Technical The Geoffrey Skene 1932 Roadster

Looks great so far, I’m mostly impressed you busted all those rivets out so nice and in short time to boot

 

subscribe!!!!

 

This will be awesome! Looking forward to the journey

 

X2

 

Agreed. I've been following this build on IG, but it's so nice to have the in-depth detail that this thread will (and has already) provide.

 

Subscribed!

 

PART 4

With the frame secured to the fixture I sent it and the X-member pieces out for media blasting. Shout out to Azusa Refinishing in Azusa, California. They handle all of our media blasting and powder coating needs.





Once the frame was blasted some problem areas were revealed. The area where the steering gears mounts was a total mess. I didn’t get any pictures of what was there, unfortunately, but the previous person had built this box section out of 1/4” plate and had it bolted into the frame rail. The box had brackets welded to it to mount a Speedway reverse-Corvair steering box, more typically used for kit T-Buckets and other smaller hot rods. The steering shaft poked through the frame crooked. Total POS. That left behind a bunch of extra holes and they had put some kind of a ring in the big center hole. Three holes had been brazed closed so I had to drill those out larger to be sure any trace of the brass was gone. I also had to drill out the other two poorly filled holes as they were full of contamination voids. I made a handful of plugs and a disc to fill the big hole, welded it all up and metal finished as it was better to just start over.



I failed to document the process as I just got going and was in the zone but here it is the finished result. Note the red lines drawn on the top of the rail. Those are to show a wedge shaped piece that had been cut out as well to clear the stupid Corvair box. Now I have a clean slate to put the holes back to original.



The other areas of damage are on both frame rails right behind the front cross member. It looks like they were attempting to fill the original shock holes and another pair of holes and it all went to hell. They had actually drilled tiny holes at the ends of a lot of the cracks. What a mess!





The best way to fix this was just to cut the whole bad area out. The area was marked, cut out and patch plates made. I also made plugs to fill what were probably supposed to be be holes for the front brake hoses. Now it’s like it never happened.

 

PART 5

With the frame rail damage repaired I turned my attention the X-member. The first step was to get the 3 pieces bolted together to check fit and alignment. Who ever had taken that old frame apart in the past wasn’t very graceful and bent the crap out of the lower X flanges where they are supposed to fit up to the center saddle.





I hammered the flanges into general position and then used some heat to perfectly form the flanges to the saddle.





With the flanges fixed the remainder of the holes were lined up and bolted. Then, after a little twisting and tweaking I had the X sitting even and square.











The X-member was then laid on top of the frame for a look and to start planning my attack.

 

PART 6

Aside from the X-member being a superior design for frame strength and rigidity, the biggest motivation to ditching the original K-member is the transmission shown below. It is a 1950’s French built Pont A Mousson. It is an aluminum, fully synchronized wide ratio unit that bolts directly to a Ford Flathead and was used in the French Ford Comete. A pretty rare find here in the States! The 1933/1934 X-member was chosen particularly because of the wider span between the two sides vs. later 30’s X-members which are significantly closer together at the center. Geoff acquired this rare trans some years ago and had it completely gone through by Jody’s Transmissions.

For more details I found a HAMB thread with good information on these here:

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/flathead-ford-tranny-what-is-it-from.344883/



So obviously this big trans isn’t going to fit the stock 33/34 X-member saddle either, but I can fix that! After careful measuring and calculating I drew out the cut lines on the saddle (followed by a revision) and then took my time carving it out. TIP: Always save your worn down cut-off discs because they can be used to more precisely cut along a radius where a new or less worn disc would be too big to follow the line.







Then I realized I needed a way to roll the filler plates. I recalled friend and fellow builder Derek Bower years ago describing to me how he rolled a hood top for his roadster. I clamped a scrap of large pipe to the edge of my welding table with spacers underneath that would let the material just barely slide under the pipe. I did one practice piece successfully so I moved on to the actual parts.



I’m using 3/16” thick cold roll and decided to make life easier by making the filler in 2 halves rather than attempt a single continuous piece. I’m either good or got lucky and made both sides on the first try. I left the material longer than needed to have leverage while bending then trimmed the excess off.



The upper corners were then trimmed to fit so the plates would sit flush. I wanted to retain the original nut plate that mounts the 33/34 E-brake handle so a notch was needed to clear it.







Then I decided it might be advantageous to be able to use the two remaining holes on the back side of the saddle where the original mechanical brake lever shaft used to go but the nut plates went away with the part I cut out so I made a pair of 3/8” thick threaded blocks to fit inside the holes. I don’t know what they will be used for yet, if anything, but it’s nice to have options.

 

Love that crack'g substitute fix.
It is apparent,,,,, You will make the right choices
Restore and rebuild a winner

 

PART 7

With the threaded blocks installed it was time to fully weld the plates but they weren’t a perfect match to radius’ cut in the saddle so I blue’d the areas, scribed using the plates as a guide and trimmed the saddle exactly. Here’s one of the 4 radius’ as an example.





The plates were position and welded in the corners. They came up a little short of joining in the middle so a filler strip was added because with how good they fit otherwise I wasn’t about to start over!









With that I finished welding and then metal finished.









Ta Da!



I finished up by media blasting the saddle and bolting the X-member back together. Not too shabby!

 

Looking good. That gearbox is a cool thing, worth the effort!
The drillings on the cracks are to stop the crack from spreading - an aviation technique - it seems they didn't get the end of the crack - as it has cracked beyond the 'stop drill hole' & besides you can weld steel, so don't know why they didn't do that!???

 

Following this thread and it's very informational as usual. Interesting I did a 33/34 chassis for a customer that wanted to keep the wishbone stock and run a T5 trans. I did virtually the identical fix to the center support, I got lucky and had the local welding shop roll a filler piece that fit with it being one piece. Worked great. I like everything about this project.

 

Very cool build so far. I’m looking forward to seeing more! Subscribed

 

Turned out slick

 

What a great build thread! Thanks for the informative information.

 

It’s definitely odd. I understand drilling holes to head off a crack but like you I don’t understand why they would waste the time to do that in this case? No matter now, I took care of that!

Thank you! I’ve seen the saddle mod done quite a few times but had never seen the process. So I cut the middle out and then said “Now what?” The clamped pipe actually worked really well but it took some muscle. Glad it didn’t have to be 1/4”!

 

Great thread and neat work, subscribed.

 

What a Great build. Thanks for taking the time to show the details.

 

Looks great. Thanks for sharing.

 

You might as well have left the center out. The torsional stiffness is basically determined by the cross
section area and the material properties. You have removed most of the area.
Nice work though.

 

Ah, right you are. BUT, I’m not done yet…

 

Very cool build.

 

Beautiful, professional work!

 

I Like it!

 

If the goal were to maintain 100% of Henry's torsional stiffness in the X brace center while reducing its cross section, what would you do? Go thicker with the new u-shaped insert? Replace the stock lower pan on the center with a thicker one? Add some ties between the new U shaped insert and the lower reinforcement pan? Asking for a friend...

 

I’d make a top plate.

 

Fit the trans then put 2 1/2 square tubes across top of saddle. Still can slid off rear of trans for maintenance

 

Great project, Dennis.
Did you ever get to count the ratios in the 4 different gears? (some are swearing by a 'Granny low', but the former installation in the Facel Fords were passenger car.)

 

If that Facel Vega trans came out of a Chrysler powered car, it won't have a granny first.