Projects Turning a pile of parts into a woodie.

And X3. JW

 

I used this wonderful 100 degree humid gross weekend to make this contraption. It's a rolling table. I replicated the back 2/3 of my frame out of wood. The idea being that I can fabricate the body off the frame, because my plan is to take the frame back to work and do a bunch more welding. My plan is also to redo the rear suspension and to shorten up my wheelbase to get closer to a stock Model A.


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Well I'm back at it... Let me preface this buy saying, yes I have lost my mind. Once again I've changed directions. After thinking long and hard about the condition of the doors and rear cab panel, combined with the lack of leg room in a channeled pickup cab (without the added length of a real roadster pickup) I gave up. I'm sure there are plenty of guys out there that could have made it work and repaired the rusted, stretched, cut up body panels... but I am just not up to the task. So I came up with a solution, I cut the whole back off and I'm making a woodie.
I had been thinking about it after building a small row boat last winter. Removing the back of the cab bought me more leg room and is one less piece of metal I need to buy of repair. I began by extending the subfloor all the way to the back of the frame. Then I make some brackets that weld to the subfloor and gave me a starting point for the rear box of the woodie.


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Once that was welded up I spent about a month measuring and mocking things up until a decided how big to make the body, roof slope, etc. the I started out by making 2 hoops out of angle iron to dictate the profile of the sides. The bend in towards the bottom to mimic the curve of a model A body, I didn't want it to be too boxy, although a woodie of the era is boxy. It's going to be much shorter than a true woody, because of the chop and channel it looked like a hearse when mocking it up longer. It will also be windowless like a panel truck.
Then I just got a bunch more angle iron and went to town with a welder.t


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OK, this has now become very interesting!! JW

 

More progress tonight, now I can visualize it a little better.


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Oh and by the way, the rear axle is getting moved forward 10", so pardon the goofiness.


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I was wondering about that......... Cool !! JW

 

I have a model A cowl and enough random pieces and parts that I plan to puzzle piece together a coupe but I have repeatedly considered going down the path you are on. I’ll continue to follow your thread with real interest. Looks good so far.

 

My 34 chassis came with a home made woody body but it wasn't nearly as nice as yours. The plywood went to my carpenter buddy and I still have the 3/4" square tubing sub structure.

 

That thing is pretty cool looking, if I can wind up with something like that I'd be happy. I drivable Hotrod is the goal here.


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Garage is getting warmer, I'm back at it


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Today I spent the whole day cleaning up the firewall. Filling a bunch of holes, replacing some previous patch work, and grinding down welds and rust. It's pretty rough, but I will do the final straightening once it's welded in.


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It's been a few weeks since I've posted anything, but that doesn't mean I having been working. I made a transmission tunnel and a brace to hold the steering column. The trans tunnel took me the passed two or three weekends to finish up, but the column brace went together pretty quick. I even took the time to take out my cowl braces and straighten them out. They are welded back in place.


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Just found your build. Very interesting approach, will be tagging along. Am curious about those rear trailing arms being attached at the outside of the frame while using a buggy spring out back. Been a lot of posts about the "twist factor" when mounted on the outside. Might consider rethinking this and connecting them under or near the******* ujoint.
Here is the traditional way most of us do this

 

Ahhh yes the twist factor... The rear suspension was taken from a rod and custom article many years ago. At the time I thought it was really cool and had the parts on hand via a junk pile at work. When I originally started working on mocking this car up I was 24 years old and had zero guidance, in fact I was so intimidated by the HAMB back then I didn't even post on here. So almost a decade later and lots of reading I realized it's an awful idea. I'm in the process of gathering the parts to totally rework the rear suspension. I am going to use ladder bars in a triangulated setup, putting the pivot point towards the center of the car and allowing more twist.


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Today was a good day. I've had a set of F1 Shock mounts in or around my tool box at work for at least 6 years. I thought I had lost them and purchased some P&J ones at Hershey last year, but they didn't have the look I wanted for the car. And today I was digging through a drawer I never open, and there they were, my long lost F1 brackets. I was playing around mocking them up on the car. I'm thinking about welding them to a headlight bar to make sort of a nerf bar style unit, but I'm not quite sold on it. That will be a project for down the road.


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Not much work getting done this weekend, had to do house work and tomorrow's Easter, but a little progress none the less. As I was saying to vtwhead, I have plans of redoing the whole rear setup in a triangulated manner. A few weeks back I went to a swap meet and picked up a dropped crossmember and some old rear ladder bars. I paid $35 for the crossmember and $25 for the ladder bars. They are real heavy duty with 3/4" threads at all points. Anyway I just got my needed hardware from speedway yesterday so I screwed it all in so I could measure for my axle brackets. Turns out if I had just got ting them from speedway they would have been correct with the clevis holes spaced at 5 3/4". I also got some new spring brackets to mount the axle above the rear. Now I just have to hunt down a new rear. Im trying to find something very wide to clear the body. I'm going to try and track down a 9" from an old van or Bronco. Does anybody have any suggestions on wide rears that are cheap and plentiful?


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Got a package in the mail today. I got a radiator off eBay. I really didn't want to but I knew I couldn't afford to have one custom made. It had to be shorter than most I could find from places like speedway or summit. It measures 20.5" tall not including the filler neck. I also wanted a functional top filler instead of the filler neck sticking out behind the grille shell. It looks well made but only time will tell.


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Here is where I need your input, do you think I should section the grill shell or notch out the lower corners and leave it full hight? Any advise is much appreciated as always.


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How much did you increase length of frame forward of the firewall to compensate for engine length?

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I think for now you should leave the grille shell alone and concentrate on making the body look the way you want, to the point that you can roll it outside for the 50 foot shot. It'll look a lot different then and you'll get a better feel for how it should look. After this, roll it outside lots and get your buddies to critique it from 50 feet.

 

I didn't really extend the frame because I didn't start with a stock 'A' frame. But what I can tell you is there is 35.5" from the lower edge of the fire wall (under where it bumps out) to the back edge of the front crossmember. This leaves about 3.5" between the crank pulley and the crossmember. I hope that helps.


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You guys ever done something and thought maybe it just looked a lot cooler in your head? I'm not totally sold on this. I thought it was going to give it a cool airplane fab kind of look, but it just looks like a lazy guy made a stainless patch, because I'm lazy and made a stainless patch. I guess I'll just weld in some metal later when I do the final bodywork.


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I like where this is going.....heres some inspiration for the body (they couldve finished the rest of the car better but i like how they did the body)

 

I was also having trouble with ideas for the same thing but came up with a leather boot. JW

 

I found an article about that car somewhere a while ago. Its really well done, I think the guy was a cabinet maker or some kind of master wood worker. I agree, if the wood is that nice why not make the metal nice too? Thanks for the pictures.


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