Hot Rods The Arin Cee Roadster

Big day for progress today! The Henry body got lifted off the 'banger frame so that I can pressure-wash the bottom side before beginning the fitting process onto the Deuce frame. Not a big deal, it took me and a couple of my faithful friends only a few minutes to lift it up and settle it onto the utility trailer on which it will live for a while.

This will also make it possible for me to pressure wash the 'banger frame and running gear to prepare it to receive the Brookville Roadster body. This also makes the running gear more accessible for the few repairs that need to be done before the body goes back on. I started repairing the damaged right front frame horn this afternoon, cutting away the damage and crusty repairs made previously. Had to stop before I planned due to a malfunctioning oxygen regulator on my torches. Drat!

So I made the best of it and went to one of the many cruise nights here in the DFW area with the coupester. Beautiful, warm Texas summer night. A guy can't ask for much more than that!

 

With two pieces of equipment sidelined today for want of parts, the torches and the pressure washer, I decided to attack the 'banger brakes to see what it was going to take to get 'em operational again. The car had been sitting for so long that I expected to find a total swamp inside, especially since the pedal wouldn't move even a bit.

Pleasantly, I found the master cylinder to be immaculate inside and the brake fluid good, but stuck due to external corrosion from the rear boot having been left off. A little sleuth work revealed the master to be from a '67 - '69 drum brake Camaro which shouldn't be too hard to get at the auto parts store. The bellcrank system is a little crude by today's standards but apparently worked just fine so I'll leave it pretty much alone.

Once the new master cylinder is in place I'll bleed the rest of the system and see how much of it needs to be refreshed. Lots easier to do all this with the body off. Oh, and I also found that the transmission, which I thought was trashed, is just fine. Whoever last took the top cover off didn't get the gears in the right place before he put it back on...

Hopefully I'll get the pressure washer going tomorrow and can make some real progress.

 

Pressure washer proved terminal, so I bought a new one and got busy washing the dirt, flaky paint, loose rust and dirt dauber nests out of the body. Then took the air hose and blew out all the seams to speed drying. Looks a lot better and will be more pleasant to work on. Found a little more rust than I expected, but isn't that always the way...

 

One small step each day. When I was pressure washing the body I noticed that a couple of the braces had been removed from the body at some point in the past, for what reason I cannot imagine. In any case I ordered replacements from Brookville Roadster and had them in just three days! Amazing! A couple of hours with an angle drill and they are missing no longer. Now, on to the next small step...

 

Just wanted to show you my build. Not old school as such. Speedway Chassis, hairpins in front, 4 bar with Explorer rear, discs all around. Crate chevy engine. Kind of on hold right now but will get back to it. Right now I am looking for the right wheel/tire combo for the Shay on the left. Going to install original 29 headlight with dropped bar, mount only one horn and remove the lollipop cowl lights. Then install 2" dropped spindle on the Mustang/Pinto front end. Won't be a hot rod but will look more like one.

 

Very cool on both counts! As you know I'm going back and forth on two cars as well, working on one then the other as time, money and parts permit. Keeps us busy, huh!

This car, the Arin Cee Roadster, is where your front brake parts will end up so they will have a good home! Thanks again!

In the meantime I'm taking time off from the 'banger roadster (see my other thread here on the HAMB) while waiting for parts for it, and working on the exhaust system on this one. This morning I spent a couple hours mocking the '35 Ford driveshaft tubes into position under the car, looking for just the "right spot".

As fate - and careful planning - would have it, the front and rear radius rods will end up parallel to the ground at final ride height...and so will the driveshaft exhaust pipe collectors. This means that there will be no competing angles when the car is viewed from the side. I'll tack them into place and then build the front header pipes to connect them to the motor. I'll design and build the exhaust hangers once the system is complete and tacked into position. One bit at a time...

 

While I was under the car tacking the exhaust pipes in place I discovered that the reverse lever and rod on the Hurst Competition Plus shifter didn't clear the crossmember so while the forward gears worked fine the car wouldn't have gone into reverse. I decided to fix it in the simplest way possible, by cutting out a section of the tubular crossmember,, turning it upside down and sideways,, and welding it back into place. This would give the lever room to swing and a small cut to the side would allow the rod to clear as well. Worked like a charm...

 

Took a few minutes and buttoned up the modified crossmember today, and photographed the final layout of the exhaust tubes. I'm keeping this one as simple as humanly possible, not unlike the "roaring roadsters" of the late '40s which got their dirt track performance not from gobs of horsepower but from making the car as light as possible.

The roadster in the final photo (photo credit goes to Don Montgomery, "Rockerhead" here on the HAMB) is the well-known '27 T-on-deuce-rails circle track roadster driven by Manny Ayulo to many victories and was considered the car to beat for a very long time in the late '40s CRA races at Ascot, Carrel and other SoCal dirt tracks. It was perhaps the epitome of hot rod racing technology at the time with wide track, long radius rods and low engine location. You may notice the not-so-subtle similarities between Manny's roadster and Arin's...

 

Nice job on the transmission mount!

 

Flush with victory following my successful attempt to get the upside-down '40 juice brakes working on the 'Banger Roadster, I decided to fill in a couple of late-evening hours by building the head pipes for Arin's car. I've shown the components earlier in this thread, all sourced online, including the manifold flanges which fit the '55 - '56 Chevy cast iron exhaust manifolds I'm using and the 1 3/4" tubing bends I got from Speedway Motors.

Building the head pipes was really simple thanks to superior planning and a healthy dose of dumb luck. The drop section of the tubing bends turned out to be the exact length I needed to get the pipes to line up with the '36 Ford driveshaft tubes I'm using as collectors. One of the pipes is a little longer than the other due to the manifold design but other than that they're mirror images of each other side to side.

They're just tacked together now - it was getting late - so I'll finish 'em up in the morning. G'night all.

 

I would really like to be able to weld like some guys do, clean and neat without the need to dress, file or grind. Maybe someday. But for now I just do my best to make strong welds that won't leak. I managed to get the head pipes welded up this morning and installed on the car. There's just not a lot of stuff under floor on this car so routing the exhaust neatly wasn't a problem. No drama with the steering box, pedals, etc. Ugly welds or no, I'm pretty proud of this exhaust setup, which will get rubber mounted later on so it doesn't drone. Of course what with no baffles one might not notice the drone anyway...

 

Still gathering brake parts for Arin's roadster, and seeking a place in the DFW area that can turn the '40 rear drums. Modern brake machines won't take hubs this big, I guess. I did get a good overall photo of the chassis from the top side, however, which shows the tube X-member and the '35 Ford driveshafts used as exhaust collectors. It's very simple and straightforward, with nothing trick. Some may find it boring, but that's the way I like it...

 

Just to add a little more context to the Arin Cee Roadster...

This little film is what was going on at the same time as "Devil On Wheels" was being made. Honest-to-real street-driven hot rods were being driven to various dirt tracks and raced...then driven home again if they survived the night's competition.



It didn't take long for them to begin evolving into track-only cars, gradually stripped of anything which added weight, and that's what this film shows. It was a narrow window of time in the evolution of hot rods into track roadsters, but here's a peek...

http://autoweek.com/article/car-life/film-friday-old-school-hot-rod-racing

 

After considering all the options I decided to step up for a Bengels' Hot Rod Seats bench seat for the Arin Cee Roadster. It arrived today and I couldn't be happier! Though I ordered the optional seat tracks I've elected to bolt the seat directly to the floor instead in order to keep it nice and low. Since I'll be the only driver it won't have to move anyway.

http://www.hotrodseats.com/standard-frames/

This one has a fold-down back and a flip-up bottom cushion for access to theses areas. I had Bengels make the seat back 1" lower than standard so that will fit neatly below the rear "tulip panel" edge even after I've reinforced it. It's only mocked in place now but I've already spent many "miles" behind the wheel test-driving it. It's perfect!

 

And, with the Bengels Hot Rod Seats seat mocked into place, I set about making patterns for the floor boards. I have decided not to use the below-the-floor pedals I spoke of earlier in this thread, but instead will use the old firewall mounted Chevy pickup dual master clutch and brake cylinder with hanging pedals. This change was necessary because there isn't enough room to fit the clutch pedal, brake pedal and Hurst shift linkage in the space between the frame rail and the transmission. Oh, well...made fitting the floor boards just that much easier.



Just in case there are some differences between this Brookville body and the gennie Ford body that will replace it I won't cut and fit the actual floor boards until the body swap has been completed. I think I'll be able to use a piano hinge between the floor board and the toe board as indicated by the green tape. Toe board will fold down, floor board will lift out. Simple, eh?

Oh, and my friend Jeff Slack stopped by today with some of the material I'd been looking for: some old rubber truck bed matting to cut into a floor mat for the roadster. That's what I used in my coupester and it works perfect! Thanks, Jeff!

 

Over the weekend I finally got the two roadster bodies switched and onto the chassis where they will stay. The Brookville body is now on the 'banger chassis and the Henry body is on the '32 rails which is under construction as the Arin Cee Roadster.

Not to waste any time today I did the rear subrail modifications that will allow the A body to sit correctly on a Deuce frame. It's not rocket science, but I want mine to be a little bit different than most. I want the trunk to have a flat wood floor like the rest of the car. So instead of removing the original subrails and replacing them with curved ones from Steadfast Manufacturing as I had originally planned, I made it so that the frame comes up through them, leaving the original floor support intact.

I found a little rust I hadn't expected so didn't get it finished today, but the photos show how far I got. It's going to work out just fine!

...

 

With the Henry '29 body on Arin's '32 rails where it will stay I decided to revisit the radiator / radiator shell issue. The 2" upward sweep of the Deuce frame at the front places the '29 radiator just that much higher than stock. So what's a guy to do?

I had previously decided that I'd go with "tradition" and leave the '29 shell at stock height even though this would produce a slightly awkward hood line. This is how it was mostly done in the past and didn't seem to bother the old time hot rodders one bit.

But this time, with the car blocked at ride height and everything mocked into place, the angle finder came up with a slightly different reading: four degrees downward at the hood hinge while the top of the doors was six degrees downward - a difference of two degrees in the wrong direction! And this was with no rubber between the radiator and the frame which would further aggravate the situation.




The problem is, for me at least, once I'd seen a '29 on '32 rails with a flat hood line the old school way of ignoring the misalignment just ground on me - a lot. So today I made a huge concession to hot rod "progress" and ordered a 2-inch chopped radiator from Custom Auto Radiator of Forked River, New Jersey. These are the same people who built the radiator in my current coupester with which I am very pleased both in the way it cools and with the outstanding workmanship. (www.customautoradiator.com)

The new radiator will be built to my specs and should be delivered within a few weeks. And it will give the car the right-on proportions that I'm after with this build.

 

Remember it will look like shit if it is an inch too high but still look bitchin an inch or two too low. Bill Burnam.

 

Just to complete this thought, here's a great photo of the Bill Burnham roadster from The Rodder's Journal...

 

Well, the big day finally came...and with it a really big box from Custom Auto Radiator. The radiator I had ordered was to be 2" shorter than stock '28 - '29 Model A and set up for a small block Chevy with manual transmission. The one I got was spot-on perfect in all respects!

I had already fabricated the radiator supports so all I really had to do was drill a couple new holes in the '32 crossmember to accommodate the wider Model A radiator feet and bolt it in! Because the car will be hoodless I played with the radiator supports a bit in order to get the line from the cowl/tank seam to the radiator just right visually (see the photos of the Bill Burnham roadster in the previous post to see how critical this detail is). These would also serve as the hood latch anchors should I ever decide to run a hood.

Then the radiator shell got sectioned 2" and it dropped right into place. (Ha! That'll never happen again! It usually takes me three or four tries before ANYTHING fits right!)

So, the next step is to get the body mounts made and the body bolted down. I'm still waiting for a couple of brake parts before I can get the car up and rolling. All things in good time...


The Custom Auto Radiator fit perfectly right out of the box.

I used masking tape to mark the desired 2" to be removed, then cut
First trial fit was very encouraging - no obvious problems

So I tacked the top and bottom sections together and bolted 'em on

Then I juggled with the fits a bit, especially the line of the radiator supports, and called it good for the day. The final result put the radiator about 1" lower than dead level which is exactly what I'd wanted. This will give the car a very slinky look, but only one in ten will be able to see what's been changed...

 

Lookin' great! Keep up the nice work.

Ryan.

 

Nice! Big improvement to the appearance!

 

Looking good the 2 in. section was just right, and it did not make look distorted. Good call. Frank

 

Did I say something about settling the body onto the frame and making body mounts...? Well, tonight I started that process by removing the front section of the body. This will allow me to fit the main section of the body down fairly snug on the top of the frame without interference. Then I'll modify the bottom of the front section to accommodate the upward sweep of the '32 frame and fit the rest of the body properly at the same time.

I'd already started to channel the rear part of the body over the frame earlier in the thread and I'll continue to do this, only more so. The bottoms of the fender wells are rusty as are the outer parts of the rear subrails in the same area. Once the body is settled on the top of the rails I'll fabricate new material in these areas, shaping it to clear the frame as I go. It won't take much change to get everything to clear as it should.

The overall goal is to get the Model A body to fit the '32 frame as if it was made for it, not just stuck on top and bolted down as was most often done back in the day. As most of those who have been following this thread will recognize, this is a total departure from my original "quick and dirty" plan. So far, so good...

Separating the body wasn't part of the original plan, but since both front quarters needed rust repair anyway this seems to be the best way to achieve more than one goal.
The rust in the cowl is relatively minor but needs to be fixed. This will give me a chance to clean up the firewall at the same time.

I don't think anybody will ever notice the changes I'm about to make, but I think the car will be better in the long run for doing them. Sure makes a mess though...

 

With the cowl section of the body removed and the rear subrails modified, the body itself settled down nicely onto the frame, so I marked the location with tape for reference during the body mount fabrication.


Problem is, the passenger side quarter panel patch was poorly fitted and wouldn't let the body go down all the way. The old, ill-fitting patch panel had to be replaced anyway so I cut it loose by snipping the old tack welds and prying it off. The new patch panels will align with the sill and will allow the body to sit down flush with the top of the frame. More later...

 

So, after stuffing myself with turkey I hit the shop to finish what I'd started yesterday...

The old patch panels were only the beginning. The bottoms of the fender wells were also rusted as were the rear subrails. Everything that looked more like swiss cheese than metal got cut away.

When I got done cutting away the rusty stuff the entire bottom edge of the body was gone...but the body now sits flush with the top of the frame with just enough space to allow clearance for the new repair panels. The body sills can't actually sit on the frame. The body weight must be supported by the body mounts in order to allow adjustment of the doors.

Yikes!

All the open space around the bottom of the body looks a little scary but the old stuff had to go before the new stuff could be installed. The new subrail outer sections will have a different contour than the originals and will allow good clearance between them and the new frame. And, no filler strip will be needed between the frame and the body. Now, on to making the body mounts...

 

Okay... Today it's almost warm so I think I'll spend part of the day cleaning and reorganizing the shop. It's only a few months old and already getting too tight...



Then I'll continue work on the body mounts... Stay tuned.

 

Lots of progress today. Instead of cleaning the shop I decided to tackle the front body mounts and the wedge-cutting of the cowl to fit the upsweep of the Deuce frame. This will allow the front portion of the body to sit flush on the frame and will bring the front of the body down about a half inch at the cowl. Yes, it's a lot of work to go through to gain a measly half inch, but when combined with the shortened radiator the overall effect is very slinky...


After peeling off the lower cowl panels, I marked the wedge to be removed - about a half inch at the front to match the upsweep of the '32 frame.


A similar amount must be removed from the inside of the inner structure as well.


I used a cut-off wheel to remove the wedge on the outside, same on the inside.


I had removed just a little bit too much material so I adjusted the gap to suite, then tacked it together on both sides for a trial fit. There needs to be enough space for the outer sheet metal to slip between the inner structure and the frame when it gets put back on.


Yup, everything fit the way it's supposed to when I mocked all the pieces back together so I welded it all up solid. I'll cut the outer sheet metal to match and reinstall it once I've finished fixing the rust.


A casual observer might not notice but Arin's roadster is starting to look downright slinky thanks to closing up the gap between the body and the frame and the slight re-angling of the body downward at the front. More to come...

 

The difference between "good" and "great" is often just in the details! Keep up the great work and it will be a great build!

 

Okay, among other things today I finished up the body mounts at the front of the cowl and bolted it down. Then I mocked up the radiator, shell and hood in preparation for building the mounts for it. All the sheet metal seems to align in an acceptable way, so now it's off to the steel yard to get the material for the mounts...