Hello everyone!!! I was browsing the web trying to look for information on restoring my car and happened to stumble upon this site. I guess my goal with signing on to this site is to learn as much as possible about restoring my car and recieving as much advice as possible. I'll start by giving a brief history on how I got my car: When I was about 2 years old(1982), my dad was driving along some back country road in Sonoma and saw a '35 ford 5 window coupe on a farm with a for sale sign on it. From what my mom told me, my dad ended up buying the car for $500.00 !!! The car had been sitting in a barn for I don't know for how many years and was in surprisingly great shape. My dad ended up taking the car to a local mechanic to see if he could get the car running since a tow would have been a ridiculous amount of money. The mechanic did very minor repairs to the motor (the original flathead V8) and got it running. So my dad ended up driving the car back to San Francisco and drove it occasionally on weekends. When I was 5 years old, my dad passed away and the car sat in my grandma's garage untill a couple of weeks ago.
I just brought the car to my house to start restoring it and I'm kind of lost as far as where to start. The body and frame are in great shape...It's all steel and has hardly any rust... The motor looks like it's in pretty good shape as well...the interior is almost complete for the exception of some cloth that has rotted away. I turned the crank bolt to see if the motor was seized or not and it turned very easily wich was a complete shock to me considering that it has been sitting for so long. There are still fluids in the motor that are about 25 years old but i'm pretty confident that the motor will turn over. I don't really know where to go from here but I have a goal in mind: I want to keep the body as original ass possible except for a mild chop (maybee 2"-2.5"), I want to keep the original flat head in the car because I'm not trying to build a race car or do burn outs, I want to have modern brakes and suspension, and I want the car to be as low to the ground as possible without scraping. I've been considering air ride but who knows. I don't know much about domestic cars at all because I've owned and tuned all import cars. I don't know of any good shops around my area that are honest and won't try to rip me off and that do very good work. I am on a very tight budget and I'm willing wait and the restoration the right way, but I want to make sure that I build a driver and not a ridiculously expensive rod that never sees pavement because it's to nice to risk driving. Any advice would help and if anybody knows any reputable shops in my area please let me know. Thanks!