Bill Currie 32 Ford Roadster – Fastlane Rod Shop

Bill Currie’s 32 Ford Roadster

2013 Hot Rod of the Year

Bill Currie has a nice collection of cool hot rods and decided he wanted to add a roadster to it. He liked Floyd Williams roadster so that was the basis of what we decided to build. Eric Black provided some interior artwork and Ed Pink racing engines would build the potent small block. Tracy Weaver did the interior work to finish out this bad ass hot rod!

Click on the images at the top to expand a gallery featuring more details. Scroll over for more images!

We start with an assortment of tubes to build the headers.

It’s slowly coming together making sure clearances and such are taken into consideration.

This header is finished welded and ready to move on to the other side.

The idea is to keep them very similar side to side and nothing hanging below the frame.

Always go up and over the rear-end.

A nice bracket to hold the tubing.

Exhaust is done and one the way to get Jet Hot Coated.

Back from coating and ready for a finished chassis.

With some help from an Eric Black drawing, we’re going to make steal interior panels. The interior will have a racy, but clean finished look.

This is the start of the area behind the seat.

With the upper area roughed in, we’ll move to the lower sections. You can see what Eric provided us.

The corner has been made. The middle inset area will be a leather panel.

The door panel section completed.

Looking down the door panel you can see the curve has been maintained.

The kick panel is made. You can see that all of the gaps have to be considered and maintained.

The latches made and the Frank Wallic made seats are fitted. Also the rear panel gets epoxy primed to stay nice until bodywork and paint is started.

Start by making separate pieces for the front and sides. Clearances are always an issue with fan shrouds. The area is pretty tight.

The corners are half rounded and test fit.

Now an inset area is formed using a bead roller.

Hole is cut and the sides welded to the front.

The flange is formed so the fan has ½” clearance. Also the notches for the lower hose and drain petcock will be boxed and finished.

The final step is to inset the overflow tank. Once that was done it’s finished mounted for the mockup.

The is the factory top tab. Blowing out in the wind when the top is not mounted. We’ll make this retractable so it’s only up when need.

First we remove the factory bead around the tab.

We make a cup with the slot for the tab to slide into.

Here’s the mechanism we make for this.

Now an aluminum block is machined to slide onto tab. It will be ground and filed to fit neatly into the cup.

It fits into the cup. Now to carefully gap it for paint.

The is the factory top tab. Blowing out in the wind when the top is not mounted. We’ll make this retractable so it’s only up when need.

First we remove the factory bead around the tab.

We make a cup with the slot for the tab to slide into.

Here’s the mechanism we make for this.

Now an aluminum block is machined to slide onto tab. It will be ground and filed to fit neatly into the cup.

It fits into the cup. Now to carefully gap it for paint.

The alternator is dissembled by Powermaster. Then we clean up the separate pieces to look as nice as possible.

We paint and sand/buff the separate pieces and then send them back to Powermaster for reassembly

The finished alternator

the painted bellhousing

the painted headlight bucket

the painted rear lower corners

the painted axle housings. The entire area has been sanded and buffed.

the painted fan shroud.

the finished valve cover.

prepping and painting the engine.

we start by grinding and smoothing the water pump.

then move on to the block and heads

then we prime and block sand the engine.

block is painted. The oil pan is next while the engine will start to be reassembled

the finished engine ready to go into the chassis.

painting and assembling the chassis

usually I do all of the painting in house, but this frame was painted by a friend, Jeremy Imming. He did a fabulous job – it is absolutely perfect. Hard block sanding the clear with 600 grit on up.

a close up of how nice it is.

the rearend mounted.

engine and front suspension. It’s ready for the body