Within a week after unloading the fully restored stock woodie from leaving its New Jersey home, Steve and Jeanette jumped into the pile of Michigan-grown maple and iron and pointed it toward the Southwest Woodie Show in Phoenix, Arizona. They left Orange County with a pack of hot rod woodies, but by the time they hit Palm Springs, California, their friends suggested Steve and Jeanette get a two-hour lead while they hung out in Palm Springs. If anyone ever needed to be convinced of a street rod's inherit superiority over a stocker, it wasn't Steve and Jeanette. After several hundred miles of nursing the 85-horse, 221-inch Flathead across the desert without air-conditioning, Steve was absolutely positive his decision to street rod his '40 was the right decision.
As soon as the old wagon made it back to Southern California, Steve and John Coleman stripped it down to the bare chassis and the choice was discussed whether to build around an aftermarket chassis or beef up the Ford's original frame. (It's funny to note major doubt settled in when the '40 was blown all apart and Steve took one look at its mangy skeleton, then wondered where his $45,000 had gone).
Armed with the knowledge that woodies require a lot of special structural support for their organic body structure, the decision was made to beef up and box the stock '40 Ford frame. Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to new or used frames was the introduction of powdercoating. The '40s upgraded chassis was sent to Kelly Inman and the crew at Specialized Coatings in Huntington Beach for a heavy dose of the glossy black goo.
Old Fords aren't exactly famous for good brakes or sophisticated suspension. The woodie's straight axle and rear live axle, along with second-year juice drums, were swapped for high-tech replacements. On the woodie's nose, a Heidt's Superide IFS setup was installed, and on the rear, a Kugel IRS with a Ford 9-inch packing 3.73:1 gears was installed. To stop the Chevy-powered lumber pile, four 11-inch vented Wilwood discs pressurized via a Corvette master-cylinder and brake booster bring things to a halt. For rolling stock, a set of 17-inch Intro Twisted Matrix wheels was wrapped with Nitto rubber.
From Huntington Beach, the rolling chassis was hauled north on Beach Boulevard (Highway 39) to Limeworks in Whittier, California. The crew at Limeworks masterminded the build from this point on. The Ford's steel body parts, after a preassembly check, were returned south to the Body Palace in Huntington Beach for paint and bodywork. While the metal was out, the Eastern hard rock maple framework and birch inserts were entrusted to master woodworker Alex Guerro. Returning from wood and paint, the crew at Limeworks jumped back in the woodie and buttoned it all up to point where it was ready for Sergio at Orange Auto Upholstery to stitch up the woodie's interior.
At the onset of Steve Early's '40 Ford woodie project, his objective was to create his version of the ultimate street rod woodie for himself. As fate would have it, the very first time the car was viewed in public at the L.A. Roadsters' Father's Day show in Pomona, California, Wayne Grafton, a street rodder from British Columbia, Canada, took a liking to the woodie and made an offer. Although the offer was big dough, it was only 10 grand over what the car cost Steve to build. Steve thought it over and thought, "What the heck; it's the thrill of the hunt and not the kill." Steve Early's woodie now lives north of the border.