My dad's '35 pickup becoming my son's first car...

[Flat Ernie]

My 14yr old son just started asking about cars late last summer. He mentioned maybe fixing up one of my old trucks. Well, I don't have any other than my daily driver '54 F100, but told him we'd find him a good project. My dad went and looked at a Willys pickup that was too rusty and also sold by the time he got there. But my dad mentioned that his '35 Pickup was pretty far down his list of projects and he wasn't sure when he'd ever get to it and if my son wanted that, he could have it.

When I told my son about it, he wanted to look at it. So, we went to my dad's (about 3hrs away) and checked it out. The carb base plate was frozen solid from sitting, so I had my son remove it and we went through it with parts from my stash. He did all the work and put it all back together, we bolted it on, and filled the bowl with gas and after filing the points, it fired right up! This really lit the excitement for my son!

My dad bought his pickup about 15 years ago. It had an early SBC adapted to the original 3-spd and hydraulic brakes, but otherwise, pretty original. About 10 years ago, we swapped in an 8BA and a '39 box, worked on the juice brakes that were previously converted with a '39 pedal & backing plates, and had it driveable. My dad started really working on the truck - disassembling it, making small repairs, and removing everything to get the interior pretty nice, but the exterior was always going to be as-is. It's a solid truck, but not without some minor rust here and there. Then my dad's life got a little busy, he was selling his business, house, retiring, and moving. Other projects got pushed ahead, and the truck just sat. But my dad had collected virtually everything my son would need to reassemble the truck into a nice driver. It was almost a kit.

Back when I was helping with the engine & brakes all those years ago, I noticed some rust undernearth the right rear frame rail at the kickup - a common rust area on these years. I welded in some strap as a temporary reinforcement, but told my dad he needed to replace that section. One of the things he bought was replacement frame sections for the area, along with replacement pieces for the crossmembers (which weren't bad).

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, and for spring break, I helped my son disassemble the bed, rear fenders, and running boards so we could get to those frame sections first. The kickup was worse than I knew, but what was even worse, was the entire right frame rail, which we couldn't see with the running boards on, was almost completely eaten away. This wasn't noticeable from the inside because someone had welded in some C-channel on both sides at some point in the distant past. The C-channel was keeping this frame together...at least on the right side

So now we're on the hunt for a decent frame. I've found a couple good ones, but they're way out west and it's simply not feasible to get them back to FL. I've posted a wanted ad here on the board:


https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=196390


But equally just wanted to share the excitement of another generation getting involved. I just hope we can find a frame soon - the few I've looked at locally are either butchered or as rusty as mine. I don't remind replacing crossmembers, and could easily make it work with just the frame rail itself, but a full frame would get us rolling quickly. I was hoping for few setbacks to keep my son's motivation up. I have to head out of state for a few months for work in July and really wanted to get him going before I left...