After removing the convertible body from the stock chassis we borrowed my friend, Rick Fernau’s trailer yet again, I think I use it more than he does! After loading the stock chassis on Rick’s trailer we headed down through the Salt River Canyon to beautiful downtown Gilbert to pick up the TCI Stage III chassis that I had bought from Tom Eckholdt who belongs to the OTHG-Phoenix car club as Michelle and I do.
Of course ADOT had US60 tore up in 4 different places between Show Low and Globe which created about a half hour delay in our arrival time, but no matter. We unloaded the stock chassis and loaded up the TCI. I have to say this is a very well made and thought out chassis. I would have had to spend quite a bit of time reworking the stock chassis to get it to the strength that this one is.
The TCI Chassis was already set up for an LS style GM engine and transmission so it somewhat made my decision as to what type of running gear I would be installing. During our trip to Silver City NM I had sometime to look over the LQ9/4L65E set up that Dave Bennett had recently installed in his 1937 Caddy Sedan, pretty sweet looking and Dave tells me that it has great power and torque and really moves his 3800 lb sedan down the road nicely. Given that the ’40 weighs somewhat less than 3000 lbs it should be a ball to drive! Now I start looking for a 2002-06 Caddy Escalade “gentle roll over” to use as a donor! In the end I will have a Cadillac Powered 1940 Ford Delux Convertible – it don’t get much better than that!
The chassis is now sitting on a set of caster dollies in the second garage bay so it will be easy to move into the shop when I get around to taking it apart and painting it prior to final assembly!