Roseville Rod & Custom Massages the Metal of Goodguys 2026 Grand Prize Giveaway ’40 Ford Coupe
One of the big time- and money-saving advantages of starting with a really clean project vehicle is avoiding major metal surgery. When you don’t need to repair extensive rust, replace floors, or correct significant damage to a vehicle’s body, you can save hundreds of hours of shop time and focus instead on the larger goal of making your car or truck the way you want it. That’s one of the many reasons we were so happy to start with a very clean and original ’40 Ford coupe for our latest 2026 Grand Prize Giveaway car, which is going together at Roseville Rod & Custom.
Roseville’s Ben York actually found the car, and we were all pleasantly surprised with how clean the metal looked after Sacramento-based American Stripping completed its multi-stage media blasting process.
American Stripping returned the coupe body to Roseville Rod & Custom wearing a protective covering of primer sealer that was applied like a powder coat. This ensured that the metal would stay protected while the team was fitting it to the chassis and making other alterations. For the most part that sealer was left intact, but there were a few areas of the body that required some additional attention and massaging to improve panel alignment and bring the fit and finish up to modern standards.
In this installment we’ll be taking a closer look at the Roseville Rod & Custom team doing what it does best – fine tuning the sheet metal to achieve a precise fit between all the panels and making select slices and cuts to achieve tight, uniform gaps around the doors, hood, and trunk lid. Anyone who has ever massaged ’40 Ford sheet metal knows that precision panel alignment can be tricky – especially on the hood. We’ll show you some of the tricks the Roseville team used to make things as precise as possible.
As Ben describes it, he and his team essentially widened the back of the hood, mostly on the passenger side, to get a good, precise fit between hood and cowl. This is an area that almost always requires attention on ’40s – the production tolerances just weren’t that precise 85 years ago, especially on panels with complex shapes. Most ’40 hoods have a bit of a “jog” from the door to the hood, and Ben says this one was particularly bad. Making pie-shaped relief cuts and adding metal in strategic areas helped fix it. It’s all in the name of quality work for the 2026 Grand Prize Giveaway car!
One other area of focus was the doors, where the Roseville crew put in considerable effort to achieve precise, even gaps around the perimeter of each door. This process involves welding on some extra metal where the gap is large and grinding away some where the gap is tight. Sometimes that grinding ends up breaking through the edge of the door skin where it hems over the inner structure, which requires additional welding to correct.
Beyond those areas, there was some minor massaging done on the rear of the car, like smoothing out rough factory stampings on the lower portions of the rear fenders and eliminating the seam between the tail panel and main body. The team also fine-tuned the fit between the deck lid and the body and made some firewall and dash alterations. From there, the coupe was basically ready for bodywork.
We’re excited about the progress the Roseville Rod & Custom team is making and can’t wait to see how things come together in the coming months! Remember, the ’40 Ford 2026 Grand Prize Giveaway is going to debut at the Goodguys Summit Racing Nationals in Columbus, July 11 – 13! If you missed the previous build series, check them out here: Part 2, Part 1.
Photos: Steven Bunker, Roseville Rod & Custom
