Technical Too far gone?

I found this sport coupe body locally. The price isn't terrible. I thought about buying it just to put in the dry for a later date. Is it too far gone for a novice? Thanks

 

The tin, what there is of it does not look too bad, but they are not rare and better ones are out there. It depends how many years you want to spend restoring a car. You have got a mountain of stuff to find to put this together

 

Never too far gone! I'd rather have it sitting on my property than being s****ped

 

Your still relatively young and if it's cheap enough you can learn a lot about building hot rods by repairing the body and refining your skill set. HRP

 

Value is subjective, I wouldn't want to pay more than $200-300 for the whole mess and that's only because it's got one good door to resell.

It would be an excellent start to a coupester though!

 

Why is it in "roof-storage"?

 

Price is everything, but too far gone today is a builder down the road.

 

Not knowing your skill level, who can say? If its cheap enough, its good material to learn on. It would be hard to make it worse, wouldn't it?

 

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/model-a-sport-coupe-the-poor-mans-roadster.1121649/

 

Looks better than mine!

 

Good one

 

I have one I got by accident; it really needs a different home. Believe it or not, there's most of a sport coupe on that trailer!

 

I'd buy it for sure. My current project was worse

If you don't, probably 20 years from now you will wish you did. I p***ed on a roached 40 ford 20 years ago and still think about it.

 

Probably to make it tougher for thieves to steal parts or haul off the entire body. More importantly, it kept the body dry and prevented it from sinking into the mud.

The pros are that it's essentially a complete body (that's still in one piece, attached to a sub frame) vs a pile of parts.
Mount it to an A frame (or set of new Deuce rails) and start squaring it up.
Looks like it needs typical lower quarter patches and floor pan sections. Which, like most A parts are plentiful and cheap. If that deck lid skin is useable, you may be able to find an inner deck lid panel (or a deck lid with a wasted outer skin that can provide a good inner panel).

Even if your skillset is entry level, you can do the floor panels with a sheet of sheet metal, poster board for templates and cheap (Harbor Freight) or used electric or pneumatic sheet metal shears and bead roller. Next would be a good used MIG welder to ****on up the floor then move into body panels.

If you're on a tight budget, buy everything used (parts, tools) and hammer out your own parts when and where possible.

 

YES, it's too far gone for a novice.

 

At the very least there are parts and patch pieces. For you to use or trade. Trunk gutters, B pillars, subrails (or parts of) tank etc. Collect enough of these partial bodies and you may have enough to build a nice complete one

 

A friend of mine told me he knew where a '32 roadster body was, that could be bought cheap. I went and got cash for it, but he wasn't going to reveal his source, he'd go get it for me. Then the story changed and it was a Model A roadster. Price was dirt so I went for it. This is what I got.


Wasn't thrilled about it, but I'd already paid for it, and it was really cheap. I had cut up a super rough 30 or 31 Tudor sedan for parts and I had some roof pieces so I welded them up into vaguely coupe shape, and straightened out the old sport coupe panels as best as I could. Ended up with this, then sold it. It still had a long way to go.


Nothing is impossible to fix, and if it's dirt cheap and you want to get your hands dirty on something, it could be fixed. But the one I had was a ton of work just to get it to a point that it looked like a whole body and sell it, and it was still rough. The one you're looking at is only worth it if you enjoy the challenge and want to have some really great before and after pictures, and the price has to be right. But if it's only a few hundred bucks, I'd say sure, go for it.

 

If you buy it and fix it, you will no longer be a novice. But you are going to need some conviction to see that project through to the end.

 

The above is true. However, you will probably be spending many years and
a boatload of $$ along the way - more than enough to "buy one done".

 

What I have learned through cold hard experience is to buy the best you can afford, in the long run you will be time and money ahead.

 

This may be too far gone but yours isn't.

 

If it's cheap enough, grab it and stash it for later, when you're no longer a novice

 

Truthfully it's value is in the usable parts that you can mix with more usable parts to make a body.

 

How much will it cost?

 

If it's cheap buy it, there are a lot of good parts on if you want to built it as
a coupe ,
or
2 door sedan; use the cowl . sub rails and doors,
or
use it for a parts car if you find a coupe or roadster that has had the 1/4 panels / trunk area cut out for a pick up bed
or
a roadster , use the sub rails , trunk rain gutter , cowl (change the cowl posts ) ,gas tank and firewall

later kb

 

i remember a piece in "rod & custom," where tex smith rescued an olds in wyoming that looked in about the same shape...

 

dan: Good point. I wish the articles would give an account of the actual work and real time it took to
complete these type of projects. They make it sound so easy.

 

Very True ! Especially if you are new at this, because it's easy to get burned out on a long, slow process.

 

What's the price?

 

There is no"Too far gone" or "Too Crashed",,there is only how much work do you want to do.
An that can be skills,or just how bad do you want a dream.