1936 ford coupe

[icebreaker]

Merry Christmas everyone
Anobody know of a company called jrs fiberglass who apparently make a lot of bodies. ebay has a very nice looking 36 ford for sale and raves about this company. Any help appreciated
rj

[Dave Severson]

got a link??? I'd like to look at it.....always like the 36's, not many being built anymore..

[Bob Parmenter]

I assume this is the one you're referring to; http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Ford-...QQcmdZViewItem . I'm not familiar with JRS, the only '36 3 window glass body I've seen is by J B Donaldson in Arizona..........it's very, very nice.

Judging a car by pictures can be tricky, things usually look better in pictures than in person. That being said, the lines of the car are nice, the chop isn't excessive, and the panels appear to line up pretty well. Now for the seller's hype. On picture 5 look at the fit of the door in the opening from the inside, especially at the top. See how uneven the gap around the opening and the door inner shell is? It's not positively horrible, and not atypical for medium quality glass bodies, but that kind of thing will drive an upholsterer completely nuts trying to hide it. The Gibbon '32 3 window I built had a similar "problem" and I ended up adding material to close the gap so that it was more even all around. Not bad if you don't mind it, but not something you'd expect to do on the "best body built" either. Picture 11 shows part of the front suspension mounting structure. The seller comments that the JRS work looks better than Heidt's or TCI..........well, opinions are like ____________! I'm a Heidt's fan, so may be biased, but those welds would never leave Gary's shop looking like that! Again, they're not horrible, certainly better than say Street Beast's bubble gum welds, but again, not "the best". Again, if there's good penetration, it can be dressed up to look top notch, but we're talking about brag versus reality here. In picture 12 you can see how the floor hump is bonded (well, matted) to the firewall. Looks to me like a big gap (that should have been almost non existant in a "highest quality" body) that had some fiberglass mat wadded and bonded to it. Horrible? No. Very fixable. But do I have to say the quality thing again?

All in all this could be a nice starting point, and these cars in steel have gotten very dear the last couple years, but with the few clues of mediocre workmanship that are visible it might be best to physically inspect a project like this before plunking down the big Franklins, especially in glass. If it were steel your chances of recovery from a mistake would be better (and that's not a bash on glass, I've built/owned 'em, just reality).