[blucar]

In 1955 a friend of mine had a very nice '40 coupe that had a very tired flat head, "Dick" decided that he wanted to re-power the car with a new Y-block. I can remember some of the alterations we did to the chassis, but not all of them.
Dick bought a brand new crate motor from Ford, then we set out to install the Y-block engine into his coupe.
We knew the chassis was going to require a lot of alterations so we removed the body from the frame.
As I recall we used a '55-56 Ford OD trans and a '46-47 Ford pickup rear end with an open drive line and parallel rear springs. The front axle was a 2" dropped axle for a '41 Ford, with a '41 front spring, and anti roll bar. The '40 steering gears were retained. The front and rear shocks were converted to tube type. A track bar was added to the rear suspension. The wheels were '49-50 Merc 15" with pill-box Merc hub caps.
The engine was left stock except for the front timing case cover which as I recall was for a '55-56 T-Bird. I don't remember to much about the hookup of the engine, I do recall that we used an 8v electric system which did not require any alterations to the cars electric system.
The car was painted black with red pleated upholstery.. The car ran and handled very well, with one exception, my '36 coupe with it's well built 59AB engine and Columbia OD would run off and hide from Dick's '40. We took the two cars out to local Vegas drag strip, I again ran off and left Dick in the dust. The best speed he ever turned with the car was in the mid 70's. Dick got mad an went home, would not speak to me for several days.
The car had been built with the thought that we would take it on a summer long cruise around the country. Our shake down cruise was down to Los Angeles. We went by the offices of Hot Rod Magazine. Parked the car out in front and told them what we had, they were not the least bit interested, telling us they had a drawer full of pictures of '40 Fords.
With our ego's deflated we started to walk out, one of the men in the office asked us to wait, he was on his way to lunch and would look at our car. The man walked around the car, stepped back into the office and called out for a photographer. Several pictures of the car were taken and we left with our ego's re-elevated.
Several months later Dick got a call from Hot Rod Magazine, they wanted his permission to include the car in an up coming publication.
Dick's '40 was the centerfold car for a Hot Rod publication in early '56 that featured '40 Ford's. Naturally we were the talk of the town in Vegas..
Dick drove the car for over ten years as his everyday car, then he decided to sell it. Nobody was interested, so he re-painted it Hugger Orange and sold it within a few days for a very good price. Two weeks later the kid that bought the car totaled it.
In the early '80's Dick called me, he told me to go buy the latest issue of Hot Rod Magazine, his '40 was the featured car in the series they had been running about cars of yesteryear..