25 minute read
Father and son
Words: Mike Pye Pics: Matt Richardson
Writing two-car features is always a bit of a tricky business, as you want to avoid giving one of them preferential treatment over the other. But it’s doubly hard in this case as the cars are owned and worked on by a father and son, and the last thing I want to do is cause a family rift!
So, here’s the deal: Mark Palmer owns the ’35 Ford Panel Delivery. He’s dad. Dudley, his youngest son, owns the ’40 Ford sedan. They have numerous other cars between them and work on them together, their different skill sets combining into the finished vehicles.
But here’s the fun part. An electrician by trade, Mark is essentially a restorer. Dudley, though, he’s a fully paid-up member of the Vintage Hot Rod Association (VHRA), so he brings the hot rod to the party. As you can imagine, that meeting of minds doesn’t always, well, meet, but the end results of their labours are thoroughly useable cars that are built to be driven, occasionally raced and definitely cherished.
Not quite like father like son
Words: Mike Pye Pics: Matt Richardson
As Mark is the more, ahem, experienced of the pair, we’ll start with his ’35.
Life lessons
‘I was interested in cars from an early age,’ says Mark. My dad bought me my first car, a 1934 MG PA two-seater sports, for the exorbitant price of £15 in 1964, when I was only 14 years old.
‘I believe his thinking was if I had a car, I wouldn’t get a motorcycle. That didn’t quite work, though, as I bought my mate’s BSA Bantam and kept it hidden round his house!
‘I cut my teeth on that car and learnt by my mistakes, like stripping the engine down for no good reason, cleaning it and putting it back together. I was pleased as punch as it fired up and ran, right up until there was a bit of a bang and it died.
‘I opened the bonnet and saw a small hole in the block that I thought could be fixed. But when I went round the other side I had a complete cutaway view of the engine, with the con rod hanging out. Rule number one: don’t re-use old big end bolts that have stretched!’
Mark also remembers modifying that engine by re-purposing two of his mum’s copper dariole moulds into bell-mouth intakes for the carbs. You can guess how that went down.
Buying his first flat, a change of profession, marriage and two sons later, Mark got back into classic motoring for a hobby. He ended up heavily into vintage military vehicles, after discovering a field full of them for sale in Norfolk that had been used in the filming of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.
That’s a whole lot of van to get straight for paint and, let’s be honest, a 1930’s commercial vehicle would never have looked as good as this when it was new. Sean Doyle and the team at Zero 3 Classic and Custom worked wonders and the paint is a combination of Mark’s choice of Chrysler’s brilliantly named Sting Grey (aka Destroyer Grey), with Sean’s suggestion of black fenders and running boards. Classy
He started with a 1943 GMC six-wheeler bought with the complete, and at the time rather surprising, support of his wife Sue (who was later given a ’43 Willys Jeep for her 40th birthday present!). And that was the vehicle which brought number two son into the fold.
Hit for six
‘Dudley just seems to follow in my footsteps,’ he says. ‘He was keen as mustard to get involved and really enjoyed driving the six-wheeler.’
A number of other American and English WWII vehicles came and went, but the turning point came in 1988 with the purchase of a very rough but very rare 1943 Ford F15 Cab 13 truck which had at one time carried an anti-aircraft gun. The interesting part about this Canadian Military
Pattern truck was it had a Ford V8 Flathead engine in it. And a nice sprung seat, unlike the wooden boards you got in English trucks of that era.
‘I was only a kid back then,’ recalls Dudley of what turned out to be a formative experience. ‘But I remember dad saying that hot rodders would give their right arm for that engine. I didn’t know anything about
them, so I did quite a lot of research on it and it seems the blocks used for military engines had a higher nickel content, so the hot rodders did love ’em.
‘That was my introduction to Flatheads. And it’s just lasted. Horsepower per dollar
Above left: The engine in Mark’s van is an early Jim Turnbull production that previously lived in Ralph Partington’s ’40 Ford. It’s based on a 1940 59A block and has history back to way before Ralph owned it. Its current look is down to Dudley, who sourced the additional fi nned aluminium parts, some from Old Time Speed in Australia, and gave all the ancillaries a coat of Cerakote Burnt Bronze. Above centre: The heads are Edelbrock 1126 block logo versions, with dual Stromberg 97s sitting on an Offenhauser manifold. Like Dudley’s ‘40, the headers are by Red’s, but this one has Smithy’s muffl ers… which Dudley says are way too quiet. A Hot Rod Works open drive conversion transfers the power to 3.54 gears in the original back axle Above right: Details, details. That’s a Powergen alternator disguised as a dynamo, but riding on its back is the original regulator from the Ford dynamo. It doesn’t do anything any more, just adds to the authenticity. Likewise, the Ford script hose clips and cloth-covered wiring
As most of it was beyond redemption, Mark made all the new woodwork himself – and did a beautiful job of it. There are still a few things the boys would like to do on the van, one being to add a roll hoop to give a secure mounting point for some seat belts. Oh, and maybe having it signwritten. Cue arguments around the dinner table…
it’s madness, but there’s just something ethereal about a Flathead.’
That truck was also enough to cement in Mark’s mind the belief that American cars are better – or at least more powerful, and more comfortable – than their English contemporaries. So you can imagine his excitement when Dudley turned up this US-built 1935 Ford Panel Delivery, once a decorator’s van in Minnesota, for sale in Hemsby in 2017.
A perfect marriage
‘I had no intention of doing another groundup restoration when I bought it,’ admits Mark. ‘But Dudley suggested we do the project together, which made sense to me. His knowledge of American hot rods was invaluable, and with my practical know-how it seemed to be a perfect marriage…’
It needed a lot of work, not least the chassis, the back half of which was largely missing due to rust.
First though, Dudley had to learn to weld. ‘I haven’t got the money to just pay people to do everything. And besides, we like doing as much as we can ourselves. So dad said he’d buy a welder but I’d have to build a chassis
table to learn how to use it. He said if I couldn’t do that, I wasn’t much use to him!’
With guidance from good friends and fellow VHRA members Kev Heffernan and Roland Frost, Dudley did build a chassis table, and then got stuck into repairing the chassis, intent on doing it in such a way that it didn’t look like it had ever been repaired.
And while Mark was busy looking for stock parts for it, Dudley was quietly amassing hot rod parts – Boling Brothers juice brakes, Posies reversed eye spring, telescopic shocks, Saginaw 525 steering box, Hot Rod Works open drive kit with dual torque bars, a cast ali radius rod dropper
and some nifty bolt-on shock mounts from Mac’s Speed Shop in New Zealand. The final, but arguably most important, part is a Jerry-drop on the original ’35 front beam.
Sean at Zero 3 performed some sort of miracle in restoring the knackered original steering wheel as an unexpected gift for Mark. He responded by making the wooden V8 horn push Sean also brought the original enamel Ford script badge back from the dead. No one knows how he did it, but they love him for doing it
A year in provenance
When it came to an engine, Dudley found a Royal Kustoms-built Flathead and T5 fivespeed ’box being offered for sale by Ralph Partington, in a ’40 Ford that had previously
Early Ford commercial buffers will have spotted the van has a ’36 bonnet and engine sides. But did you clock that the bumpers have been mounted upside down, with the irons now exiting beneath the wings rather than through them? The front indicators are hidden within the fanfare horns
Truck started life in Brainerd, Minnesota, as a decorator’s van. Dudley and Mark, however, found it for sale closer to home, in Hemsby. The body was covered in dents and dings from general use but amazingly good considering its age. That ancient signwriting is a real bone of contention between Mark and Dudley: Dudley wanted to keep it, Mark got out a tin of Nitromors. It might make a return one day
The restored chassis part-way through build up (right). Note the open drive conversion, dual torque bars and dropped front axle. Back on its wheels again (far right), with the new motor and fi ve-speed transmission alongside and new wood under construction
It then went off to Zero 3 Classic and Custom for paint… and, about eight months of hard graft later, Zero 3’s Sean Doyle inspects his handiwork in the booth. Great work Back home, Mark gets busy making the rest of the new internal woodwork
And just in case you ever wondered how much wood there is in a ’35 Ford Panel Delivery, here’s one of the many images sent over by Don Rogers in America, who proved to be an invaluable resource during the rebuild
While the body was reasonably solid, the same could not be said for the chassis. So Dudley’s fi rst job was to build a chassis table and teach himself to weld. Then he started cutting… and went on to restore the chassis so it still looks original, while also adding internal bracing to strengthen it
Mark’s ’35 Ford Panel Delivery might look stock at fi rst glance, and that was the whole idea as he wanted a sleeper. But a Jerrydropped front axle, Posies reversed eye spring, subtle rubber rake, uprated brakes and a hot fl at motor and T5 transmission all say hot rod. They just say it quietly The rubber rake is more obvious from the rear, where the meatier 7.50-16 Firestone Deluxe Champion blackwalls fi ll the voluminous arches just that little bit more than the 6.00-16s up front
Left: The van would have had just a single seat originally, but Mark wanted a bench seat to be more sociable, so a ’39 Ford pick-up bench was procured from Sean who sold them the van in the fi rst place. It was installed with the battery box and some of the electrics as Mark didn’t want to clutter up the fi rewall Below: The gauges are all from Classic Instruments and were chosen after much deliberation because everyone that has them say they just work. The speedometer is GPS Skydrive driven for accuracy, and the two temperature gauges in the header panel are for the left and right engine banks. We don’t usually show close-ups of handles and so on, but we had to here as there’s a good story behind them. That might look like a stock winder handle, but it operates an electric window mechanism via a micro-switch. That was dad’s idea.
‘Bloody street rodder,’ grumbles Dudley…
belonged to a Japanese prisoner of war. ‘I just loved the provenance of it,’ says Dudley excitedly. ‘That’s what I like about all this old Ford stuff – the vehicles are like rolling museums.’
He got his way with the hot rod bits there too, and tried his hand at painting the finned ali parts with Burnt Bronze Cerakote – an expensive product, but one he’s so far been very pleased with.
The internet has made the world a more accessible place, and another contact made in the process of this truck’s restoration is Don Rogers in America, who proved invaluable when it came to the woodwork part of the rebuild. ‘He was just incredible, he’s got a ’35 Delivery himself and would either send pictures of his own truck, or original Ford USA blueprints for the parts we needed. As dad can do woodwork, he’d then just make what we needed.’
A lot of the work on this one was done during the pandemic. Due to the nature of his job, Dudley never stopped working the whole way through, but the focus when he wasn’t was on the truck.
Most of the work was done at home, but occasionally other talented individuals were called upon – such as local blacksmith Lawrence Coleman, who united the top half of the van’s original, rusty fuel tank, with its van-specific filler neck position, with the bottom half of a second tank in much better condition donated by Jim at Royal Kustoms.
We love the way the ’40 sits, and you may be surprised to hear it’s on Durant monoleaf springs front and rear. A dropped beam and the tyres and 15-inch wheels help the nose-down attitude, but a ’40 sedan is just a great looking car
Eventually, though, it came to the small matter of the bodywork. Which is actually no small matter at all on a panel van like this.
Two tone
‘Sean, Lizanne, Nathan and Ben at Zero 3 Classic and Custom in Rudgwick undertook the massive job of preparing the van for paint,’ says Mark. Deciding on a colour was another one of those moments when no one could agree but, as it’s my van, I made the choice (it’s a modern Jeep tone, since you ask), though it was Sean who thought it would look better with black wings and running boards.
‘Sean’s an absolute artist, and a perfectionist. I suppose working on Bentleys puts you in that mind set!’ Bentleys and, dare we suggest, hot rods.
The body is pretty much stock but, as Dudley points out, ‘if you really want to geek out, the body is a ’35 but the grille and hood sides are from a ’36. We’ve also
flipped the bumpers and filled in the holes in the fenders where the bumper brackets originally passed through. That’s something I think everybody should do as they just flow better that way round.
‘Oh, and the front indicators are hidden in the horns.’
After paint, the van returned to the Palmers for wiring, glazing, making and fitting all the interior wood and final mechanical fettling.
Sitting on a 6.00 / 7.50-16 rubber rake on ’35 Ford wires, the truck has the air of a stock restoration, but enough little touches to catch the eye of a hot rodder. And with that, Mark and Dudley were out on a test
Left: The ’40’s 59A Flathead is based on a French military block and now displaces 284ci. Inside, there’s a 4 1/8-inch stroke crank, Ross 3 5/16-inch pistons and Scat H-beam rods, while the exhaust is handled by Red’s headers and Speedtone muffl ers, of which Dudley can’t speak highly enough Centre: Having, as Dudley put it, ‘had fi ghts with old Strombergs and cried,’ he opted for a brace of brand new ones on this motor, with Maund ribbed intake stacks, along with one of Stromberg’s e-Fire electronic distributors Right: Heads are Edelbrock 1116 script logos with Isky springs and stainless Pro-fl ow valves beneath them, worked by a Potvin super 3/8 grind cam
drive. No big deal, just a 500-mile round trip to Pendine Sands for this year’s Hot Rod Races and back. And it never missed a beat.
The fabulous ’40s
Which neatly brings us to the ’40 sedan. This arrived chez Palmer later than the ’35 but was responsible for the pair’s desire to go racing in their old Fords.
That one came into their ownership around 2018, after Dudley had been thoroughly bitten by the VHRA bug. ‘I just really wanted a hot rod,’ he says. ‘Something I could jump in and take straight to the drags, or Pendine, or GOW!
‘It was only after I bought it that loads of people started coming out of the woodwork saying they’d either worked on the car or owned it at some point. Gordon Brennan had it for a while, then Chris Howe – he was the one who painted it black. It supposedly even belonged to C W Moss at one point – and I’m inclined to believe that as every single piece of trim on the car is there, and it’s all original, too.’
Quite a lot of modifications had already been carried out, such as Durant monoleaf springs front and rear, front anti-roll bar, dropped front axle, F1 truck front brakes, a ’48 rear axle and 15-inch Mercury steels all round. With another tasteful rubber rake, this time achieved with 5.60 / 7.10-15 Firestone wide whites, it sat with definite hot rod poise.
The intention all along was to race the car at Pendine, but Dudley was too late to get a race ticket that first year. That wasn’t about to put him off, though, so he went as a spectator anyway and, shortly after, the engine decided it had had enough.
Below left: 15-inch Mercury steels are a nice touch, their slightly different offset better filling the ’arches than the similar Ford versions. Tyres are 5.60 and 7.10-15 Firestone Deluxe Champion wide whitewalls. Fancy The head and tail lights on a ’40 are as timeless as the dash. We just love the way the flutes on the glass side light lenses mirror those in the headlight surrounds. Word is this car once belonged to C W Moss, so it wears the full complement of original Ford trim The ’40 Ford has to have one of the most attractive of all the Ford dashes from this era, and is a common swap into non-’40 Ford hot rods. The original gauge cluster is just a perfect piece of Art Deco design Below: Car currently has a stock-style blue velour interior that has been re-done at some stage in its life. Eventually, Dudley plans to replace it with aged leather in a tuck ’n’ roll style
French fancy
‘It looked great but it still wasn’t really a hot rod in my mind, with its stock engine,’ admits Dudley. ‘And blowing that up prompted us to go see Jim and Jules at Royal Kustoms in Poole. We asked if he
Above: The ’40 as it used to look, first when Gordon Brennan had it, painted pale metallic blue; then when it belonged to Chris Howe and was painted black Right: Eventually, the original engine took a dump – which was the cue to step things up a notch on the hot rod scale with the purchase of a new, Royal Kustoms-built motor
And into the hole it goes… leading to a further upgrade to a ’39 ’box and the relocation of the gear shifter to the floor, rather than on the column as it was before The car is reunited with its original steering wheel. Cheers, Gordon Dudley took his first run down the Pendine Sands in 2021, and was instantly hooked. Now, he just wants to go faster
could repair it first, but he told us it was a small-bore motor and would be a lot of work, and asked us if we had considered a French Flathead?
‘When I asked if he had one, he replied that he had 20!’
The hard part was knowing when to stop once Jim started offering up his menu of tuning options. ‘I couldn’t afford the “red” extras,’ says Dudley with a grin. So I just went with most of the “blue” ones instead.’
Following the ever familiar pattern of one modification leading to another, the larger dimensions of the new engine with its aftermarket Edelbrock heads prompted a further change from column shift to three on the floor. That meant re-engineering the handbrake bracket – which gave Dudley his first opportunity to try his hand at fabrication, in addition to that more intricate welding involved.
‘Coming up with solutions to the inevitable problems, that’s the bit of working on these cars I really enjoy.
We laughed when Dudley described the car as looking a bit like an elephant, but from this angle you can see what he means. With that giant boot, it’s no surprise ’40s were a favourite with moonshine runners into the 1950s, before more powerful cars became available
There’s no shortage of projects and interesting vehicles at the Palmers’ gaff. As well as those shown, there’s a ’30 Chrysler coupe, a ’35 Chevy coupe and a ’46 Chevy – so there’s no brand loyalty here, just a love of old vehicles
‘It’s only a ’39 Ford three-speed but it’s so much more fun. It just feels more racy. The downside is you can’t have a middle passenger up front any more, but I’d never go back to column shift.”
The wheel deal
Neatly bringing the shifter conversion round full circle, when Dudley went looking for a replacement wheel for the sporty Grant that was on the car, up popped that man Gordon Brennan again. ‘I’ve got the original wheel off that car, you can have it. When you sell the car, I’ll have it back.’ What a hero.
‘I was bowled over by that gesture,’ says Dudley. ‘But it’s testament to the hot rod brotherhood. The VHRA is just such a welcoming club to be in, it’s a real collective.’
With that, Dudley was back on the road and lovin’ it.
‘It still looks a bit like an elephant,’ he laughs. ‘But Jim’s engine really woke it up, and prompted us to try harder to get a race ticket for Pendine in 2021. We both had a go up the beach and I got 79.30mph out of it. Of course, then I wanted to go faster.
‘The car’s an absolute joy to drive as it is now, though, and I drive it pretty hard – mainly around the back roads around where we live.
‘It’s quite heavy, but it’s so on the nose. It’s just point and go.’
Asked if he had any further plans for this vehicle, Dudley replied that the paint could do with a refresh at some point and he’d like to replace the blue velour interior with some aged leather tuck ’n’ roll. Oh yes, and then a T5 / open drive would be nice, but that would mean the back axle would need changing… And so it goes on.
‘There’s always a shopping list with these kind of cars. But everything we do, it’s me and my dad. I use him as a resource. He’s always there to help, and there’s nothing he can’t turn his hand to. More importantly, he doesn’t treat me like an idiot. And he just loves drawing a picture when he’s explaining something.’
That’s a sentiment which is echoed by Mark: ‘For a father and son project, this has to be one of most enjoyable projects I have ever undertaken.
‘And who would have thought at the start of it all, we would have built a vehicle from the ground up and, in the process, saved another unloved commercial from going on the scrap heap.
‘So, thanks to all who, in one way or another, helped make it possible.’
The two vehicles are clearly quite different, though underneath there are a number of similarities. They’re both hot rods, in that they’re lower and more powerful than stock, but with its fi ve-speed ’box the van is more of a long-distance cruiser and more suited to the kind of motoring Mark wants to do these days. The ’40 better suits his son, Dudley, who likes to throw it around the back roads of Sussex and Kent with the hot Flathead and Speedtone muffl ers on song, as well as taking his young family out for a spin whenever the opportunity presents
