1939 Ford Deluxe Sedan -The Down Low

P&J offers stainless steel perch pins (PN 1043), which are a godsend if you've ever spent an afternoon torching and beating rusty perch pins to remove them. Whenever working with stainless, always coat the threads with anti-seize compound, otherwise the threads will very effectively seize in place, and destroy the pins and nuts.

Believe it or not, but these two springs fit the same 1935-40 Ford application. While you could reverse the stock spring eyes to get the car lower, there's no way you could get the stock spring to flatten out to match the profile on the POSIES spring (P&J PN 1057) without disrupting the shackle geometry.

Yes this is a rear axle, but it still serves as a good example of how to remove stock Ford shackle bushings. Simply insert a hacksaw blade through what's left of the bushing shell in the spring boss, mount the blade to its frame, and cut through the wall of the bushing shell's wall. Check your progress frequently to avoid cutting into the spring boss. I usually start at the side opposite of the shell's seam, but I usually have to cut the shell in more than one place.

The plastic bushings that P&J includes with its spring shackle kits are the cock for dolly. They're infinitely more compliant when compared to Ford's fiber-packed bushings, and they slip in with no more than a few mallet taps. Note that the shackle's lower bar (technically number 5048 but come in the 5001 shock mounting kit) serves double duty as a lower shock mount.

If you remove your stock spring as I usually do, with a five-pound sledge, give the spring plenty of space to flop around in once it leaves the shackles. To install the POSIES spring, merely loosen the spring pinch bolt to take the preload off of the main leaf. At that point hand pressure will deflect the spring enough so its eyes meet the shackles.

P&J upper shock brackets (part of shock kit 5048) mount directly to the original shock locations, and even retain the stock shock bolts. While they technically don't require us to drill holes, you'd be best served to drill a hole at each arrow tip and fasten the bracket to the frame with additional bolts. It's because the load path exerted by the tube shock will cause the bracket to pivot along the rotational axis created by the two existing bolts, and that can fatigue the bracket and/or frame. The two additional bolts will eliminate that axis of rotation and preserve the parts' lives.

The dropped axle not only lowers the car, it makes the tie rods interfere with the wishbone. The traditional fix required heating the steering arms with a torch and bending the arms down until the tie rods cleared, but it takes a seasoned hand to avoid overheating the arms and access to a machine shop that can check the arms for cracks. The P&J forged dropped steering arms (PN 1109) mount to the spot-faced pads on the spindles and take the place of the nuts that retain the brake backing plate (or, in this case, the caliper bracket). We removed the stock arms with a chop saw, but a hacksaw would work just as well.

Due to its age, our car needed tie rod ends. Rather than trying to narrow the stock tie rod and drag link to fit the 1022 axle, we got the 1028K tie rod kit and 1060K drag link kit. While we probably could've saved a little money by shortening the stock rod and link, as a general rule we avoided cutting and welding steering components whenever possible. The design also prohibits water from rusting the rod ends in place too.

Good quality stock drums and brake parts are expensive, so the Super Bell Power Stopper 3234-4K disc-brake kit actually costs about the same as rebuilding the antiquated Ford brakes if the drums are bad (and ours were). We would've paid a premium just for the peace of mind that we have good brakes and can find parts anywhere, so this was a welcome surprise.

In stock form, the brake dust shield hits the bottom spindle boss. To fit the shield, scribe the boss using the caliper bracket as a template, remove the bracket, and grind away the boss to the scribed line. Had we read the instructions, we would've known that before we assembled the knuckles.

The Power Stopper brake kits boast a 1-inch-thick vented rotor that could easily stop a car that weighs far more than our 2,800-lb sedan. Since the rotor simply bolts to the back of the hub, that gives us the option of 4 1/2-, 4 3/4-, 5-, and 5 1/2-inch wheel bolt patterns (sorry, not the '36-39 10 1/2-inch pattern). We chose the 2324 kit as its 5 1/2-inch bolt pattern matches our '40 rear axle and lets us use '40-48 Ford 16-inch wheels.

The driver-side bracket gave us roughly a .030-inch gap between the pad and bracket, so we mimicked that figure. P&J very graciously offered to send us a new bracket, but we'll probably keep this one as the machined surfaces-not the as-cast area we ground away-establishes the caliper register.