Keeping a 1940 Ford coupe all in the family

For Jim and Vickie Delzer, their stunning 1940 Ford DeLuxe Coupe is a link in a family tradition extending back more than a half century.

Someone had traded the coupe in on a new car at a dealership in Enid, Okla. in 1964. And that’s where Vickie’s parents found the car, which they bought to use as a daily driver.

“Her parents used to put her up on the package tray behind the seat when she was little,” Jim Delzer noted.

“My cousin and I both took our driving tests in that car,” added Vickie.

But at some point, the old Ford fell out of favor and was parked. Then along came Jim Delzer, who fell for Vickie.

“When we first met, her mom told me, ‘That car has got to get out of my yard.’ But I really had no interest in the car. I was more interested in Mustangs at the time,” Delzer recalled.

In fact, he and his wife would eventually buy an early Mustang convertible from her mom and restore it.

So the ’40 coupe sat, unappreciated and unwanted. Until the Delzers spotted a ’40 Ford coupe that had been mildly street-rodded by some friends.

“That’s when I decided we’d better get down to Oklahoma and bring that car up here. That was in the mid-’80s. We had it in storage a long time,” he said. When the couple started work on the car, they figured it would be a three-year project. By the time it was finished last year, it had been more than seven years.

“It was a full body-off-frame restoration. I wanted to do it in depth. I wanted to keep the car as original as possible. It was in excellent condition when we got it, with very little rust.”

The odometer showed 73,000 original miles.

“That’s the original engine that was in it,” added Vickie. “At car shows, when you open the hood, people are waiting to see what you have under there.”

There was never a temptation to replace the flathead V-8 with a later model small block V-8.

The coupe was stripped down to its bare essentials, with the flathead taken to Jerry Livingston at United Engine Specialists for minimal machine work, which included replacing one cylinder sleeve. A friend and fellow Mustang enthusiast, Harold Farrier, helped Delzer reassemble the engine, which got one significant upgrade.

“I’m not a purist,” Delzer confessed. “But obviously you have to put duals on a flathead.”

A Red’s Headers dual exhaust kit, including exhaust headers, pipes and a pair of “Smitty” mufflers took care of that part of the project. The resulting low-key rumble proves the point that nothing sounds quite like a flathead through duals.

“We do get a lot of comments from people who say, `I love it that you left it original and left the flathead in it.’” Delzer said.

Another buddy, Butch Dysart, handled what little body work was needed, including patching a rusty spot in the trunk floor, before prepping the coupe’s body for paint.

“The color is called Lyon Blue. Most (’40 Fords) are either black or that nice maroon color,” Delzer said, noting that the deep blue hue is, however, a factory Ford color.

He chose to use a single stage R-M formula, rather than going the modern basecoat-clearcoat route, again for maximum authenticity.

Dysart and Zach Noel teamed up to spray the car. Then it was Delzer’s turn to learn a new skill, as it was up to him to color-sand the entire vehicle.

Inside, Vickie wasn’t sure she wanted to go with a stock mohair interior, remembering her itchy days as a child riding in the car.

“But the only other option involved three different colors of material and that would have clashed with the dash,” she said.

So they ordered a Cartouche mohair interior kit and installed it themselves.

“We didn’t have as much problem as we did with the vinyl kits we did in the Mustangs we restored,” she said.

They also took on the daunting task of woodgraining the metal windshield and window moldings, applying a maroon paint and then carefully applying black ink with a special tool to replicate the grain.

The interior features Ford’s first column-shift three-speed manual transmission, along with a two-tone dashboard. A horizontal speedometer is set in a cream-colored panel, along with individual gauges.

The decision was made to keep the old lever-action shock absorbers, instead of replacing them with modern tubular shocks. For rolling stock, Delzer did go with larger steel wheels and a set of BF Goodrich Silvertown radial wide whitewall tires, P235/75/15’s in back and smaller P205/75/15’s up front.

“I wanted a little bit of a rake to the stance,” he explained.

“We don’t drive it a lot. It’s definitely not a daily driver,” Jim Delzer said. “I was really surprised for 85 horsepower how much power it has. Sixty-five is as fast as I’ve taken it and I still had throttle left. It really goes down the road nice.”

The Delzers do enjoy sharing their car with others at area car shows.

“At shows, it’s nice to see grandparents talking to their grandkids about these old cars,” said Vickie Delzer, who can tell a few tales of her own about their old family Ford.

This story was originally published November 18, 2016 at 12:42 PM with the headline "Keeping a 1940 Ford coupe all in the family."