Customs The Titty Twister '52 Ford latest from the Potter Meat Market

Read to the end, there's finished pics at the bottom!

About 2 years ago, I got this '52 Ford from fellow HAMB member Edelbroke in a trade deal.
It's one of those cars that had a lot of work done to it but a lot of poor taste as well (he
didn't build it). So I decided to go through the whole car and give it a period-correction.

This is what it looked like on the day I started.



Note the lack of bumpers, painted door handles, 14" Coke-bottle mags



Painted tail light bezels and rolled pan built onto the back.



This is at my friend Tim's place, we swapped labor, he did some mechanical stuff for me and
I put quarters on his Chevelle. Worked out great since I'm a pretty good welder but a lousy mechanic (plus he's got a hoist in his garage!)

He put in the Aerostar coils and shorter shocks in the front (big thanks to Fairlane Dave
for posting up that info) along with 3" blocks in the rear. He also went through the brakes
and did some work on the top end of the motor (which we'll get to later).

 

As long as it was up on the hoist, I decided to tackle the inner rockers and body mounts. I
knew when I bought the car that this was going to be one of the bigger jobs. Here's some
before pics of the carnage.



Somebody painted this car and just ignored how there were no inner rockers or body mounts left.





Four mounts on each side, not a single one that was still connected



A couple in-progress shots

 

After 22 solid hours of cutting and welding 28 separate pieces of steel, it turned out nice.
I got a little heavy handed with the seam sealer but I want this to last, especially after
all that work. It's all welded solid underneath.









Next, it was time for some bodywork. The paint looks OK in those first few pics, but there
was some bad bubbling on the bottom of the driver's door and front fender. There's some
poor bodywork in some other areas as well, but I didn't want "might as well" to turn into a
complete paint job. And I only had a little bit of the original paint from the car to work
with. So I decided only to fix the worst spots and run this paint job for a while.





Once I started cutting, I could see why it was bubbling. Junk in the door and a piece of
screen to hold in a previous repair.





If I had more paint, I probably would have cut the whole door bottom off, but I only had so
much to work with. And again, at some point, may as well repaint the whole car, and I knew I didn't want to do that. New pieces tacked in place



Fully welded and ground



Then it went to my buddy Grinder's place for finish bodywork and paint. I did some welding
work on his chopped '50 Ford in exchange for some time in his spray booth, and he did a
great job spraying the paint on and getting it all to match.

 

Drove it home from the paint shop on dry rotted roller tires and broke down a block from my
shop, had to push it into the driveway. Convenient spot to break down though.



Ended up being a carb problem.

The rest of it was assembly of parts. This is what it looks like today, with some before
pics sprinkled in so you can see all what was done.

Before



After



Up front, I shaved the bumper bolt heads on a stock bumper and cut down the front bumper brackets so the bumper would sit lower and a bit closer to the pan (with some help from Grinder). We painted the center grille divider body color since it was black before.

I got some '54 Ford headlight rings to replace the painted originals that were in the car.
The headlights are meant to look like Lucas Flamethrowers as vertical quads, but I had a 7"
hole and a 4" hole to work with, so I couldn't use original Lucas lights. These were made
using some cheapie eBay halogen conversion headlight bulbs, reflectors made from '59 Dodge hubcap centers, and license plate bullet bolts. The parking lights use the '52 outer
housings cut down, with Chrysler Cordoba bezels and lenses, with the bullets added to match.

The parts aren't period correct but I think the look is, and I didn't have to repaint anything to do it. The old parking lights were out of a semi trailer and said "Grote" on them, here's a pic before.

 

After, with the new lights. They're cooler looking in person, hard to take a good picture of the lights.



I also swapped out the black painted wiper arms for stainless ones. Here's a before side
shot that really showed the paint bubbles.



And after paint. I swapped out the painted door handles for some original chrome ones.

The wheels are 56 Ford 15" with trim rings and home made wide whites. I mounted spinners to the dust caps. Would like spider caps but can't justify the cost right now.



Side shot shows the new ride height, which I feel is perfect. It's obviously lowered but not too much for a custom.

 

Here's a before shot of the back, showing the painted tail lights and rolled pan.



And after. I got some '53 tail light bezels on eBay and some real nice '56 Olds lenses from
a local junkyard. Another local junkyard netted me the rear bumper with brackets for $30
and the chrome is pretty darn nice.



Here's another before pic, with the new tail lights going in. I had to cut the bumper pan
completely off to mount the back bumper. Careful cutting got me a nice, stock looking edge and some touch up paint should keep it clean.



And after. The rolled pan didn't look that bad once the tail lights were changed, but I
still like the bumper the best.

 

We also did under the hood. Here's a before shot, a rat's nest of wire loom and $10 chrome valve covers.



While it was at Tim's shop, he swapped out the intake for an early style one with an oil
fill tube so I could run script valve covers on it. I got a set of wire looms from eBay (for
my birthday, thanks dad!) and an Oldsmobile air cleaner at the junkyard from the same car
that gave up it's tail light lenses.

I cut the center out of another script valve cover and
attached it to the air cleaner so it says "Chevrolet" as well. It's a 400" Chevy motor and
I didn't want to pass it off as an Olds motor, but I also don't want it to look like a belly
button. I have a bit more engine detailing to do but this gives you a good idea of where
I'm headed.



I also did a complete overhaul on the interior, but I have to get some pictures from Tim's
camera so I can post them. I'll try to do that tomorrow.

 

Looks good John!! Hope to see you at Iola

 

Nice transformation..............Mike

 

What a difference. That looks great.

 

wow man you've got the bitchenst car in Potter. Looks good.

 

I like the way you think!

It looks a bunch better without blowing the whole thing apart!

Great job!


Sent from my iPhone using TJJ!!!

 

Wow man. Killer save. I love it

 

motor looks WAYYYYYYY better!

 

Wowsers! Nice work. almost making me regret getting rid of my 54....

 

Great job!

 

damn that car looks cool !!!!!!!! me likey lots..lol now dont get mad at me but i kinda liked it with the old wheels.but that engine was plum scary looking. looks great now! so i give it a 100 on the done right meter!

 

Super transformation Amigo. Nothing is permanent in car style except good taste! You hit it outa the park brother. Thanx for sharing, looking forward to seeing interior changes. ~sololobo~

 

What an improvement! That looks good.

 

Switching the bumpers and tail lights to chrome made such an amazing difference! I think painted everything looks too 80s or something. Nice work.

 

looks a lot better. The chrome and wheels really woke it up. I like your Olds-type spark plug wire retainer too.

 

Nice car, looks great

 

nice job. i like the new look much better.

 

WOW looks great. I really dig what you did with the car and especially the engine. Looks great!

 

Nice transformation!! I reakky like what you did with the engine too!!

 

Thanks everybody for the compliments. I've been dying to post these pictures up but I really wanted a finished product to show before I did. The interior was probably the biggest part, I'll get before and afters of that. You can still see the velour headrest seats in some of the before pics...

Thanks! I'll be there. Cliffy can't come this year so some of us are taking over his spots, we'll have Symco stuff posted all over, be sure to stop in.

The wheels weren't bad looking on their own, they just didn't fit the period I was shooting for on this car. I sold them to a guy with a Mustang, they were perfect for his car.

The motor has a few more details to go, the blue fuel filter is getting swapped out and I have one of those battery covers to make a modern battery look like an old water filled one, I don't want anything modern under the hood. I'll post finished pics when it's all done, but I really appreciate the compliments, I'm really happy with how it's turning out.

 

Huge improvement! Car looks great.

 

Here's the interior, before and after.

The old seats were some 80's looking headrest affairs upholstered with enough velour to make Zapp Brannigan jealous.



You can see the stock steering wheel with painted horn ring and the plain door panels with little embroidered "1952" patches in these pics.





Taking the seats out was a breeze, considering they were mounted in the car with 1 bolt and two sheetmetal screws through a single layer floorpan section. And a nice wooden shim to take up the slack.

 

Those went right into the dumpster and were replaced with original seats reupholstered in blue pleated vinyl. I have so many hours into these seats, it's insane. The back seat frame I had was in good shape, but the front was pretty rotted, I ended up getting a donor 4 door front seat to steal a bunch of springs and the tracks from.

I'm sure I have 20 hours into these seats, maybe 30. I'm really happy with them though. The upholstery was a kit I got online. Took a little work to make them fit but they turned out nice.



Here you can see I redid a '59 Ford steering wheel in blue and white two-tone with a '57 Fairlane horn ring. The steering wheel was really cracked and was originally pink, I have a ton of hours in restoring that as well. I really like it though.

Whoever built the car originally retained the stock automatic steering column and did a great job hooking it up to the TH350 trans it has, so I'm really happy about that. Nothing uglier to me than a late model steering column stuck in an old car. I also made a radio delete plate out of a '57 Chevy quarter panel insert to cover up the hole where a CD player was cut in.



I reused the door panels that were in the car, but I added a stainless divider to separate the top and bottom, plus a couple sets of '54 front door panel trims on top so I could add the white vinyl inserts (dresses it up and eliminated the little patches on the door panels) I also put the trims on the bottoms of the door panels, which are '63 Thunderbird outside door trims, and used '55 Thunderbird door handles and window cranks I'm real happy with how these turned out.



I made a nice new package tray with pleated vinyl and some cool kick panel vents used as speaker grilles, I'll dig up the before and after pics of those as well.

 

GREAT transformation. I recall seeing that car for sale and thinking, "some HAMBer is going to pick that up and make it cool..."