Featured Hot Rods Here I go again. 29 woodie

This might be my third build thread if I do***ent what I’m doing. I bought a 29 Murry body fordor from my pops and I am going to build a phantom woodie by using the cowl fenders and running boards. Last year when I traveled out to the GNRS I bought a bare boxed frame from Brookville. I’ve collected an s-10 rear, picked up a set of ladder bars and a set of posies quarter elliptical springs. Up front I have a superbell 4” dropped axle and a set of hairpins and Vega box.
Im a finish carpenter by trade and my plan is to build the body as close to an original look as I can. The part that will make it a phantom is the cowl. Original 28-9 used the Briggs sheetmetal but mine will use the murry cowl that looks more like a 30/31.
this is what I have so far.

 

Rusty, if you join the National Woodie Club, as a member you can purchase plans for a Model A "Woodie" body from the club for $20.00. If you aren't a member the plans are $40.00.

 

Looking forward to your progress. If you haven't seen this thread on the Barn by GB Sisson about his jail Bar Woodie you might want to check it out. Or not.
https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=175939&highlight=jail+bar+woodie

 

I did a similar build many years ago other than I started with a bare frame and a cowl. I started not knowing that there were so many different cowls and hinge designs. If you want, I can see what pictures I might have of the front door to cowl hinge I ended up making. It was close enough to the original it took more than a quick walk by to tell the difference.
ras

 

Like the Woodies a lot, never had one, all are Kool, old to newer, all good IMO, I like the 51 Ford woody wagon. Good Luck with your project, sounds interesting, will follow along.

 

Seems to me, I would pull the fenders, boards, aprons and grill and just find a "dime-a-dozen" $100 Model A cowl and hood to build the woodie.
That way you can sell the original rolling ch***is with a complete body to help finance the project. JMHO.

 

Hotrodjack, I thought the same thing. It seems like a waste of a fairly Model A nice body.

 

Nope LOL, You are too far away... but here is what I did with an unwanted Model A Fordor.

 

Very kool!

 

I’m a visual kind of guy. I have 300 pounds on the back to see if it would drop a bit. I figure the back is probably going to be 1000 pounds on the springs. A stock model A woodie weights 2485.

 

Should be cool!

 

This should be cool. Are you using the doors? This will be worth the watch.

 

Using cowl,hood,rad shell,splash aprons and fenders. body parts from the cowl back will not be used.

 

Cold War Motors has a friend that's restoring a Murry 4 Door.
I learned how much effort is required to work on one of those. If a finish carpenter isn't willing to tackle restoring one and would rather build a Woodie, that's saying a lot!
Sounds like you have researched this and others have shown where to get plans. I'd suggest looking at @mamllc 's posts including a Model A.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/modern-model-a-woodie.1057180/

 

Love a woodie, im in.

 

Old hotrod buddy gave me a set of rams horns he had for years. He started smoothing them up but never finished them and he got tired of looking at them.

 

Got the motor mounts and trans crossmember in today after work.

 

Made a pan hard bar bracket this weekend. I’m going to add a link the will go over to the drivers side web to give it more strength.

 

I wouldn’t mind seeing what you did for the door hinges.

 

I'll follow along on your build journey ....

 

Homemade woody door hinge;
Sorry it took a little time to sort through some of the old pictures. First an explanation
of why I went this direction. If you've ever looked at the original Model A wagon door
hinges you will see they are what is called a continuous piano hinge. The hinge is basically two pieces of sheet metal wrapped around each other with no hinge pin in the middle. Luckily for me the windshield hinge is the same type of hinge, it just needs a little modification to be a door hinge.
After getting the three original hinges off the cowl post I made a Luan template of my future cowl-side hinge plate. You can see the template setting on the running board.

Once I was happy with how the template fit the cowl I transferred my pattern to 0.25" metal. Which I cut with my handy jig saw.


Next was grabbing a windshield hinge and getting rid of the windshield part of the hinge, fortunately the windshield is wider than the doors are tall.



The next few pictures are the metal plate bolted to the cowl post, then the modified hinge welded to the hinge plate. Lastly the door bolted to the ***embled hinge.





Writing it out and looking at the pictures make it seem a lot harder than it was actually
building the hinges.
ras

 

Thanks for all that! Very creative.

 

Very nice. Have thought aboit this myself.
Quick Question where you placed your quarter ellptic spring on frame , did you drill a hole to accept the nut holding spring.
Im either doing this or spacing spring mount out. TIA

 

Not wanting to hijack your thread but a couple of other thoughts you may not have crossed yet. If you don't have access to a mortising tool I would seriously think about getting one. My mortise were all done on a drill press and hand chisel. If you decide to do finger joints for the curved pieces around the rear wheels, I used a table saw to make mine. 1/8" width blade, 1/8" gap, made a little jig to maintain the spacing and mine turned out okay. Not quite mamllc good. but okay for me.
I see that you are quite the metal fabricator, that will come in handy as you build the body. I was amazed at how many metal gussets, braces, hinges, and brackets the original wagons had that needed reproduced. The most surprising for me was the sheet metal front seat back that bolted not only to the floor but also the left and right B-pillar.
Lastly, for sizing of the doors and overall body I bought the Revell 1/25th 1931 Model A Wagon scale model. I measured every panel, window, board dimension I could with my 6" dial caliper. Then multiplied my measurements times 25 to bring my number to full scale. I was also lucky to have an original 31 wagon about an hour away that I got to visit a couple of times. It surprised me how accurate these plastics models are. As an example, my measured front door length was within 0.065" of actual. Front door height measurement was within 0.100".
ras

 

I made a piece out of round stock drilled and tapped it and the welded it to the bracket. I then drilled a hole in the frame to accommodate the piece.

 

Thats crazy on the model. Last year when we went out to the GNRS I bought the ch***is and I was able to take measurements off a 31 That was in the ambr hall. The owners were nice enough to let me take measurements. My son do***ented my goofiness.

 

Thank you

 

This is from one of our fellow Hambers from the Friday Art Show it's kinda slick. Being a finish guy myself it would be a cool one to clone

 

When I was in HS I wanted to build a Model A woodie. Even bought the model like @ras did. I had a '31 Fordor parts car that would have been the perfect start. But there was no way I had the skill, time, or money to take it on. Since then I've seen I lot of home built woodies. Some top notch and some not. The ones I really liked were the 4 door ones that mimicked the originals.. Not to say that the one pictured from the Friday Art show wouldn't be cool/ Just not my cup of tea.