Projects Tomcat’s Crazy '31 Model A Build Thread (2010-?)

Here is the final design and layout for the pedals. As many of you guy's know, packaging all this stuff in this little tiny car has proved to be quite a challenge. There is a lot of detail here.

The Pete and Jake's bracket would not work. After selecting and sourcing the steel I hand made the brackets using an an angle grinder, die grinder, hand files, hole saws and my trusty bench top drill press. This was very time consuming. I do know how to operate a mill and lathes but, just don’t have access to them. So for now, I just make due.

For that finished look, I radiused and smoothed all the corners on the pedal arms and after the mock up found the best places to drill and tap for the grease fittings.

The Zerks, Threaded Couplers, Bronze thrust washers (modified), Rod Ends, Rod End Spacers, Replacement Bronze Bushings, 3/16” Roll pin, and the Threaded Urethane Bump Stops were all sourced from McMaster-Carr. The return springs are from the Gardener Spring Co.

A fair amount of thought was given to being able to put it together and take it apart for servicing after the car was finished. Will it all work? Only time will tell.

 

Very nice work. Especially the rear wheel wells.

 

Sweet

 

I really like the bump stops for the pedals.

 

And return springs.
Car was lucky to find its new owner.

 

Super nice work! I'll look forward to following along with your progress.

 

Thank you sir. The rear wheel wells took some work, but I'm happy with the result and very little body filler will be needed. In fact almost none.

Thanks man!

Thank you alchemy. I revised that bump stop bracket to be a bolt on for ease of assembly.

Thanks X38, I'm not sure the new owner was lucky to find the car!

Thanks for following Malcolm and, I appreciate the complement!

 

Next up is body mounts. First off, the frame rails are pinched and there is a gap between the frame and the body. I 've seen a lot of builds where they pie cut the cowl and/or channeled the cowl to get rid of the so called dreaded gap. Part of me wanted to do that but, I also wondered really how many high boy cars were done that way back in the day. Any? I do however , completely understand why some builders do it today.

The gap at it's widest is 7/16". Now that might seem like a lot but it tapers off to the front and rear. Standing next to car all you see is the radius at the top of the frame but not the actual top. You would have to get down on your hands and knee's to really see the gap. The body contour, at least on this car, follows the frame perfectly. I'm going to leave it that way and hopefully not get too hammered on for it.

I also decided I would attempt to incorporate some type of body mounts that would isolate some vibration from the chassis to the body as the engine will have solid mounts. The transmission will be polyurethane.

12 mounts in total have been fabricated from 1/8" wall rectangular steel tubing and will use Kenworth Semi Truck battery box mount bushings. They are polyurethane, 1-1/2" diameter, 1/4" thick and have a recessed centering washer. They come as a pair from Energy Suspension. Some nice 1-1/2" dia. X 1/4" thick SST washers will be combined with them as needed. Small adjustments can be made with the thinner fender washers.

Note ; Pictures are mock up only and don't show the last mounts at the rear, or every mount with their bushings.

 

nice work.

 

Back to the floor (Part 1). Rather than weld the new rear sub-rails to the rear wheel well panels which would create some panel distortion and nice places for future rust to grow I decided to employ some modern automotive technology.

I used 3M Panel Bonding Adhesive which is basically special epoxy to bond the wheel well panels to the sub-rails. After the adhesive cured I welded the joint at the front where they meet the original sub-rails.

I turned to the nice folks at Absolute Sheet Metal down Arizona way for their Model A floor kit. They are a small company and really nice people to work with. I also had them make a couple extra panels to my dimensions that I could modify for fitment. It's all 16ga. so it should strengthen the body up pretty good.

Unfortunately the fit was not what I had hoped. This is probably due to these cars having such loose production tolerances some 90 years ago. This is where TIG welding really shines and helps reduce the grinding and metal finishing that you would have with MIG.

A couple of panels needed the flanges to be extended for a better fit and the front panel had no flange at all so that was added to provide strength and attachment to the toe board panel later. The floor panels were fitted but not attached in order to make future work easier.

Starting at the rear, the first panel comes from Steadfast with a built in hat channel;


A little step needed to make the next hat channel flush at the top;


Going to need the shrinker;








A little more width was needed;


The beauty of Pulse TIG.




Fully welded, just needs some hammer and dolly time;


Under the seat needed more length;




Gap at the front corners was way too big, more work ahead stay tuned

 

Some really neat detail shots of your work. You're turning this car into something you can be proud of.

Nice work.

 

Thank you Brent. It's getting there.

 

The floor (Part 2) Before I could finish off the floor a couple things needed to be addressed. The lip at the bottom of the fire wall had been removed so that had to be fixed and I needed to fabricate a toe board panel. It was also clear the '36 chevy column drop angle wasn't going to work either.





To make the toe board panel I needed a way to bend flanges on 16ga sheet. So made this from some left over material;


Blank toe board panel fitted;

 

To solve the column drop angle problem without modifying the dash, I just made one from scratch using an 1-1/2” diameter industrial shaft collar from McMaster-Carr and some 1/8” steel sheet.








A few holes to lighten it up a bit;






I think it would look good chromed so, we'll have to see how much that costs.

 

Fantastic work ,I use best chrome in San Martian .

 

Thanks sdluck. I'll look into Best Chrome. Hopefully they are still in business and doing quality work.

 

I used the floor seals from a '61-'67 Ford Econoline to seal the pedal arms.


Pedal pads are S0-Cal. The So-Cal gas pedal looks a bit spindly so that may get changed.

 

I like those pedal seals, I’ll have to remember them for my next project.

 

I looked at several aircraft surplus and after market master cylinder floor access doors but, nothing was available in a size I liked so, I fabricated my own using a cheap $7 SST piano hinge and a left over Dzus fastener from another project.



Access to the proportioning valve knob was included in the design.

 

Yesereebob!

 

Impressive… I’ve missed some important education in my lifetime! Thanks for sharing your build.

 

Holy Friggin' Cow! That is some impressive work!

Dave

 

Oh well, you can't always get what you want. Inspirational stuff, kudos to you sir!

 

Thanks BiscayneBrain, I missed a few things along the way too. The good news is, it's never to late to learn something new.

Thanks Dave, I really appreciate that.

BrerHair, Thank you for the nice complement. Getting what you want sometimes just takes a heck of a lot more work than you think!

 

Wow! I too bought a Model A coupe that was not exactly as advertised. Your work is inspiring! You sir, are a talented and patient man! Keep the updates coming, this thread is amazing! Thank you for sharing your journey to creating the car you want to own!

 

Sorry to hear you had a similar fate. Many thanks for the kind words. Only on the H.A.M.B. do you find people that really know and appreciate what it takes to build these cars.

 

Since the floor was 90% complete it was time to get the seat on some generic sliders I had bought on ePay. I think being able to adjust seating position is an important feature and the car did not have that before. Somehow, I had to keep the height to no more that 2” as my head is probably 2” from the roof.

While figuring how to bolt them to the seat frame I noticed some rust under the upholstery. This damn onion of a car revealed yet another layer of crap! Well I just couldn’t ignore this so after considering some bucket seat options and weighing the costs, I decided to remove the seat cover and see what I could do.







For the sliders, I fabricated some adapter brackets that bolted to the factory holes in the front and then some weld on brackets for the rear.


After stripping this pile of doo doo down to the bare frame, I welded the brackets on the rear. I loaded up my cheapo blaster with some left over play sand I had sitting around and sand blasted it in my driveway. What a pain. Don't use play sand! It clogs up fast and made a hell of a mess. It did eventually work and when it was finally done I hit it with a couple coats of flat black Rustoleum out of a rattle can.




This was such a set back, I didn't think to take all that many pictures of what I was doing. After many hours of research on the web learning about proper upholstery foam, glue, burlap, and hog rings, I stumbled onto a You tube video from Alchemy Kustom Upholstery down in Odessa Texas.

This guy gave me the inspiration to try his method. If you haven't seen this guy in action you're really missing the art of upholstery. I was able to source the foam and supplies from Albright.

I already had a hot wire foam cutting table I built for another project so, I cut up the rusty old crumbled up van seat foam into sections, made patterns of each section, then traced all the different shapes onto the foam with a sharpie.

Next, I cut all the sections on the hot wire table and carefully glued them all together.








And finally the bolsters;


As many already know, normally the cover is made to fit the foam after a little sanding and shaping. Well, to make this foam fit the existing cover required a TON of sanding and fitting over and over and over I don't know how many times. It's on there now, comfortable, and looks pretty good. Now happily back to some metal work

 

Tom... Magnificent, as usual... But where did you get the wire grid? (looks tig welded) Methinks WAY more 'steps' than the usual seat construction!

 

Thanks Mike, the wire grid was part of the factory van seat. That seat was a real pain in the you know what!

 

The final step to mounting the seat was to fab some mounts that go between the sliders and the floor. Pretty simple to make from some 1"x 1" x 1/8" angle and some pieces of 1-1/2" x 1" x 1/8" rectangular steel tube. Drilled, blasted, welded, and painted.