 1949
Ford F-1 - Continued
First Hand Account
by: Marty Perkins
I chopped a Ford 9" rear end from a '67 Fairlane and added large bearing ends. Then came custom mounts for the AVO
coil-overs and the brackets for the uneven four-link suspension from Ron Baker Racecars. Ron was nice enough to let me use his facility and specialty tooling to shorten the rear myself.
The cab was a wreck. A whole new floor was in order and after some 21 fabricated patch panels, it's integrity was restored. I replaced the bottom third of both doors too since they had seen better days.
Then came the fun. I had never chopped a top before and figured it could be rather serious if I messed up. I found no less than a dozen articles, half of which contradicted each other, and I spoke to professional body men that had done chops before. I quartered the roof and dropped the profile 2 ¾" total, but cut low in the back to maintain a full sized rear window. Cutting the doors to match actually proved harder than the roof itself. Overall it was much scarier than it was difficult.
 I decided to change the look of the hood and solicited the services of a local sheet metal shop with a louver press. I had a right and left patch panel made and butt-welded them into the sides of the hood for a clean look inside and out.
The bed was gone, nothing salvageable other than as templates. I decided the bed would dump so I made a subframe to mount the sides and floor on, stepped hard to allow room for the rear. Space was there so I built in a handy little storage space under the bed floor. Inner fender wells were necessary to allow room for the 31x16.5 M/T Sportsman tires. The strengthening contours of the bed sides were replaced with hardwood panels so the fenders would fit properly. Not only did they match original profile, but they set the truck off wonderfully. The hardwood for that as well as throughout the truck is white oak with
"Santeen" (a South American hardwood) accents.  [more]
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