Ray Digby's passion for his hobby and his street rod building skills are both very evident in the 1928 Model A Ford Sedan Delivery featured on these pages.
     From the beginning of this project to the end (1999 to 2004) the car only left Digby's Cedar garage for upholstery work. Yes, that means everything, from building the frame to painting the body, was performed by this longtime member of Nanaimo's Smokin' Oldies car club. Digby purchased this car in 1998. Well, maybe not exactly this car. When he bought it, it was a 1928 Ford tudor Sedan. (Some sources say Ford didn't build a Sedan Delivery until 1929, while noted automotive journalist Bill Vance writes "Both Ford and Chevrolet entered the more formalized sedan delivery business � Ford still called it the delivery car � in 1928.").
     While a common conversion, Digby certainly didn't intend on morphing the car into a Sedan Delivery. "It was available locally and I just bought it as a project," says Digby. It was on a "hot rod holiday" with street rod buddy Joe Beiciegel that he decided to turn the two-door sedan into, well, a three-door. "Joe had a '28 Sedan Delivery and I noticed he could throw all his stuff in the back. A '28 sedan doesn't have a trunk and everything has to go on the back seat and it's a royal pain to get back there," says Digby. Not that the word "practical" comes up very often in this hobby, but Digby decided it would be easier to travel in a Sedan Delivery than a tudor sedan.You can buy a $3,000 fibreglass kit to make the changes, but that's not Digby's style. "To me, the fun is building it yourself."
     The fun started with a three-and-a-half inch top chop and continued with filling in the rear side windows to create the panel look. The panels are six inches longer than the window openings used to be. Then, Digby took some 3/4 x11/2 tubing and made up a door frame and tack welded it inside the cab. Then he used his cutout wheel and cut the door opening and preceded to install and remove it about "100 times" to get the fit right. 
     When Henry Ford started building Sedan Deliveries, the rear opening was a lap-fit door (the main doors still overlap the body) but Digby likes clean lines, so his cargo door is flush mounted and also includes a power window.
     Digby also made several other body modifications, including widening the splash apron 3/4 inch so the running boards would flush mount with the inch-and-a-quarter widened rear fenders. The all steel rear Model A fenders � actually, the only non-original steel on the car is the splash aprons, custom-made hood and radiator shell � never looked complete to Digby. "They just sort of ended," he explains.
     So, he used some welding rod and reshaped the bottom fenders to create a nice contour. If you didn't have intimate knowledge of Model A fenders, you wouldn't notice the change. Many rodders like to swap the Model A rad shell, which essentially leaves the radiator exposed, for a 1932 Ford version, Digby didn't.
     "I like the shape of the Model A grille, but I don't like picking bugs out of the rad," he says. After moving the radiator an inch and half forward and lowering it an inch and a half, he custom built his own radiator insert, which includes 51 vertical bars.
     "It took longer to make the jigs to cut and bend the bars (then to actually make) the grille." His son, aircraft mechanic and metal worker, Rick Digby, rolled the custom hood to proper specs. He did borrow the narrow, solid bumpers from a '32 Ford, but he didn't leave the rear bumper untouched. Instead, he cut and bent it to the shape of a Model A bumper. Again, a subtle, slick modification that might go unnoticed if you weren't a Model A fan. The body modifications also include a steel roof insert in an area once covered only by fabric. Mercedes Benz Hartz cloth now covers the roof.
     Digby chose PPG Winter Mint Green to make this Sedan Delivery really standout. Aspen Graphics in Chemainus did the pinstriping and Dad's Delivery graphic. (Digby takes care of many of the details, including the newsletter,for the Smokin' Oldies car club so member Wayne Foulds started calling him ‘Dad’." So, Dad's Delivery).
     Inside, Davlin Upholstery in Victoria stitched the Pontiac Grand Am bucket seats and door panels in tweed, two-toned cloth. A '32 Ford dash replaces the Model A version, and Digby recessed the opening so the gauges would flush mount. A home-made banjo-style steering wheel is mated to a GM tilt column with a modified tube to hide all the wires. The ignition and light switches, along with heater, A/C, and air bag controls, are all hidden behind a panel to the lower left of the steering wheel.Under this Sedan Delivery, suspension upgrades include Firestone Air Bags on all four corners, a four-link rear suspension and 8-inch Ford rearend with3.80 gears, four-inch dropped Super Bell front axle, GM disc brakes and custom made front sway bar.Wheels are Weld Rodlite XPs wrapped in BF Goodrich Comp T/A radials.(205/50/15 front, 255/60/17 out back).
     For motivation, Digby is using the same Chevy small block 350 that used to reside between the frame rails of his '32 Ford roadster. It's bored .30 over and stuffed with hypereutectic pistons and an Engle camshaft. To help it breath, the heads are ported and gasket-matched while an Edelbrock EPS performer intake and a Edelbrock Thunder Series 650 carb take care of the air/fuel mixture. All that power goes through a GM 700R automatic transmission before it gets to the rear wheels, which Digby can light up quite easily with a blip of the go pedal. "It pushed the roadster to 13-second times," says Digby of the motor.
     While this Model A is clearly one special delivery, the ultimate indication of Digby's ample rod building abilities is its reliability. "We basically finished the car in the middle of June (2004) and in the middle of August we hooked up the trailer and drove south to Pleasanton, CA and East to Pigeon Forge, TN," says Digby. "By the end of the summer we put pretty near 10,000 miles on it without a single mechanical breakdown."
     Built Ford tough, in Digby's garage. Clearly, a killer combination.