Butchered Back to Life

When Henry Ford first developed the Model A, I feel like there was never a thought in his head that there would be someone almost a century later hacking it up and turning it into this crazy machine. 

In fact, when Mike from Stanceworks, bought this Model A from the Pomona Swap Meet, he had promised the owner he wasn’t going to chop it up. Well, the same night he bought it, the car was completely stripped down to pretty much a shell. 

Many builders will do a full restoration and pull every nut and bolt off the car and replace, respray or rebuild any possible part they can to make the car look as it did the day it rolled off the show room floor. Others get into the “resto-mod” side of things and upgrade a few components and swap the motor, Mike decided to completely reengineer the entire car. 

Collectors and Purists may scoff at such a build as this, but let’s be honest as enthusiasts, do you really feel excited when driving around a car that has only 40hp? 

If you haven’t rode in a Model A, it’s difficult to describe how slow one is.  In stock form it is unable to be driven on the freeway without maxing the car out in the slow lane, and you can easily be smoked by a Prius. 

Yes, the model A really is that slow, but back when it first came out, it was revolutionary. The successor to the Model T, it helped Ford regain the market share it was losing to competitors. 

Over the years Ford has continued to develop new chassis, new motors, new suspensions. Performance greatly increased as well as efficiency. The advancements in the last 10 years though have accelerated at an alarming rate. The new Mustang GT for example is able to run a 1/4 mile in the 11s completely stock! Who would have ever thought that production cars would become so fast? 

That brings us into the powerplant choice for the Model A that Mike chose, the Coyote Motor. On Mike’s last model A build, he shoved in a BMW Powerplant. A few people disagreed with the BMW swap, I personally thought it was creative, but you can’t please everyone. 

This time around Mike wanted to keep it in the Ford family and seeing as how Mike was chopping up this Model A already, he figured why not supercharge it as well? The supercharger is fairly large too at over 2.5 liters, it has more displacement than the average 4 cylinder motor! 

Loud and violent is the only way to describe this car on throttle, even with his 13 inch rain slicks in the back, grip just is not in your favor. After all, it weighs a mere 2200 lbs and has over 600whp. You can spin the tires in any gear you want, there is no mercy with this truck. 

Thankfully Mike found out that we at CSF had decided to re-release the dual fluid cooler and it fit in almost the exact space he needed for the build. 

The Dual Fluid Cooler from CSF fits within 1/4 in of where it’s being mounted. Look at the way in which Mike fabricated the mounts, it ties into the overall aesthetics of the truck. 

The reason why this dual cooler was needed is how open yet compact this truck is. Running a separate oil cooler and transmission cooler would have created issues where Mike could mount everything properly.  

Another crazy addition is the fact that mike is using the CSF x Rywire tuck radiator. This radiator is normally found on Honda K Swap builds, but due to how well it works and how easy it is to mount in different cars, it founds its way onto Mike’s truck.

Mike has been known to do some pretty crazy things to cars in the past, especially with his infamous Rusty build. which you can see here in this short video. This Model A definitely follows in the footsteps of his Rusty build. 

Had Mike done everything by hand, he would have never gotten everything as precise as he wanted it to be. While he took on the task of building this Model A, he learned how to use Fusion360. 

With the benefits of being able to draw and print exact fitting parts, he was able to fabricate motor mounts and relocated suspension mounts with little to no effort compared to what it all being done by hand would involve.

It wasn’t until halfway through the project did Mike even know what he was really doing design wise, but with the help of Fusion360, he was able to create these one off parts for the build. 

Because of his new skill, the precision and quality of the parts he was able to produce elevated this build to the next level and at an even more rapid rate. This all contributed to such an incredible finished product. 

With so much attention to detail and the fact that Mike is running a few CSF goodies, how can we all not love the build? Expect to see more of this build around So Cal and also click the links in our blog for more info on the products that Mike used in this truck.