"...as a young teenage boy growing up in Southern California I owned an immaculately spotless early model wooden Ford station wagon...spending what seemed to others an enormous amount of time maintaining and reworking the wood in an exacting and meticulous standard never before dreamed of by the manufacturer."
The 1940 and before Ford wooden station wagons were designed and built using what was called the "slim-jim chassis." Basically what that meant was that the body of the vehicle was built with outboard or exposed running boards, creating by default a narrower interior. After the war, in the 1946 to 1948 models, they increased the size of the interior by simply widening the body fully over and covering the running boards. The 1941 version Ford wooden station wagon like the one I owened and restored beyond like new condition was a slightly modified hybrid model between the previous slim-jim and that of the post war widened model. If you carefully examine the 1941 version with the previous year 1940 model you will find the 1940 wagon has fully exposed outside the body running boards while the 1941 wagon has almost full, but not totally, covered boards. If you jump to the first models produced after the war, 1946 through 1948, you will see the running boards are completely covered, the width of the cabin interior fully widened over the running boards. That widening, besides just increasing cargo space and more seating room across the bench seats, also allowed a for few modifications to the interior not found in the slim-jims. The most notable change being crank windows in the rear doors. The front doors always had double panel doors alowing room for a window crank mechanism to be inside. Not so the rear doors prior to the post war models. If you notice in the above photo the 1941 model, although slightly widened, still adhered to the sliding window rear door design of the 1940 slim-jims, hence among other things, the hybrid definition. The rear side windows in the various models, clear through and up to the 1948 models retained, of course, the sliding window design because of the rear wheel well immediately below the windows. The 1941 model also changed from a floor shift transmission to a column shift allowing for a much more uncluttered floor and easier cross seat access, a pre war feature retained into the post war years. The much wider body of the 1946 to 1948 also allowed Ford to design a more horizonal bar-like grill across the front rather than the previous more vertical grills of the pre war models, with the 1941 model vertical design widening out the appearance with independant right and left grill openings. If you look you may notice the 1941 model still had an opening in the grill to hand start the motor using a crank if necessary, something not retained in the post war models. A hand crank was included with the tire jack as one of the tools that came with the car. Personally, I always liked the 1941 front end design, considering it the best of the Woody front ends. To me, it always carried a sort of P-40 Warhawk look about it, the P-40 Warhawk being my favorite World War II fighter plane and as well, the same type plane used by the Flying Tigers.
"...when I noticed the man next door had stopped to look at the wagon. In a mellow, almost Shakespearean voice he told me how beautiful he thought the wood was and how he had admired for all these months both the beauty of the wood and my endeavors to keep it so. He asked if it would be alright to touch the wood and, as I nodded in approval, he ran his fingers over the surface in such a strange and exacting manner that he and the wood seemed as one. No racehorse trainer could have stroked or curried a prize thoroughbred in a more loving way. When we made eye contact for the first time I was set aback, almost stunned, by the overwhelming calmness and serenity that seemed to abide in his presence. Never had I experienced anything like it. He thanked me, smiled, and tipping his hat, nodded slightly and strode off."
THE ABOVE FROM: Zen Enlightenment...the Wanderling writes of his first encounter with his to-be Zen mentor.
In a never ending search to make the woody more revalent in the ever changing world of automobiles, and loving the Ford flathead V-8 and how they looked when modified for more power, I began a effort to jack-up the engine. Actually, the very first effort to do so was accomplished without any initial input on my part. Along the way I had met and became friends with one of the top Ferrari and Maserati mechanics in the world, Joe Landaker. Liking me and my endevors in restoring the woody, one day Landaker asked if he could borrow it. On his own and without my knowledge, he had taken it upon himself to install a dual intake manifold topped with two brand new Stromberg 97s, all at no cost to me. Over the years I worked my way through the list below to "D," even to the point of having a chopped and balanced flywheel and Zypher transmission and Columbia rear end. With the engine becoming more fussy, before moving on to "E" and "F," I began rethinking my options. That option eventually led to a point where I was moving away from the flathead to installing an overhead valve V-8. To explore that option I went to the mechanic of the stars Max Balchowsky. Through Balchowsky everything was in place to have a nail-head Buick V-8 installed when Uncle Sam stepped in drafting me into the Army. After I received my discharge I had put cars behind me and never went back.
A) 89HP at 3600RPM - Stock 100HP Ford flathead V8 (corrected)
B) 114HP at 3800RPM - Same engine with dual intake manifold.
C) 124HP at 4000RPM - Same as B with 8.5:1 compression heads.
D) 140HP at 4400RPM - Same as C with 3/4 race camshaft.
E) 145HP at 4500RPM - Same as D with special exhausts.
F) 177HP at 4500RPM - Same as B, bored 1/8 inch, stroked 1/8 inch, ported, relieved, 9:1 heads.
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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The very same day I met my soon-to-be Stepmother for the very first time I was exploring around the house and grounds of her place when I came across a combination garage-workshop large enough to hold four or five cars, although at the time there were only two cars parked inside. One was a brand new late model Cadillac Fleetwood. The other car was an early model 1940s wooden Ford station wagon, albeit like no station wagon I had ever seen.
My stepmother's driver told me she ordered the woodie specifically from the Ford Motor Company because she liked going back and forth to Alaska and the Northwest Territory in Canada. She got a hair up her ass one day (his words, not mine) thinking it would be great to drive all the way up there. Being told she would probably need a four wheel drive vehicle she asked around and discovered Ford had some kind of a four wheel drive conversion deal with an outfit called Marmon Harrington. You ordered your woodie from the Ford factory and they would ship it down to the Marmon-Herrington plant in Indianapolis, where all of the conversion work was done. So that's what she did:
"The vehicle was stripped of its body, drivetrain, and in the case of a light-duty vehicle, the transverse front leaf spring, wishbone and front axle. Crossmembers were added to the frame to support the added weight of the four-wheel-drive transfer case as well as the installation of a beefy Warner four-speed transmission with an 11-inch clutch. The front drive axle was more or less a modified Ford rear axle with the ring-and-pinion housing offset to line up with the output shaft from the transfer case and constant velocity joints added at the axle ends to allow the wheels to steer. When the work was finished, the buyer would pay a steep premium for his new rough-terrain capability as the Marmon-Herrington conversion nearly doubled the price of a Ford wagon."
1940 Marmon-Herrington 4x4 Ford Woodie The driver said once the car was delivered and she came into look at it she said the car was too beautiful to drive all over a bunch of rocks and mountains and changed her mind. For the most part the car just sat and far as he knew she had never driven it or rode in it. He did agree with her assessment that the car was beautiful. I opened up the door and sat in it on the drivers side and after that I always knew I would have to have my own woody. What happened to her 4X4 woody I have never been able to clarify. Years later I was told it was discovered to be just plain gone.
I was just a kid in grade school when my infatuation with modified Ford V-8 flatheads first took root. I was living on a ranch owned by my Stepmother located in the high desert of the Mojave. Having learned Morse code early on I was seeking a way to send it over greater distances. Somewhere along the way I heard of what was called a Spark Gap Transmitter that not only filled the bill but was realative easy to build and could be made at a low cost. To build one however, required the use of an automotive coil, something I didn't have. On the way home from school I stopped at an auto repair shop and asked the owner if he had any used but still good coils lying around. When I told him what I was doing he gave me a brand new coil still in a box at no charge. The owner, basically a shade tree mechanic that worked on farm equipment like tractors and such, was restoring a more watch like 1949 MG TC, as shown above, and in the process had installed a hopped-up Ford V-8 60 flathead. Below, the Wanderling's 1952 MG TD, looking all the same as the mechanic's MG TC.
BEFORE THE START OF WORLD WAR TWO MY STEPMOTHER BOUGHT A BRAND NEW
FOUR WHEEL DRIVE FORD WOODIE FROM THE FACTORY JUST LIKE THE ONE ABOVE
THE JEEP, NEVADA, AND THE RED-HAIRED GIANTS
