The Backyard Club - 1934 Ford De Luxe Coupe

This is a "backyard" restoration--the owner can't stress that enough. There's no way, you say, as you take in this stunning 1934 Ford Type 770 five-window De Luxe Coupe. Your eyes see flawless paint--shockingly, never buffed or waxed--on a straight body, a deeply gleaming grille and smooth upholstery, both inside and on the rumble seat. Unless you go through the photo album to see the small one-bay garage and driveway where this restoration took place, and listen to the owner's stories of owning this Ford for almost 50 years, you won't believe it's possible. But this Vineyard Green Coupe has proved that a backyard-restored car can rival the work of a state-of-the-art restoration facility when friendship, dedication and craftsmanship come together.

Back in 1964, 22-year-old West Shokan, New York, resident Howard Markle was tipped off by his cousin to a Ford Coupe for sale only seven miles away. "Because my cousin was eight years younger than me, they wouldn't sell it to him. I looked it over, then told them I'd like to buy it. They didn't want to sell it to me either, because they felt I was too young, and might turn it into a race car."

That was a legitimate concern: The Ford was Gordon Eaton's first car, the one he and his wife courted in, and they wanted it preserved. "I talked with the Eatons for three hours, and they finally said, 'We trust you; we'll sell you the car.' I'd scraped up every dollar and dime I could find, and they accepted my offer of $225. I hooked it to the back of my 1950 Ford pickup and towed it home."

Mechanical issues with the V-8 meant that Howard was unable to immediately enjoy his new purchase. Instead, he stored the Ford in his father's barn until 1984, when his friend Bruce Turner--a metal fabricator by trade-- told him that if he wasn't going to restore the car, he might as well sell it. "He said he'd be interested in helping me work on it, so we brought it up to my house and put it in the back of my one-car garage, sideways, with the nose off," he recalls. As a truck driver and house painter, Howard's busy schedule left him little free time, but another offer of help from his brother-in-law, Mike Leone, an ASE-certified mechanic, got the wheels turning in 1993--a $40,000 professional restoration estimate didn't hurt, either.

The frame was media-blasted down to bare metal using Black Beauty. It was coated with POR-15 primer before being top-coated with tough single-stage black polyurethane enamel.

"One night a week for seven years, we worked, cussed, threw things, came back the following week and did it again," Howard laughs. So Howard, Bruce and Mike met in the garage every Thursday night to turn a solid and complete, if non-running, 63,000-mile Ford V-8 into a prize-winning show car, four hours at a time.

Reproduction Tudor sedan rocker panels had to be shortened, making them fit the five-window Coupe body; this represented the largest metal repair, thanks to the car's dry storage.

The men disassembled the car, supporting the body on sawhorses so that they could remove the running gear from the frame. "We sandblasted the frame, and there was no pitting on the metal; this car came out of Massachusetts, but it had never been driven in winter. It was perfect," Howard remembers. The car's low mileage meant that many of its original mechanical components were in very good condition, including the shock absorbers. "We didn't rebuild them, just cleaned them up," Howard says. "Everything looked good when we took the top cover off the three-speed transmission, so we changed the oil and sealed it up. And the differential was sandblasted and repainted." The front end was reassembled with new bushings, and the leaf springs were cleaned and installed with new clips and mounts.

Howard had once considered modifying the Ford with hydraulic brakes, but chose to retain the mechanical brakes. "We didn't have the bracket for the emergency brake--I couldn't find one, couldn't even find a picture of one. One night, Bruce said, 'I can figure something out here.' 'How? You don't have a template or anything!' 'I'll make one,' he said. The next week, he came back with a stainless sleeve and a bracket. We bolted it to the transmission, put in the emergency brake, and it worked just right."

The Coupe didn't have its original engine when Howard bought it; it had seized after Gordon Eaton tried to do a rebuild. "It had a Sears and Roebuck block, which had some cracked water jackets; I took it out and stored it behind my dad's barn. When I went back to get it in the late 1970s, it was gone. I got a replacement 'tin can' V-8 from a 1934 Ford pickup. Zigmont Billus, of The Babbitt Pot in Fort Edward, New York, poured new babbitt main bearings, and a local shop in nearby Kingston did all the necessary machine work. New pistons and sleeves were installed, and I rebuilt the water pumps. Then the engine sat on a stand for the next 20 years."

Doing careful and tedious work with a hammer and dolly, minor dents were removed from the front and rear fenders, the four-part hood and running boards.

The body came next. "The floorpans were perfect, but there was some rust in both rocker panels," Howard says. Moisture also damaged the metal tray that collected water at the base of the roll-down rear window, and its wood support; without proper drainage, water had pooled at the front of the rear wheel arches. "We bought rocker repair panels, but the ones that came were for a sedan, so we had to split and shorten them," Mike explains. He also removed damaged metal from the lower rear fenders, and MIG-welded in new patches that Bruce had made from cold rolled steel.

The most difficult aspect of body repair was the splash pan that joined the two rear fenders. "The car had been rear-ended in the passenger corner," Howard recalls. "It was buckled and ripped in places. Mike worked on it for a long time, but I got a bit disgusted and told him to throw it away--I decided I'd buy a new one, which cost $265. When we went to put it on, we saw it was cut wrong--too narrow and too short. The company wouldn't take it back because more than 30 days had passed since we ordered it. Mike said not to worry, he'd spend more time on the old panel, and he got the pan to fit perfect. That other pan hangs on my garage wall as a conversation piece."

Mike primed and painted the underside using Sherwin-Williams materials. When it came to preparing the rest of the body, it was all hands on deck: "We wet-sanded the body before Mike primered it, because the old black and burgundy paint had been brushed on. That was our first sight of the factory green finish underneath," Howard says.

The 17-inch steel-spoke wheels were carefully and slowly painted so as to avoid runs or drips; basecoat/clearcoat polyurethane enamel provides a very durable finish.

Howard would entrust final paint to Bob Van Wagenen of Magic Touch Auto Body in High Falls, but he, Bruce and Mike did all of the prep work. "I stopped by often, and I'd run my hands over the parts," Bob says. "If I didn't like something, I made them do it again."

"We didn't use any DA sanders; everything was done by hand. Those front fenders probably took two days to sand," Mike adds. To ensure that the repaired panels all fit together properly, they reassembled the car, now in primer, before taking it apart again.

The crew had been bringing prepared parts to Bob for paint as they worked, and he sprayed them with RM single-stage acrylic enamel with hardener. "They'd bring me parts in blankets, and I'd hang them in my shop, wet the floor down, turn on the exhaust fan and have at it," Bob recalls. "Every part has three or four coats of paint on it. Because we used enamel, as soon as you spray and it's tacky--waiting 15 minutes to a half-hour, tops--you do the next coat, with no sanding between. A fender may take a couple of hours to paint, and everything is air-dried." Ultimately, the body, which was delivered to the shop on a snowmobile trailer, was painted with four coats of Vineyard Green inside and out, just like Dearborn did in 1934.

Mike rose to the challenge of painting the wheels, spraying them with a Tacoma Cream base and topping with clearcoat enamel with hardener added for durability. "It took nine hours to spray six wheels, but there were no runs," he says. Meanwhile, Bob's most difficult task was the louvered hood panels; "I didn't want to do them," he remembers with a laugh. "Every car you see at a car show, there's always a drip coming out of a louver. You can't wet-sand and polish a louver, so you've got to get it right. I don't know how I did it, but there isn't a run or a bare spot in any of those louvers."

The nine pieces of wood-grained metal trim inside the Ford were restored with equal care by Matley Wood Graining Service in Kent, Washington, while the upholstery wool materials and artificial leather soft top insert came from LeBaron Bonney. Bruce used his metalwork expertise to refurbish the original grille: "All of the bars were bent. I took it apart, straightened and tack-welded them together," he says. The original bumpers required nothing but new chrome, which was done to a high standard by Mike O'Brian in Wilmington, Massachusetts.

Those freshly painted panels made reassembly the hardest part. "It was a big trick, getting the hood panels together without chipping anything--it took a lot of hands," Howard says. "Jim Halpin, of Color Tricks in Wappingers Falls, put on the stripes. He did them freehand, without tape. I've seen a lot of striping, but I've never seen work as good as his."

It wasn't Howard's intent to create a show car, but the Ford won its class at its very first showing, and it thrilled former owner Gordon Eaton when they were reunited. "I was very lucky to have some very talented people around me," Howard says. "I think we have somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 hours in the car. I didn't keep track of money, and I didn't pay these guys--it was a night out for them. You should have seen us in that one-bay garage, stepping over the parts, stepping over one another. They came up to have a soda, beer or snack, to hash things out and to have a good time. It turned out to be a quality piece."

The top's new tack strips were trouble; the tacks didn't hold, so they had to secure the top with bolts, nuts and washers, fitted every inch the entire way around, for perfect results.

The team, from left to right: Bob Van Wagenen, Mike Leone, Howard Markle, Bruce Turner