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Last year, Dennis Gorder and his wife decided to maybe do one last car project. “We had wanted a collector car in the 1955-1957 range,” said Dennis, former national president of a Model T Ford club. “In the spring of 2019, we heard of a 1957 Ford Fairlane two-door hardtop project car. It had been a father/son project started in 1999 that was never completed. However, the asking price was more than we were willing to spend.”
In November 2019, the price was lowered. “We negotiated,” Gorder explained. “In late November, we picked up the baby blue 1957 Ford.” According to Dennis, the body had been done and painted. The chassis had also been painted and a 390 V-8 of unknown origin had been installed. It also had bucket seats, a console and a tilt steering column. A new wiring harness, purchased in 1999, had been installed.
“Some paperwork was included,” Gorder explained. “It showed that parts had been ordered in 1999.” Needing completion were the wiring, carpeting, brakes, all heater cables and the inside windshield trim. Most of the windows would not go up and down. The seats had new covers, but no padding. Once Dennis got the car home, he found more things that needed replacement. The tires looked like new, but had 2002 date codes. The fuel lines were not safely routed.
“I worked on the car over winter and then during the COVID-19 isolation period,” Gorder told Racing Junk. “Being retired I had a lot of time to work on a car,” he said. “I estimate I worked at least three days a week for about six hours per day on this project.” The Ford-specific parts houses Dennis worked with were still taking orders. For standard parts, he found that the local NAPA store remained open. “I actually liked ordering online and having parts delivered to our house,” he noted. “There no big delays or issues.”
Many of the car part suppliers Gorder used were offering free shipping. “I did not noticed any shipping delays,” he advised. “I have noticed that response time is sometimes longer than usual, which makes me believe they are working from home and perhaps on a limited basis. The CJ Pony company’s showroom was closed, but their shipments seemed to go out right after ordering. Questions took a day or two to get answered.”
Dennis has a shop behind his garage. It is heated, has internet and satellite TV. There is also a refrigerator in case refreshments are needed. Although the ’57 Ford was purchased before the pandemic, COVID-19 did affect his project. “We originally planned to have it done by Fall, maybe for the ‘Cruising the Coast’ show,” he pointed out. “But it was on the road by mid-May.” The virus actually helped him completing the car ahead of schedule. “With no virus we’d have been concentrating on our completed cars to get ready for cruising and car shows,” he explained. “But when the virus started, there was no need to get the other cars ready, no shows to go to. So, we kept going on the ’57 Ford”
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