First Drive Of Mad Scientist's 1939 Ford Coupe

hey guys Matt iron trap garage and today we're going to be unloading I know it's dark behind me but we're going to be unloading the uh all the stuff we got in Jersey the other day um I'm going to start today literally we got home Friday night um usually I don't work on Saturdays but the weather uh with it being winter time is actually unseasonably warm today I think it might rain or snow tomorrow so I want to get this 39 Ford out of my trailer um the Lincoln's probably going to stay Mike's trailer for just a little while till we can get some room cuz we are kind of full up right now of course it happens quickly I'm going to get this car unloaded by myself Moon's going to do his favorite thing and get to inspect a trailer full of stuff that smells like Mouse raccoon who knows what um but he always loves this part should be a lot of fun and uh we'll take a look at the car a little closer come on what is is hold on watch out we here what's in here see yeah what you smell what you smelling there [Music] this thing is almost flat tires not here we go all right so got the car off the trailer by myself and uh it went pretty well the tire still had some air in it from sitting around um I left them a little flat because it made it even though it made made it hard for me to push it also left it kind of controlled so when it came off the trailer it was nice and slow and I could you know didn't roll it into our 38 convertible project so um got it in here and uh this thing is a sweetheart you can see the paint we didn't do anything in the paint has a nice shine to it it's dusty um it looks like it's majority of it is original paint you could see where they previous owner just in a couple little spots he had brush painted over some spots this seems to be a common thing we've seen you know beautiful was an extreme case of that but um overall really really nice clean solid honest original car which is you know very very cool now the part that gets a little scary that is not original uh is when you start looking in the engine bay there is a lot of craziness going on this gentleman was kind of like a electrical Savant if you will I mean he was taking apart and rewiring using capacitors all kinds of crazy stuff in the in the place he was living and also in the car and I mean he definitely was understanding circuitry but it's a little mad scientist under here for sure but um it's really solid so you can see he had kind of the most oh step over here one of the craziest looking things is you see that there's this coil that he has mounted up here on a block of wood and piece of plastic or whatever for insulator um but down here that's one generator Ator that's two generators so what we think there was two batteries in this thing we think he had two batter two 6V batteries two 6vt generators that was essentially creating 12 volts in total um over here there's little notes on everything so this was dated I think it says 200 210 2006 negative brush insulated from ground base so he has little notes all over the place here it's probably hard for you guys to read but that's what it says there's like pieces of tape with writing all over it so there's a lot of craziness going on I've already put my hand on the fan and the engine does turn over that's one good thing the stuff was stored this car especially was stored in the probably the driest part of the building um the lincol was stored outside but it does that also does turn over so inside the car is really nice I mean this is like a I don't know if the interior maybe at some point its life was redone this seat to me that just looks too nice um even from even the most the cleanest most original cars I feel like don't usually look um like that the material dries out it starts to just get threadbear from sitting in it um so I have a feeling that the seat was probably redone at some point um I don't think the car was ever restored if you look inside you can see the headliner has all that's kind of what I expect from an old headliner just a little bit of staining and discoloration all over but um yeah so that that kind of leads me to believe that maybe the seat was redone um it's hard to say on the door cards but I'm going to guess they probably were they're just dirty from people you know from him getting in and out and driving it but um we didn't see a ton of evidence of a repaint but it's hard to say you can see little like remnants here I don't know if that's like old wax that he waxed it back in the day or someone waxed it and that's just you know residue of wax hard to say but there is another spot in the back here for battery and yes this ball of wiring goes all the way up into the car somewhere we don't know where so unlike a lot of these cars where I would just shove a battery in this thing and crank it over and see if we could start it I'm a little worried um cuz I don't know well he probably did know what he was doing I don't know what switch does what and what you need to do and where you need to put the battery so I might um actually just kind of Disconnect or cut a bunch of the wiring that would potentially cause an issue just to save any kind of problems or at least decipher a little bit of it we definitely want to at least disconnect all this stuff that's back in here to the trunk and I'm going to disconnect the charging system cuz I have no idea what's going on with that so at least if we disconnect some of that stuff um get the engine basically separated from the body um I can at least safely know that if we put power to it um we're not going to start a fire so that's what I'm probably going to work on first um when we go to get this thing started and running but that is just a quick walk around of the car I mean there's it's just kind of mad scientist I mean there's like there's a little clip here that he had for the underhood light it's pretty funny a little uh cloth pin with metal shoved around it and then you would because it's positive ground you can just touch that there with the battery on and that was probably on underhood light so a lot of stuff we got to disconnect and separate this stuff cuz it's just dangling around and we don't want to since we don't know what's going on we don't want to touch something and cause a huge major issue all right I moved the light so you guys could see the inside interior here um I don't this is kind of crazy like I said you can see I'm trying not to block my light here but this is a light you know how you would buy it from Napa essentially he had a tape shut and he was using this to work under the dash there's a oh boy there is a headlight plug here that he has wired in with into the car with you know a headlight plug that is coming from inside there and that was his underhood work light which I guess he was leaving it in the box and then just shoving it when we found when we first found the car it was literally still plugged in so luckily there's no battery connected but we got like we don't know what he was doing with all this stuff in here um there's little jumper clips and you know [Music] for for a tester for a meter um I think some of it he was jumping wires from things to things there's notes I guess this is for the 12vt it says it's hard to read trying to get in the light here but it says charge 12vt battery regulator negative R regulator W battery um yeah so he's got you know notes and things there was even a wiring diagram so I'm guessing this is for the um let's see heater defrost 6volt start this is all his wiring notes that he had from 2012 adjust mixture would choke idle with throttle so he also must have been adjusting stuff with the mixture with some of these knobs here or original stuff in the dash so like I said we're going to have to go and take I mean there's like all these crazy switch boxes and you know other switches and things and wiring hanging underneath of this thing so we're going to try and extract all this extra stuff that's not original from the car and that way we can kind of safely start the thing up but pretty wild [Music] stuff [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] n [Music] oh all right so I think I got most of the stuff disconnected from up front for this old B second battery so I'm hoping it's like all kinds of these alligator clips everywhere I don't really know what they were doing but try offish all this wiring oh is that a oh God Son of a bch guess I need to put a those Springs are getting worn out where's my oh the official every old car has one of these just about in it safety rod all right pretty sure oh god really I thought it was a t-shirt you're kidding me yeah so he was using for his uh uh insulation around the wiring some oh tidy whes size 34 hes there's two of them he had cut a hole right in the crotch area and he had the wiring running through the Tidy whes now that's that's a first and now I have to go wash my hands cuz that's pretty great um to tell you what's going to happen to these things on my Moon's bed SL Mike's seed insulation this is going right in the freaking stove I'm going to sacrifice a they're going right in the stove close the stove those suckers are gone goodbye all right so why the Tidy whes are burning I got my hands washed we can uh this wiring mess out this is a this enough wiring to like wire a bedroom in a house crazy what is [Laughter] this oh my god get wiring all over the place I got to show this this is great so in this secure safety device here and an old milk container with a piece of string wrapped around it we have the starter solenoid with some alligator clips yeah sweet that's a again that's a new one it's actually a good good old solenoid probably still works might keep it SC aveng it wow look at all this wiring I mean it all all this house walking great I will say he didn't really drill like extra holes really he was using original he'd reuse like this is the the original fuel line clamp he used to hold his bracket so this is what we found in there for the charging system or additional charging system I guess so again this is literally like two cat food containers and there you go got a little fuse box all right so through my little uh Optima 6vt battery and it looks like to me once we took all the extra crap out um it is wired like a normal early Ford would be which is a positive ground um coils wired basically backwards to what you would normally think of all of that stuff so it was kind of interesting he had it he had the coil wired what's call backwards to what people normally think of for a negative ground vehicle um he had it wired like it should have been but but then a lot of the other stuff in the car was 12vt and it was not quite sure I think that's what that cat food circuit box in there did something for that so I'm going to I'm a little scared here but I'm going to touch hopefully nothing starts smoking I didn't really clean these terminals so oh okay this has got one of the that's great this has got one of those solenoids on it a lot of the older solenoids they had a a jump start option on them where there's literally a mechanical button underneath and you can crack the car over so there we go so I knew the engine was turned over and was free this is cranking the starter so next question is do we have spark and if we have spark um some fuel should make combustion if we don't have any stuck valves or any ISS major issues with the engine so said I I mentioned I didn't get a I didn't get a spark out of the jumper wire which usually tells me that we got corroded points an issue so and again there is some wacky stuff done to this car so I also don't know what's going on with he has like his own remote coil kit set up here so that up that up did see a spark there I don't if that [Applause] was not seeing a not not seeing a spark so probably got to file those points not a surprise all right so we uh we hooked up a 12vt set up here change the coil and uh we're going to try and make this thing run maybe we're definitely getting spark now spray a bunch of down in there hold on let me open this goad [Music] okay sh y now this has a wood spacer on it yeah I don't know what that's going to do I don't I'm assuming he ran it with all this nonsense so [Applause] right that's good we're fine 100 it's like 90 yeah I mean anytime you see it it go up to over 60 or 70 it's all the cylinders over here shot out at me I could smell it yeah ready it's over 100 damn you find one that's zero we'll know what's going on ahead 110 on holy crap two cranks go ahead that even better 120 even when me doing it shitty it's almost at 100 all right we'll call it 100 yep and stand on your head while you're doing it y it's almost 125 [Applause] 120 that shot it off 110 115 same yeah we got 110 jeez so this Le the CL this engine is brand new this is like one of the best uh flads I've ever had with all righty Steve is back from his uh gas station run we're going to try some fuel this time instead of like brake clean or whatever else even though normally we can get stuff to but we're going to see what happens here posi positive negative negative power for the [Music] coil might just be let me give it some more there it went yep that's running that ran that ran that that that's official that's nurse tank worthy yep [Applause] yep yeah but with the distributor with that clear top you can see the you can see the the point sparking Oh I thought something was wrong no no I'm sorry I was just I was just it just [Applause] to we go look at that see that that's cool a not running great but it's running not smoking sounds good wild okay that's freaking awesome that's what I wanted to see all right so yesterday we got the uh 40 to cough and run which was awesome um turned out that basically it just needed actual fuel the engine was so dry from sitting for so long the brake clean chassis clean whatever wasn't quite enough to make it like totally fire off put some fuel down in it started coughing and it fired up and ran and ran pretty decent um we didn't show this neiz it would start so easy um all of this came out the exhaust pipe on this side surprisingly nothing came out of this they have some homemade dual exhaust on it so we have one thing that happened as we were about to be done for the day luckily we saw it um the float or something was stuck on this thing and it was just overflowing um normal thing from carburetor sitting so um it has a later APA Holly on it um that they kind of cobbled some of the stuff together so we're going to uh probably get rid of that and cuz we just have more of strombergs and we basically found a almost New Old Stock or old rebuild um 97 it was on is it 97 or 48 97 logo big logo oh yeah oh man this car is getting a big logo yeah so we got a 97 on the my shelf of strombergs and it needs very little work basically Steve just took it apart checked everything out um and checking the float level and then put it back in the car and hopefully we should have a carb that doesn't leak is all set up um and then we're going to work on draining the gas tank out this fella had um some wild ideas with fuel and and electrical and all that stuff there was some kind of clear plastic fuel line that was running out of the bottom of the tank he has like a just a brass petcock in the bottom of the tank where the drain would normally be um that he was pulling fuel from and then he had a little electric fuel pump um that is hard to see but it's down you can see down right in there um and then he was using the what is normally the feed line as the return and then he had some kind of that pipe fitting te that was I think he thought would act as a return um but he didn't quite have it hooked up right anyways but anyways we're going to get rid of all that but when I got a little bit of the fuel when I was pulling the fuel lines out it stank stank like some kind of mixture of I don't know moonshine rubbing alcohol kerosene it was I could not get the smell off my clothes it was Terri worse than old gas so we need to get that outside then and um we're going to drain that out and then we can get it the the original fuel pump is still uh is still on it he the the the old guy had just uh loop the hose so we should be able to take that right off and put it back on the uh the factory feed line and uh put some fresh gas in it and then hopefully fingers crossed we can run it on its tank with the original fuel pump with a good carburetor and once that's good then we know we can kind of undo some of this other stuff that's on here but Steve's going to have to delete the uh the wood the wood spacer here that we have underneath the carburetor we're going have to get rid of that sucker uh in this round of changes but hopefully here soon we should have this thing purring on um on its own gas tank and fuel pump I found an extra wooden spacer in the trunk when I was going through everything it must have been like maybe a different thickness of wood he was he was uh experimenting with um we'll probably want to change he has some kind of cable um choke cable yeah so we have those original knobs so when the when we get closer to actually running the vehicle like on the street we can yeah put those original knobs back on M what not but we should keep those choke cable brackets he has yeah I'll hang out to them those are good to good to have for custom applications three original studs with the nuts and the things perfect and an extra gasket well homemade gasket but still yeah perfect will say that he was very you know meticulous with that so let me put the original studs and oh yeah all that back in if I want to change that out mhm my piece of wood goes bad yeah all right so Steve put another stomberg on here that was checked over and uh got a Nur tank so we're going to try and fire this thing again with a carburetor that's maybe a little more fresh and uh we'll see what happens come on [Applause] baby not like all cind a lot of fuel went down you that coil wire is not hitting there is it no it's close but it's not that's pretty pretty close damn why smooth as glass another one that's quiet as heck I come out with him see maybe it's a little lean coming off right well why I shut it off we know it starts and runs well better now yeah before we smoke ourselves out mhm and uh let's roll it outside get the G gas tank cleaned out and then we'll put five gallons of fresh fuel in the tank hook up the fuel pump and we should be able to start it on that as long as that pump's good if not we have many yeah exactly but that was a improvement with a new carburetor it's better it's still not not perfect but but we got to adjust some stuff so we'll see if we get it to run on the fuel tank next oh nice all right so uh we got the car outside there is a little petcock that the gentleman had put under underneath there and there's also some twine under there too for bonus but there is a petcock there so we're going to try and turn that got a drain pans and hope we can get this to drain out pretty easily okay that does not look happy whatever that is nope that is nice and molassy yeah see if uh or will come out is it all the way open that's all the way open yeah oh all right that it doesn't have much in it doesn't sound like it has a lot I'm I'll take that fitting out of the end of it and yeah that or if you want to bring the air hose out you could try blowing in the tank and see if yeah the nastiness is kind of gone around the fuel's running a lot clearer than it did at first oh yeah it even actually smells like gas all right well what the strain and then uh we could probably put a plug back in the bottom and then hook up the original line yep all right so Steve got the uh the tank all drained out and we initially had some brown stuff and a little bit of rust but then it cleared up and actually looked like half decent fuel but it still smelled a little stale so um Steve's putting four or five gallons of uh fresh fuel in and uh he's got the fuel line all hooked back up the correct way here um just for now they had actually cut the line here and left the fitting on so for now what we're going to do is just um we put a little piece of rubber hose he put an extra um filter on there and um we're going to see if this pump's fuel so he left this just a little loose with the clamp here so as we're we're going to try and run it and hopefully we this thing starts spitting some fuel we can quick shut it off um and get it primed on the fuel that's in the carb and then uh we tighten it all up and hopefully we should see it run so fingers [Applause] crossed we not running out of [Applause] fuel we might be running out of fuel should be already pump oh there it goes it's pumping yep hope it catches up before the carb runs out of fuel yeah yep sucked it right up go happily running yep sounds better already nice all right so we got the fuel system all hooked up and is working pretty good now uh we had to change the fuel pump the fuel pump was bad on it and we actually think he might have raised the pressure on the fuel pump cuz it was immediately overflowing the carburetor and it was filling up the little little plastic filter like instantly so seems to be pretty good and we don't see a ton of um I don't see a ton of of dirt coming in that filter so again for everybody's going to scream at us like a lot of videos that filter is literally just to run the car and make sure we don't get a ton of rust in there so now that we're seen that is looking pretty good we're going to take that off I know plastic filter engine hot fuel boom so don't worry about that um we were able to switch some stuff around and we now have the 6vt battery in the car and are cranking on 6 volts and um and it seems to be uh it did fire up what we found though is he had something bypassed in the wiring that the ignition switch is not sending power to uh the uh from the I switch to the coil so we ran a jumper wire and it fired right up on the 6vt and was fine so what we're going to do is fire it up and run it and I'm going to get in it and move it under its own power for the first time of us owning it put it back in the garage and then we're going to Tinker with the wiring a little bit and um but it's running on the gas tank fuel pump another carb it's almost drivable very close so close all right we're going to have to open it it's garage too perfect open the garage hey that's awesome we also need to connect the steering because I found the [Music] keys I have no steering Steve so just yell if I that's right I forgot yep I look it good perfect yet we go fine feel good all right so we're ready to take our first drive out of the parking lot um actually I don't think I've actually moved it more than just in and out of the garage so uh we haven't even done our yard test it's been raining the past day or two but it's not cold so we're going to make the best of it take the first drive even though it just started misting or raining I threw on for fun I had these accessory we found in Wisconsin in one of our picks these very rare accessory the 39 Mercury accessory trim rings for wide fives and uh they fit really really tight and the rim can't be tweaked at all I think I got them on good we're going to have to keep an eye out while we're driving around town uh that we don't lose a hubcap but we got everything together on the car um Steve had been tinkering away on it I had been tinkering on it but we got everything pretty much sorted um Steve put a new set of upper hoses on reproduction ones we had um we actually just checked uh this morning and the charging system is now working he had a little toggle switch that I think he was turning the charging on and off for each of the B batteries so there was a toggle switch it was still attached that we weren't sure about Steve checked it and it looks like that's what he was doing so um It is charging which is great um it starts up and runs pretty good Steve put a remote coil over here and got rid of the homemade piece of wood we put a normal um remote coil adapter kit although I will say his kit did work flawlessly um just uh it wasn't as smooth of a of a uh conversion as I would like so everything's pretty much together it seems to be okay um Mike and Steve noticed in door jam here I haven't even seen it yet we were wondering why this thing had such great compression and runs so well where is that oh right here we were at Steve and I were discussing where the car came from so I decided to look to see if there was any hints so there's an old tag here that says uh service tag rebuilt motor at 72700 and it has 789 915 I'm going to guess by looking at this this is maybe something that he put on but it's hard to say but it's super cool it's over top of another tag I can see underneath of it there's another Lube tag and then there's one here that says the wheel cylinders rear drum seals seals rear brakes master cylinder um axle seals we're all done at 78500 um so I'm going to guess he was putting these tags on when he was doing this stuff but we found remnants of engines that were taken apart um in all his box of stuff and some of the stuff we left behind cuz it was old you know Valves and and pistons and things and we got a ton of that but that probably makes sense cuz maybe he rebuilt the engine not sure but it has fantastic compression whisper quiet for a flathead so we're as close to a new 39 Coupe as we could get or we'll ever see probably so super super cool so we're going to take it put some gas in it I think it's only only got 2 or three gallons in it hopefully enough to make it a mile or two down the road see how it drives the brakes seem to be fine on it and uh we should be good so we'll see what happens Steve's going to wait in the shop and and you got your cell phone right yes he'll be our Steve will be our road service if we need it all right all right so we had this running today already awwesome on six fa just boom fires right it's almost as quiet as the um the 39 convertible s yeah well this thing probably the throwout bearing doesn't make crazy noise yeah that was not good I don't know if the wipers work or not but oh they're trying come on baby some needs some help we're just going to leave we're just going to leave those alone window open a little bit we're going to probably get some fogging here but hold your breath I noticed the clutch lets out real high but is it total opposite of the 39 ver where that lets off on the floor all my cars every car is so different again we pulled this out of the garage 2 weeks ago weeks ago and we weren't even working hard on it I mean we had it running within you know a day or two Yeah couple days or whatever had it running and if we were actually focusing on and weren juggling projects probably would have been within a day or two we could have had it this far yeah is the trunp latched I don't know you can check it breakes not bad not terrible either that or it could be the tires are square and we're hearing it trunk flashed yeah just sound like some was well either that or the shocks it could have loot it could have shocks that are junk and they're rattling around true could have square tires which is very you never looked under the car no I've never even put this on the lift Steve did connect the steering back up so that's good yeah this is the first time it's left the driveway it's got good good power yeah that's Square tires yep now we get going yeah Square tires what other oh beautiful not as bad as beautiful we're not bouncing down the road that discard didn't sit his on brakes actually work pretty good on this thing it probably worked better to longer get some of that surface rust off the drums curious if the gauge works on the battery gauge might be yeah I think the battery gauge is working nice guess we'll see if 30 30 or 40 lbs of oil pressure pressure that's working so we'll see if the uh uh fuel gauge works when you fill it up yeah cuz right now it's showing dead empty yeah I mean it other than the square tires they're really not that bad they're not great but they're not bad it's just main feels like the B yeah yeah somebody hanging right behind our ass of course same old gas station every time yep I can't even hardly hear the thing running it's crazy it's like the 39 vert is silent filming a video on business expense business expense that's a write off yeah that is a write off still have all the hub caps right yeah check that please yep all still there how'd you figure out they were 39 accessory is it in that book my it's in my one of my other books oh nice it's in my the early V8 book that's like got all the production numbers and all that stuff still up in a [Music] while I want to keep it yep kick that tray [Music] over all right so successful test drive obviously with the weather um we didn't want to take it too far it was raining and getting worse so uh the wipers need some work we found that out as soon as we left that they were uh not working very well so we had no wipers windows are barely been clean they were fogging up so we decided just to do a quick run a couple miles down the road to the uh gas station fill it up bring it back uh very very good trip uh nothing that we didn't expect tires were you know need to be replaced we found out the fuel gauge doesn't work which is not surprising the sender might be uh just bad in it and uh otherwise pretty good the temp gate GA worked the oil pressure was good in it um I believe the amp gauge was was working as well um so yeah good good trip so basically because of it being winter and we never know with the weather in Pennsylvania here if it's going to be raining and 50° or if it's going to be 2 days from now a blizzard um so we wanted to put this upstairs because really I'm going to wait till it's warmer outside I didn't want to put this car too much in front of some of our long-term projects we have going so we got a running and drying the biggest thing is any car that's upstairs uh runs and drives and we can move it around if need be and we're not pushing things so we're going to put it up for here for now put it on ice and and then in the spring we're we'll do a little bit more videos on um cleaning up the paint uh and the exterior I got some new tires for it doing you know a little bit of odds and ends and basically just putting it on the road you know 100% but pretty cool that basically two weeks ago we were pointing this thing out of a garage and now we drove it to the gas station uh we've had some good luck lately was some of these cars I can imagine the next handful of cars we're going to buy are going to be total P's that will not run no matter what you do to them so that's how it goes so thank you guys for following along appreciate it C you [Music] later

Channel: IronTrap Garage

Views: 86,471

Keywords: irontrap, iron trap, iron trap garage, irontrap garage, matt murray, hot rod, street rod, rat rod, traditional hot rod, barn find, barn find hunters, kustom, trog, the race of gentleman, vlog, the hamb, jalopy journal, model a, model t, roadster, coupe, picking, american pickers, early ford, ford, 1939, 39 ford, moonshine, flathead, wirll it run, first run, start

Id: WWgvtWsWPiA

Length: 48min 24sec (2904 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2024