Hot Rods Drug Home: East Coast T Modified - NH

If this came from a military base it is possible it came from somewhere near the Naval Shipyard located on the river in Portsmouth. All of the steel use in this vehicle is pretty common in the fabrication of submarines and surface craft vessels. The other military base in NH would be Pease AFB, but they had strict regulations on taking apart cars on base, so the airman usually had factory high performance vehicles. In the late 60s, they perform a base wide clean up at Pease, which resulted in two cars from the 1930s, one a coupe and one a bucket of rust that were removed from the woods and taken someplace. The is a retired "Yardbird", who lives outside the rear gate, that was into hot rods and at one time was building wings for super modifies, he might be your best source. I hate to say it, but if your car is one of the ones that came from the clean up event, you didn't get the coupe. But what a project you got.

 

My only suggestion is to only fix what you can fix well. Otherwise it would be better to sell it as a pile of rusty parts. There was T roadster pickup for sale at the Hot August Nights swap meet that someone had obviously put together just to sell. I did not see one thing that they had done that did not need to be done again. I'm not saying you wound do that but just to make sure that your efforts actually benefit the buyer. Any way you go this is a tough build.

 

Pat, you have a shrinker/stretcher? You can also make a buck from probably a 4x4 and hammer form the dash area. It doesn't have to be one piece either

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Agreed. Thanks for putting that concept into words and reminding me. That's why I was considering back-patching and leaving the buyer to decide if they just want to leave it, fill it, cut it out, replace it, or just throw rustoleum on it and go down the road!

I am going to patch up at least the bottoms. I can make those panels myself and do a good job of it. I've got practice on my own T already. That way at least it's not going to be as drafty!

Yeah, I could, but this isn't going to be MY car and that's A LOT of work on a cowl that can be replaced for less than the cost of that much work. I'll see how I feel about it once I do the patching on the bottoms and how much metal I've got left over. I'm getting short on 20ga.

ALSO, I noticed something about this car !

It's Channeled 6" at the front and only 3" at the back of the body!

 

It's a Massachusetts thang.. I have a channeled 30 chevy roadster pickup built in 59-60 near Boston, and the cab is down 2" more at the firewall, and the front of the bed is also down 2" more

I almost think they did that to get a raked look? The chassis on these old survivors were pretty much level with no rake. IDK

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I figured it was an East Coast thing or it may have been some sort of compensation for a Gasser stance.

I pulled out some steel last night and got one little patch made about 50% of the way. I'm still mulling over what @Six Ball said yesterday about what to leave and what to fix. I think I'm going to go ahead and make these lower patch panels but just tack them in so a buyer can either finish weld, mud, or take them out and do it their own way with them or their own panels. I can also make radius patches for the door jambs pretty easy.




I know full well that I have a shrinker/stretcher & a brake and that most other guys don't. So making these panels is not a waste of effort because it's not something most buyers can hack and it's a couple hundred fewer dollars to invest with commercial panels.

I can hammer out one of the rear panels good enough, but the driver side is roached, so I'm considering cutting it out and replacing it with one from my car that I'm replacing with fresh steel anyway (when I get back to building that car...someday).

 

So, in considering how to deal with patching this tub up and keeping @Six Ball's advice in mind, I came up with a decent idea for supplying patch panels as well as putting them ON the body. It dawned on me that I could use the method that my old timer neighbor, Paul had taught me for sticking panels together without clamps. What he did back in the day was to drill both panels and enlarge the outside hole, then run a sheetmetal screw throug them and they'd pull tight enough to weld.

So, that's what I've started doing here. This way, the buyer has the option of using them any which way they wish to: as-is,, stepped/modified, welded, filled, on top, or throw them away and start over without having to cut a bunch of tack welds. I should probably grind out the one panel I did tack in for consistency.

So here are the pictures. I shot them with a bit of primer and sealer since the car is sitting outside and it's fresh metal.

 

So, I got the new back panel in (I was told it came out of the original body used in the VooDoo Doll build) and started pulling out parts to put under it.

I'm still a bit on the fence as far as my mockup perch. I'm not sure if I should just leave it, or if I should put a real perch on there.

I pulled some 37 bones, a 36 axle, & a set of F1 spindles and brakes that I had prepped for my original build idea some years back. Unfortunately, I don't have anything to tie it together or steer with like this.



I forgot that the 36 axle was thinner. I guess some washers would be a good idea here eh?



Drug the 47 Merc rear out from behind the shed. That was a bit of a chore but at least I'd just cut the grass!



This is where I ran out of steam and left things. I needed shackles to put the front end together anyway, so Sunday I went to the swap at NED. I scored some headers for the 265 that I'm dropping in this too!

 

I made a mess but it's on the ground now!

Missing a wheel bearing and shackles.... among other things...

 

Got the front end on there finally last night. Still needs a wheel bearing, but that's on the way (beats spending hours digging for a needle in a haystack). I'm going to get the rear end under there tonight hopefully so I can get it ready to sell by next week hopefully.

 

Well, she's a roller now. And really getting harder for me to part with but I'm going to have to. With some more body work this car will be really something special. I'm hoping whoever takes it off my hands can see the potential too.



I'm happy with the general stance and wheelbase. I'm sure there will be adjustments needed. I chose a set of 40 rear bones to go on it because they've got more than enough length to work with to make whatever configuration a buyer might decide on AND they're long enough to just connect with the rails at what looks like the right spot to keep the rear end in a decent spot without doing any superfluous work (keeping the canvas blank).

I think I'm going to have to move the body back a few inches so there's room for an engine and the radiator behind the front crossmember. I'm not doing any permanent mounting though so it's NBD and the next guy can do whatever, which I'm assuming will probably be modification/boxing of this frame or building another one anyway. I like how the 37 split bones look on this car a lot too.





I hung the old SBC headers I picked up at the NED swap in Epping NH on there for a little fun along with the little gas tank I've got for it.



I've just gotta open up the hole in the tube crossmember a little more and figure out a good way to clamp the spring on there without breaking the bank or doing any cutting/welding on the original crossmember.

 

Posted for sale now on the Boston Craigslist under Auto Parts.

 

I thrashed on this rig all weekend. Here she sits!

 

That's interesting but not reminiscent of what you drug home. I understand why, but at the same I don't really get it. At the very least you saved a lot of vintage iron that could easily have slipped away.. Most would not have seen in the original pile what you did.

 

Yeah, Unfortunately, my situation at home currently kinda forced me to build it out expediently, with stuff I have money into but am not using, and try to send it down the road for the next guy to finish, which drove a lot of the decisions. There are a few things I'd do differently if I could keep this one, and I wish I could, because I dig the look, stance, and proportions.

I DID keep the remnants of the original frame however and I did document this car thoroughly here, so I may re-create it some day or do a build incorporating some of the ideas. I still have a small pile of parts I'm trying to hold on to that I could use and a bunch of ideas from this car and the process of putting it together to what it is now.

I also kept the quarter elliptic springs.

 

You certainly put together something someone will be glad to start with. There are a lot of good parts there and you saved someone a lot of time searching for them and put enough together that potential can be easily seen. It was the 1/4 elliptic set up that got my attention because I'll be using them on the rear of my roadster.

 

Yeah, there's parts there that I collected over 4 years and all of New England. It's the only project anything like it on the market up this way currently from what I've seen.

I've still got the frame and the springs. I'm handing over the rear end to a Willys guy though. I've got enough to go on to replicate the setup the way I'd like to do it with parts I'm more familiar with.

 

So, I've gotten a little work in on this car since nobody's bought it off me yet and I can't leave it alone. I decided the cowl skin was probably too far gone for most average buyers to not be terrified of it, so over the weekend I stripped it off and started getting the other cowl I'd been hoarding in my shed ready to replace it.

I was left with this skeleton, and it's Halloween so it seems an appropriate pic to post.

 

I love this thread!

 

THANKS!

There's lots more to come, this car is about to really come together from a pile of mocked up parts for a quick sale to STAGE II which will be a cleaner, more thought out, & likely RUNNING car (that I should still sell but would totally keep too).

I picked up a nice, relatively new, 64 Falcon radiator out of a car that had been upgraded to a 5-spd from a C4, so it's got AT line ports in it. It's MINT also. Getting it to work between the track nose and the scrub line may prove a challenge at a glance though.

Oh, and here is the Tetanus Terror Murdercorn Head I made out of cut-offs, also since it's Halloween!

 

Got the rear perch tacked in and the rear end relocated, thus dropping the stance down to a more manageable rake. Next will be the front end coming up about 3/4" with a proper perch.




I also finally rebuilt the other front backing plate and swapped out that MOPAR finned iron drum for the OE F1 drum on the driver side. I also found a tie rod I'd forgotten about, so I can actually move this thing around by myself without a full cardio workout.

Oh, and here are the pictures from Halloween:

 

Just for fun, I plopped this 34 Chevy truck roof on there. It's got me thinking things that I probably won't do on this car, but that could make a pretty cool (but heavy) lift off roof with some work.

 

Just got these muffler pipes. I think I'm saving them for another build, but aren't the cooooool?

 

hmmm raise that roof shape the door opening s a bit and it would make an interesting c cab stretch the frame put on a short pick up box lol

 

Yeah, that's where I was going with my thinking on the roof. If I set it back enough, I could probably leave the door opening alone and just make the tub longer to match the curve of the roof (once narrowed).

But I really dislike the tiny truck bed thing and would never do it. Ass-out, turtledeck, or nothing for me!

 

Wheeled this heap out yesterday and got back to work on it since it was nice out. A buddy of mine that wants to learn about hot rods came over to help and learn. Since I wanted to remove the stock front crossmember and weld the tube and perch in, I started him grinding and drilling rivets, which I DID NOT mind not having to do all myself for sure.

I forgot to snap a pic, but we did get the new crossmember and perch tacked in and the spring attached. I'm planning to use the original crossmember as either a cradle under the engine mounts or as the transmission crossmember.

 

Here's the front end tacked in.

 

Making more changes, swapped to a 32 Commercial shell and got some lake headers for the 265!

The body needs to come up a bit but the wood I'm planning to put under the body will take care of that. This will level it with the shell, which will allow me to mount the radiator high enough that I don't cut the hose with the fan blades as soon as I turn it over.

 

Time to update this thread since I have news and new Halloween pictures.

I just bought my neighbor's running Model B setup out of his 33 Pickup. SO, I'm going to be pulling this 265/350 setup and saving it for another idea I've got on the backburner that it's more suited to.

So this little rig might be returning to something closer to its original setup after all! I measured the torque tube and it's 60" and I am going to see where everything sits before I make any decisions on wheelbase or cutting. I think it might put me around 112" or so and I want to see how that looks because I am pretty sure I can hit it on the head by going back to this car's original rear quarter elliptic spring setup.

Here are the pictures from the Halloween setup I used the car for this year:

 

Cool car! It may be a little late for this, but.... Dana 23 axles were standard in Studebaker Champions. they were commonly available in 3.90 & 4.10 ratios for cars without O/D, and 4.30 and 4.55 ratios for cars with O/D. I was just offered an NOS one in 4.55 (cheap). It may still be available if you are interested.