My new '41 Tudor Super Deluxe

ChikaFreak

ChikaFreak

Junior Member
Hi Barners,

I am starting my first thread after looking though the Barn for weeks and finding tons of great information.

I recently became the new owner of my Grandfather's 1941 Ford Super Deluxe Tudor. My grandfather had quadruple bypass surgery about 2 months ago and he realized he could no longer take care of the car. As soon as he started to discuss getting rid of it I immediately raised my hand and volunteered to inherit it. This was the first of many old cars that he owned including a 46 convertible and a 31 coupe.

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I hope I can ask all of the many questions I am going to have on this thread and try to learn a little bit from the years of knowledge you guys (and girls?) have.
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My first project is to get the horn working. I detached the leads from the horn relay and hooked the horn right up to the 6V battery with some speaker wire that I had lying around. I got the relay to click but the horn wouldn’t sound. Any ideas?
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I tried to get the horn assembly out but the 3rd bolt underneath was blocked by a solid line (maybe brakes?) and it was starting to get dark out so I will come back to it this evening.
Any ideas what might be wrong with the horn? I plan to check for 6V at the leads tonight to make sure power is getting there and to make sure the steering wheel horn switch is working.
Thanks guys!
Chris, IL
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I just saw this thread; that is a nice looking TuDor. I'm not sure why your horn is not working but you should check all the wiring and the grounds in the car, if it is original, or and older replacement harness, you might want to replace it. I'd also suggest installing a new 6 volt horn relay. Again, that is a beautiful car; take good care of her for your Grandfather.
 
Welcome aboard! Since the whole horn assembly grounds through the mounting bolts and the relay clicks, you may have a horn (or 2) which doesn't have a good ground. Also, horns draw a lot of power. Is the battery fully charged? Good luck.
 
Nice! I too have my Greatgrand fathers 41. He bought it new in Nov 1940, I have the sales receipt! My horns do not work either, I'll be following this thread. Please post more pictures of the engine and engine bay. Good luck!
 
All the comments about current draw are correct. The horn system is best tested when the car is running, generator working, and battery at full capacity. The horns operate by ******** coils. This principle is fairly straight forward and simple. The coil core is attached to a diaphragm that rapidly moves in one direction till a set of points opens allowing the core to go back to its normal position and then it starts the process over again. This happens very rapidly giving the audible tone. Things that can go wrong are dirty or corroded points or an open coil circuit. The guys allready filled you in on the other problems with dirty ground path, faulty wiring, or a faulty horn relay. They had to use a relay since the little connection inside the steering collumn could in no way handle the current that the relay can pass plus the relay is closer to the battery making for less resistance in the electrical wire circuit of the oprating system.

The covers on the horns can be removed and the points cleaned plus a good ohms check of the coil won't hurt. I don't know what the resistance of the coil should be but it will have some. At least you can tell if the coil is open in the windings indicating it would need to be rewound or replaced with a serviceable one. You may also notice an adjuster in there to tune the horn. It can be adjusted a bit but I would leave the adjuster where it is until you can verify that the coil, points, and diaphragm are all good. When adjusting the tone, a person is adjusting for best audible function or decible level. You can't change the pitch of the tone much since the horn was only designed to put out one specific pitch by the manufacturer. The old Ford Super Deluxe cars of that era had the high & low pitch dual horns. You may need hearing protection when testing. They are loud when functioning correctly.
 
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I have a '40 and the horn assembly looks the same. I suggest, just take it out, strip it, paint it, solder in new fabric coated wires, install a new relay and wa la, that should be it. Provided the connection to the horn button,through the steering column, is good, which lightly should be fine. IT worked for me. Good luck.
 
Thanks for all of the help! I think that most of my electrical problems are going to be helped from just cleaning up the grounds. I got the horn out and cleaned up all of the grounding points on the bracket and wire terminals on the relay. Then I set up a little bench test with a 6V battery charger that I had and I adjusted the "tuning?" nut on the back until I was able to get a good note out of them. The wiring diagram at Vanpelt was a lot of help. They still dont sound 100% clean, like a trumpet, and there seems to be a lot of chatter from the coil/diagphram area but they work well. Reinstalled to the car and they work really great. I have to be really careful though because the bottom link of my horn ring is cracked :(.

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After a job well done I decided to treat myself to a little drive. After about 4 miles I came back and looked under the hood and I had smoke coming out of my oil filler stack. The car has 61,000 miles on it and my Grandpa did rebuild the engine about 1,500 miles ago but didn't get it bored and honed. I am thinking it is excessive blow-by. What do you guys think?

I see an engine rebuild in my future.. does anyone recommend any machine shops in IL?

Thanks,

Chris
 

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Very nice tudor sedan. One of the things you should consider is joining the Early Ford V-8 Club of America. The V-8 Times magazine is well worth the membership and there are many good technical articles in there for Ford V-8s. You can check the website at ; www.earlyfordv8.org.
 
So I had my first break down on Sunday. I stalled going up a steep hill in 2nd trying to get into a gas station. I can't get down to first without stopping but i think that is normal. No syncro in first?

So after I stalled I couldnt get the car started. Turns out I think I was vapor locked. I couldnt see any fuel passing through the fuel filter I have between the pump and carb. There was a little fuel in there but it wasnt passing through or filling up more.

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Needless to say I killed the battery trying to get the car started.
I tried to isolate the starter and only give it 12V like i have read on here but I couldnt figure it out. I tried hooking up the negative jumper cable to the negative lead that goes to the firewall and I tried to hook the positive cable to both a head bolt and a starter bolt with no luck. Can anyone help me out?

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I did get the car started by hooking directly up to 12V just like you would with jumping a modern car.

Thanks,
Chris
 
TJ said:
Very nice tudor sedan. One of the things you should consider is joining the Early Ford V-8 Club of America. The V-8 Times magazine is well worth the membership and there are many good technical articles in there for Ford V-8s. You can check the website at ; www.earlyfordv8.org.
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Thanks! My grandfather is a member and he has kept all of the issues since the 80s. There is a lot of great info in them!
 
Nice looking 41. Too bad about your grandpa feeling he could no longer keep the car up. How old is he? Was his health bad before the bypass surgery?
 
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