Projects Shade tree Model A speedster kind of thing

You're getting more done working in the woods and using trees as tools than I'm getting with a shop and an open credit line to Harbor Freight!

 

Well, I’m no stranger to HF. Haha

 

I learned this method from my father. He was a wooden boatbuilder, and he developed the ability to build them by eye, without any plans. He built some truly beautiful boats that way. It was kind of like watching (and helping) a sculptor, in a way, just seeing the boat take shape, literally, except instead of removing material he was adding. I guess that's still sculpture, though. I'm using the same philosophy here (and used it on the original body, too). It requires me to keep things adjustable. That firewall, for example. It started oversized, has been trimmed, and will be again. My plan to frame around the edges will allow me to finalize the shape and make corrections right up to the end, even adding some back if I get over-zealous with my trimming. It also takes a lot of patience. I made those conduit side pieces first, because everything is based off of the width, both practically and aesthetically. Then, I added those battens and bent the dash frame. Left it there and went down to our ramshackle coast house with some of my children and grandchildren for a few days, then came back with fresh eyes. Small adjustments have been made, and I'll leave it be again while I work on the brakes or something else, then surely adjust some more. The trick is not to do anything permanent unless you are completely happy with where you are. For example, that dash frame had a nice parabolic curve, but I changed it this morning to have a little peak in the middle and a straighter run on each side down to the terminal curve. Just looks better to me, and it lifts the rear of the line of the hood in profile so that it doesn't appear to be slanting down. I had measured carefully, and it was parallel to the frame rails, but optics are a funny thing and it looked to me like the radiator end was higher, even though I knew it wasn't . I probably didn't raise it even a full inch at the dash end, but it made a difference. Anyway, here are some pictures of where I am now. There are probably too many of them, but I like to have the documentation for future reference.















I sat in this thing for about 15 minutes this morning, just daydreaming and planning and puzzling. The pedals need some pretty drastic modifications, and it needs another section of floor up there, but it all seems feasible. I'm pretty excited about how I hope it will turn out. Knock on wood.

 

Much as I dislike publishing pictures of myself, I'm going to include some that my son took of me sitting in the car. I tried to take some myself, but discovered it is impossible to get into this car and fully seated in the 10 seconds my phone gives me. I do have some pretty funny evidence of the attempts. I'll keep those to myself. Ha.







Dang. This is going to be a small car. I wish I had the wheels on it, but soon enough (hopefully).

 

Your shift lever knob is a hoot....

 

show at least one of the 'personals'-come on be a sport!

 

Well, hell. No harm, I guess. This was as close to success as I got. I was laughing at myself pretty hard in this one.



It's not so much that the car is going to be impossible to deal with, but that all of this stuff is taped and clamped on there, and I had to be careful not to kick or grab the wrong thing. I would not have been laughing at myself if I had knocked it all loose.

 

Loving your build and your ingenuity! Are you near Valdosta? My brother lived near Tallahassee for over 30 yrs. Charles taught sculpture at FSU. Your outdoor "shop" reminds me of him working on large sculptures, mostly of steel and cast iron.

Al Hook

 

Al,
I'm in Thomasville. If you know where Valdosta is, I bet you know or can find T'ville. Your brother sounds pretty cool.

 

I am also not too excited about having my picture taken. FWIW, I think the first photo is a cool portrait of a man and his passion.

 

Back to the brakes. My NOS cables arrived yesterday, so I have started the project of grafting 1937 cable actuated mechanical brakes to the 1928 Model A rod actuated system. First off, I needed to turn it into the later Model A system. Here's a picture that shows the rather complicated 1928 apparatus that goes across the chassis to the right, and the later one-piece crossbar to the left.



Front of the car would be to the right. That gap in the middle of the '28 stuff is where it connects to ball sockets on the arms of the housing for the torque tube bell. That piece to the right of the gap ends in ball sockets and has another big one in the middle. It accepts the force from the pedal. Although it looks overly complicated, it's actually pretty ingenious and, at least in theory, allows the braking to be balanced between the two sides. I don't know enough to tell you why Ford decided to go with the one-piece arrangement, but I'll bet any performance advantages of the old system just weren't dramatic enough to justify the complication and expense? Either way, I had to cut the ball sockets off of my housing because they blocked the speedometer drive. I replaced the whole mess with the later model shaft. It was a bolt-in.

Now to the cables. Here are a couple of the old ones:



The new ones are genuine NOS ford parts, my preference over reproduction by far. They have been stored well all of these years. Grease was still gummy in there (but I did renew it, anyway).



Removing and replacing was pretty straightforward, so I won't take up bandwidth for that. Here's a front and rear installed:





My old front cables had these cute little pedestals that connect the cables to the frame. They anchor the ends of the cable sheaths so that the braking force actually gets to the brake shoes. You can see them in the picture of the old cables. Unfortunately, the rear cables must have had another arrangement, or the brackets were hard to get to because whoever pulled this stuff just cut those cables and pulled them through, leaving the brackets with the frame. I looked on the Bay of E and all over the internet for a couple more of them, but couldn't find any.

I decided to just try making some for the rear. I had no intention of trying to copy the Ford ones, just needed to secure the ends of those cables so they won't pull forward when the brakes are applied. I looked around the junk pile for inspiration and found this old single port VW intake manifold. I cut the ends off of the heat riser and turned/drilled some tubes out of bar stock. I squeezed the heat riser ends in the vise until they matched the OD of the tubes, then filed some curved notches. The tubes are a friction fit over the brake cables for most of their length, then they shoulder down to a hole the inner cable will pass through, but the sheath won't.












Took all of that out to the O/A setup and brazed it.




Old and new, just for comparison. I measured and made sure the center of the cable would be the same distance from the frame at the new brackets as it will be at the brake crossbar. I don't want any unnecessary friction or wear.



Right now I don't have any way to clamp the rear cables into my homemade brackets, but I don't think that will be a problem. For one thing, the cables will have a much deeper bury in the new brackets. I also think that the bend I will have to introduce into the sheaths will be pushing forward constantly. I think the clamps are necessary at the front because the wheels there have to turn, and there could conceivably be a combination of steering and suspension action that might briefly pull. I can always retro-fit some kind of clamping deal on those rear ones, if I discover an issue. One more item on the watchlist.

I still have to attach those cables to the Model A crossbar, and of course the front cables are too short by about 6", while the rear cables are too long by about a foot or so. I think I already have solutions figured out, but that's a post for another day.

 

The front brake cables are 6" too short. I decided to make short sections of brake shaft to make up the difference. The cables terminate in swaged-on 5/16" x 24 threaded rods, with 2" of threads for adjustment. 7" extensions will give me about 1" of thread bury, and 1" of adjustment. I need these to be good steel, so I decided to sacrifice an 18" socket extension.

First, cut roughly to length:



That's tough, hardened and tempered steel, and I will be doing a good bit of machining here, so I needed to anneal it. To do that to carbon steel, you heat it past bright red and cool it as slowly as possible.





I let these cool to touch buried in the ashes on the sides of the forge. You can get a lot more carried away with this stuff if you are making knives or such, but this will do enough to allow me to machine it.

Speaking of machining, I left 2 1/4" full diameter at one end, and about 1/2" at the other end and turned the middle down to the diameter of a Model A brake rod. I don't want these to be so heavy that they pull a kink in the cable when they are not being used.



Ended up here:



Then I stupidly ground flats in the short ends. Just a complete brain fart. I had intended to forge them flat, which would have made them wider and left me plenty of meat around the holes for the pins, but I got carried away with the machining and stopped thinking. I was able to salvage them by taking them out to the forge and hammering them from the end, making that section shorter and wider. It left them uglier than I wanted, but I don't care. Then I drilled them and sanded some of the ugly away.



They look pretty thin on one edge each in the picture, but that's just because of the little chamfer I put on them lining up just right. They are at least as beefy as a Model A brake rod end, so I think they will do. They are way beefier than the worn out rods I was running on the old car for a year or so before I replaced them all. Haha.



That's a pretty unworn stock Model A end. I should have taken a side by side, or at least tried to hold them the same distance from the camera, but you get the idea.

I considered hardening and tempering these. One of my hobbies is knife making, (the real reason I have that old forge and anvil) so I am familiar with such stuff. I decided against it. Stock Model A brake rods seem to me to have been left annealed. They deform pretty easily, by which I mean if you bend them they stay bent instead of breaking like hardened steel would, or springing back like tempered would. Some people think unhardened steel is weak, but that's not necessarily true. I think in this situation, where you would definitely prefer deformation to failure, annealed is best. I am perfectly willing to be convinced my reasoning is wrong, though.

Be that as it may, I still have to drill holes in the long full diameter ends and thread them. Those will then screw onto the cable ends, and the short ends with holes will attach to the brake actuating cross rod with pins. This picture will at least give you an idea of what I'm dealing with, though.



Next up is the rear brake cables, which have the exact opposite problem. They need to connect to the top ams of the cross rod, but they are far too long, so I have to deal with that. Stay tuned.

 

Well, I just couldn't live with those rods I made. I am sure that the eyes I messed up on would be strong enough, but they were still griping my ass something awful, so I made new ones.



Same idea and process, just did the eyes right this time. See that mosquito on my thumb? Hazards of shade tree work, I guess. We have two kinds around here. Big dumb aedes aegypti ones and these little smart, quick bastards. I don't know their scientific name, but I have a few names of my own for them. Be that as it may, here is one of the brake rods temporarily in place:



I took advantage of the situation to make them 1" longer, as well. I finally found a clear picture of the front brake cables on a stock 1937, and I thought that I had the little cable stop bracket clamped just a bit too far back on the frame. Moving it forward just that one inch eased the double curve it has to make between the frame and backing plate. I think it is better now. Sorry I don't have a corresponding picture of how it was.



It's not like I had a kink pulled in it or anything and with my limited suspension travel over a stock set-up I bet it would have been fine, but I'm still happier with it now. I've tested it lock-to-lock and full suspension travel, and all seems well. Knock on wood. I do have one last issue to deal with. The arms on the cross shaft are slightly twisted because the Model A brake rods ran straight from there to the actuating arms just above and inboard of the kingpins. I think, rather than heating and un-twisting those arms, I'll bend a little angle just before the new substantial eyes in my little brake rods. I think it's entirely possible that those arms are hardened and tempered, and I don't want to anneal them.

I also have almost all of the stuff I need to shorten the rear brake cables, too. Just waiting on one more shipment and I'll delve into that.

 

almost like henry building that first one!!

 

One of the nice things about a near-complete rebuild like this is that there is no shortage of things to do if you get held up by lack of parts or inspiration on any particular job. My brake job is still progressing in fits and starts, but it's on hold right now. There's not a real practical reason for that, I guess I just need a little more time to figure on it. In the meantime, I have some issues with the brake and clutch pedals to deal with.

One problem is that they sit against the firewall when they are all the way retracted, and have nowhere to go. The other thing is that, in the old car, I didn't have a dead pedal for the clutch. No room on the off side of it to rest my foot when I wasn't using the pedal. I worked around it, but it was definitely a design flaw that I need to address. This car will have even less foot room, so that's going to be a challenge.




I could cut slots in that firewall but, with the steering column slot already there, I'd rather not. Than means the pedals have to change. Just some careful heating and bending.



In that picture you can see where I already heated and bent the bottom of each shaft and the top of the clutch. The angle of the part I'm getting ready to bend on the brake gives an idea of how much I changed the angle at the bottoms. I was just getting ready here to bend the top of that brake shaft so that it matches what I've already done to the clutch. That left the footpads sitting too close to the seat, though. Way too far back.



The footpads aren't even in the frame of that picture, but that in itself illustrates the problem. So I cut them off.





Sorry that brake arm is at a different orientation in every picture. It won't be so floppy when I get that system finished.

I'm kind of mad at myself for forgetting to take pictures of some of this, but what I did is cut the extra shaft off of the footpads, leaving just a nub, and then slotted those so I could turn the pads ninety degrees (that's the part I forgot to document in pictures), slip the slot over the cut pedal shafts on the car, and braze them in. I think you can see what I did under the brazing.





They will now operate through their full range without hitting the firewall, are back in the right position as far as the seat goes, and take up a much more narrow space in the footwell. The perspective of this next picture makes it look like there's a clearance issue with the clutch and steering column, but they just clear each other. I'm sure I'll still have to do some adjusting with the torch once I get the body made, but hopefully I can make this work.



I will need to take the pedals off eventually so I can turn them upside down and braze the bottom of those joints. I'll clean them up then, too. Sorry I don't have more progress to update you all on. It's been pretty hot and humid down here. Highs in the upper 90's, heat indexes close to 110 almost every day. I could hardly see to do that bending and brazing through the sweat in my eyes. Whew.

 

Ok. The brakes are assembled and ready to adjust (hopefully). I drilled the frame for the little pedestals that secure the ends of the brake cables and bolted them on. Then I had to deal with the too-long rear cables. Spent a little money here, but brakes are fairly important in the overall scheme of things. I bought Sta-Lok fittings. You can google it, if you want. They are designed for sailboat rigging, very strong and durable.

The first job was to adapt them to Model A brake clevises. Those are 5|16" threads and the studs on the Sta-Loks are 3/8". Didn't take much effort to drill and tap the clevises, and there's plenty of meat left for strength.



I also shortened the studs as much as I could.



I didn't have any lock nuts, so I just hacksawed a regular one in half and smoothed the cut marks off.



These 1937 Ford brake cables are what's called 1x19, which means there is a core of 7 wires wrapped by an outer layer of 12 wires. (That's what the 19 stands for. The 1 means that each of those parts is a single little wire, and not a bundle of even smaller wires.) I cut them at the right place (hopefully) with a cold chisel and unwrapped the outside layer back an inch or so (after eventually remembering to slip the nose of the fitting over the wire). These fittings have a little hollow cone that fits over the inside bundle, then you lay the outside wires back around it. It has a split in it so, when you tighten it down, it squeezes the outside wires against the cone and compresses the whole business around the inside bundle. It's ingenious, really. Problem is, the 1937 Ford cable isn't a standard sailboat rigging size. I ordered the closest sized fittings I could without going over, but the conical sleeve wouldn't fit over the inside bundle. I just made replacement sleeves. I used bronze because I had it. They are sightly bigger around than the stainless originals, but they still fit inside the housing of the fitting.



Here one is wrapped and ready:




I know that seems pretty shady, and I guess it is. Funny thing, I would never do this on a sailboat but, odd as it sounds, a stay or shroud parting suddenly on a boat would be much more catastrophic than suddenly losing one rear brake on a car. Remember, one advantage of mechanicals is losing one doesn't affect the others. I'll add this to the list of stuff to watch, but these things are designed to be stronger than the cable itself. They have been tested to destruction over and over, and the cable almost never fails at the fitting. I feel pretty certain that I've significantly degraded the strength rating of mine, but my right leg can only apply so much force, leverage notwithstanding.

Anyway, I got them all buttoned up and hooked to the cross shaft and adjusted most of the slack out of the cables. Plenty of adjustment left, but if they stretch and I run out of threads, I can just disassemble those fittings on the rear, shorten the cables up a bit, and put them back together. I intentionally made those front rods with plenty of thread. Hopefully that will do me. Here's what they look like right now:








I might just have to rig up a temporary gas tank and see how much trouble it'll be to get her to fire up so I can toodle around the yard a bit. I'll have to put the seats back in, though. Had to pull them so I could bolt the rear cable pedestals on.

 

This is a fine piece of craftsmanship, beautifully done.
What you can learn here is fantastic.
Regards Harald

 

looks like fun - I used the stock 29 tank on mine which left me space in the back for a trunk. I got a 30 chassis in Arizona City AZ and a 29 closed cab pickup cowl with the windshield cut off in Divide CO

 

Mechanical brakes with rods work better - they don't stretch, they still feel weird compared to hydraulic brakes but not as weird as it feels with cables. I've got almost 4000 miles on my speedster now with the stock A brakes

 

The original car’s setup ended up being Model A brakes, stock in the rear, cast iron drums in front with the Flathead Ted floaters. They stopped that light car really well, in my opinion. The wreck put my original rear end out of commission, and I had this ‘37 stuff on hand, so I went with it. I hope it works out OK. There are some guys over on the fordbarn that had some nice things to say about the cable brakes, so that’s reassuring.

 

Well, it's been raining here, and Studebakerhawk's comment got me worried, so I've been down a research rabbit hole all morning about these brakes. Long story short, I think the 1937 brakes should work fine. Knock on wood. They are larger than the old Model A brakes, in addition to having all four drums be cast iron. They were designed from the get-go with floating style wedges, as well. They also seem to have the eccentric adjusters to allow both ends of the shoes to be adjusted like the early juice brakes have. I am admittedly pretty ignorant about these early brakes in general, but I've ordered a reprint of the 1937-38 engine and chassis repair manual that has the adjustment procedure in it, so I'll know about that in more detail soon. The only downfall seems to be the cable stretch situation, but I can't get too worked up about that. So many British and European cars used cable brakes successfully, I just can't believe that I'm doomed there. This will be a relatively light car, compared to what the system was designed for, so that should help. Lot of mixed information out there about this whole business, and I have no desire to start a cable vs rod or (heaven forbid) mechanical vs juice brake debate in this thread, but it all seems to boil down to proper maintenance, which is kind always the case, isn't it?

 

I agree with you, a properly adjusted mechanical drum brake with intact components will slow the Model A down well.
We also fine-tuned my friend's Model A, which also had cast drums, and were amazed at how cleanly it stopped.
The limiting factor is definitely the tires.
Greetings Harald

 

Not much progress to report. I have had some absolutely delightful family (grandchildren) obligations, so I've only tinkered with the car recently.



I have found time to make some little brackets to connect the bottom corners of the firewall to the frame, and (most importantly) I have the brakes adjusted as well as I can get them without a driving/stopping test session. The 1937 Chassis Repair Manual wasn't as much help as I had hoped, but I'm still glad to have it. Turns out there is a special tool that bolts onto the rear spindle after the drum is removed that you use to set the bottoms of the shoes 0.005" from the drums (using the eccentric adjusters). I don't have that tool, so I am just hoping for now that those adjustments were OK way back when. I did tighten the adjusters down to lock the brakes and set each cable so that the holes in the eyes were 1/32" short of the ones in the clevis ends, per the manual. That should get me close, hopefully. If not, I'll figure something out. I'm thinking maybe I could shim the drums, put them on with the top adjusters backed off and then adjust the eccentrics until they drag? For now, I just backed off of the adjusters enough to free up the wheels and rolled it back to the old picture spot for another walk-around video. Mostly for my own edification, but here's the link anyway:



For somebody that doesn't like to have his picture on the internet, I sure seem to be putting a lot of them out there lately, but I can't think of any other way to show the proportions of this thing, so...






Some weird distortion in that second picture. Huh.
I might need to scoot that seat up a bit, but the clutch pedal is hitting the stops there, and if memory serves, it disengages a good bit higher than that, so let's just wait and see. It's funny how much bigger it looks with the wheels and tires on it. I was worried when I took those pictures with them off and me sitting in it, afraid it was going to feel like driving a clown car, but this seems better.

Slow and steady, I guess?

 

I like this build

 

I'm trying to get this thing percolating. I could just jackleg it and lay the coil on the head and prop some kind of temporary tank up there somewhere, which would be completely in character, but I needed to get the coil and my reserve gas tank attached to the firewall anyway, so I decided to go ahead and do that. The coil was easy, I just glued and screwed on a wooden block with a semi-circular cut-out and screwed the aluminum strap clamp into that. The reserve tank was a little more involved. I ended up with a similar idea as the coil, but horizontal and with two blocks. For the clamps I had an epiphany and used the extra from my rear brake cables. They had threaded ends already swaged on, so I just cut the other ends to length, found some nuts that were a tight fit, and brazed them on the cut ends. I added little brass finish washers, as well, just to give a little more insurance against them pulling through the firewall. I think the pictures will help make all of that explaining clear.













Now I know some of you will be grossed out by the state of that little tank, but there's a story behind it. When I was a child, my father found an antique walk-behind garden tractor at his favorite pawn shop and brought it home. It had a single cylinder air-cooled engine and steel wheels with riveted on treads. I remember playing hooky from elementary school to "help" him get it running. In the living room. It smoked a lot at first. My mother is an enthusiastic and understanding woman. I guess it turned out to be less practical than he hoped (I don't remember it getting used much after the initial enthusiasm passed) but that is it's old tank, obviously handmade by some long forgotten handyman. I thought about trying to file off some of those solder blobs and pretty it up a bit, but all of that history really appeals to me, so have just been using it as-is. I had it on the old car, too. It has a little petcock on the bottom that allowed me to use it as a reserve tank, kind of like on an old Volkswagen Beetle. I'll plumb it back in that way when I get the main tank figured out and mounted.

 

I like the story on the tank - it's nice to have triggers for memories like that. I also like the wood mounting brackets. Nice touch.

Oh yeah, the proportions are going to make for a great looking little speedster!

 

Well, here's a thing:



My videography skills leave a lot to be desired. I'm aware.

Not running quite as smooth as she was before, but I hope it's just general cobwebs and the missing exhaust system (knock on wood). Also, honesty compels me to admit that, rather than running to town for gas or doing any siphoning, I just put a bit of 40:1 two stroke fuel in it. It was pretty old, as well. Don't judge, dammit. I'll certainly monitor it, check out the floats and needles and such, but we're pretty far away from any serious road work here. Initial impressions of the braking system are positive. Got a little skid from all but the driver’s front, and that's without any additional adjustment. Doesn't that first drive feel good, though? Kind of gives me the motivation to keep going. I wasn't burning out on this project or anything, but it sure feels nice to be moving.

 

Looks like fun

 

Nice, throaty sound and the SUs seem to give it plenty of fuel. Brakes seem to be dialed in pretty well, too. We live vicariously through your adventure. Nice!