I've always found that trusting to serendipity and happenstance to get things done often gets better results than franticly chasing around after something, what a great find, it looks just right! I'm on a similar journey with my '31, I just wish the last owner had pre-chop it for me though! Subscribed..
I totally agree. The car will become whatever it's supposed to become, I just need to not screw it up... having the pre-chop is very nice! One thing that will be a priority is getting some shocks set up. Low-speeds it's fine, but at 40mph+ the car does pogo a little when it hits road imperfections. There were no shocks on the car when I bought it. I looked at a lot of ways to mount tube shocks, the reversible kits that the parts houses sell, bending up an F100 shock mount for the front... A lot of ugly solutions and solutions I don't have the ability to do at the moment (no oxy-acetylene setup). I love the look of the Houdailles, but they are ungodly expensive for some reason, and I don't want Chinese stuff on this car, so... I played around in CAD and I think I can have my own friction shocks machined that will do the job better, and for about the same money as the Offenhauser ones that Speedway sells. The bushing material will be Delrin, and I'll use the shock ball ends to mount to the later Ford style dogbone shock links. Should work pretty well and look okay. In order to take up the offset between the frame and the dogbones I'll have to measure once I get the prototype in hand and either bend the arm out accordingly, or just add more Delrin discs to the assembly if the distance isn't too great. Opinions welcome.
I like the changes, it kinda looked odd before with the heavy chop and tall stance, reminded me of a crop sprayer.
Shock drawings look good, but I'm not sure about the Delrin, it's very slippery and I often use it for making bearings for one off jobs, like a thrust bearing behind a chuck for tool post mounted cross drilling fixture on my lathe which has stood up to a lot of pressure and high revs very well. Leather was often used back in the day and might be a better choice.
My Tudor has friction shocks I found that the rubber tends to stick and bond to the friction plates this causes the shock to rip apart, welded back up and I have added a film of grease on the rubber and this has prevented sticking car rides very smooth and doesn’t bounce You will need a spring plate so you can adjust the friction
We use a type of plastic in the friction shock's at work. They work well. Originally they had timber disc's - (English/Euro)
All four wheels are in the same ZIP code now. Time to blast them and give them a new coat of paint and then we can finally put the new rubber on.
Are they Ford or KH wheels? I’m running two sets of 35 Ford wheels with no tubes, and no leaks precision manufacturing
Just saw this thread. What a great Coupe. Congratulations. Love where you are going with it. Subscribed.
Not much going on lately other than driving, I ordered a set of tubes with the wrong valve stems, so I'm just waiting to receive those before I can go ahead and mount the tires. I can probably get away with tubeless as most people seem to do, but... we'll see. I did want to add some more volume, though, so today I installed a Cherry Bomb "Old Skool" Hot Rod Muffler in place of the OEM style. I made the mistake of firing her up with no mufflers before installing the new one, and the sound of a straight-piped banger is one of the best on Earth, so consequently the Cherry Bomb sounded a little underwhelming (but is still definitely an improvement). There's very little real-world information about this muffler out there, but at $30 I think it is a great alternative to a Porter or something similar, if you are "budget-minded" like myself. Unfortunately, it is made in Mexico... can't have it all. I installed it with the openings of the louvers facing into the flow of the exhaust, but Cherry Bomb claims this muffler is "reversible." A little quieter than I'd prefer at idle, but is definitely opens up when you hit the throttle. Tone seems a little raspier than the open header. I'll post a video of the sound at some point for the next guy researching this muffler. For $30, I don't think anyone could really complain. You'll notice this job is basically half-assed... I'll be needing to re-do the exhaust entirely this summer and will whole-ass it then, but that's for another update in the near future...
Thank you! The side windows are just about 9" on the dot. If you want any more measurements let me know.
Thanks! I've cut my Steelback doors for 10 inch, seeing your Coupe gives me an idea how things will look. I'm happy.
The 16s are gonna make a huge difference. So... what sizes are those tires ? They look spot on to me!
@metalhead140 has a coupe that has a similar chop & is a banger, check out his thread! Another very cool jigger!
Please keep the A radiator grille. Everybody goes to the 32 B style and I’m just tired of seeing belly buttons. The A style is much prettier.
Oh yeah, that's a great looking car. Almost makes me want to keep the bigger A wheels on mine and do a little rubber rake on those. Maybe one day.... Don't worry, to me all of the Ford grilles are iconic in their own way, and I think that A coupes usually look better to me with A grille shells. I like the character of the car with this and it's going to stay that way. And, I agree with you about belly button hot rods. I am trying to strike a balance between making this a hopped-up, banger-powered hot rod I can take long road trips with, using as many old parts and build techniques as reasonably possible while not losing the forest for the trees, and also not making it another copy-paste car. To that end, hopefully I'll have another update this week...
I like it with the stock wheels. I would like a Model A (or other brand) sedan with a heavy chop and skinny wheels.
My avatar had a flatheadV8 and kept the stock tank, my 30 Pickup had a B motor with a Winfield head, Ansen manifold with a Holley 94 and header and stock tank. There's no problem with the stock tank but always turn the gas off when you park it. Starting on a 29 roadster pickup with a warmed over banger, dropped axle and 16" wires.
I love a good mail day, and today was definitely one of those. I scored this '28 Chevy head from a fellow HAMBer. It looks like it's in better shape than I was expecting, and I'm planning to get all my ducks in a row and "cutover" to this head sometime in the summer. Plan is to run the Jern adaptor plate (which I don't currently have at the moment), and it should be a piece of cake to CAD out a water pump adapter (thermosiphon head originally) and pushrod cover/exhaust plate, as well as a distributor adapter. Taking suggestions for carburetor setups as well now. I won an auction for a Reese Fish carb a while back, but the government of England said I couldn't have it, I guess, and they didn't let it leave the country. So, we're back to square one. Two sidedraft Fish carbs coming off thing would have been an awesome look, though, if not 100% era-correct...
Not familiar with this setup, seems fascinating. A quick web search turned up an adaptor plate like the one below. So many questions. Seems like a massive combustion chamber, what kind of compression will you end up with?
The Jalopy Journal
