Projects The 48 hour coupe

On your brakes, the larger wheel cylinder and the longer shoe should be toward the front. You have it reversed if the photo is of the passenger side.

 

Nice catch... thanks.

Any suggestions in the correct wheel seals?

 

Caught the shoes as well,

do you know what year the rear axle is from?

 

Supposedly the entire drivetrain except the engine is from a '39. But I don't necessarily trust that which us why I also measured it

Bore in the drum is just under 3 1/4"

Are wide 5s different than the 40 and later style

 

Wheel cylinder swapped and shoe exchanged. Now I need to go back to the fronts though because now I'm pretty sure I don't have those shoes right.

Thanks for keeping me straight fellas

 

Got the drivers side rear all on and together and now my ebrake cable is too long.

Looking at the handle mount had what looks like an after market mount attached to the back of the trans mount. I think if I remount it to the trans like the pic Tim shared earlier that will put me back in the realm of being able to extend the shaft with all thread to make it function like it should.



The more I look at it the more I'm kicking around just tossing this frame and all its goofiness to the side and building a new setup. Crazy I know and it's probably not worth that much work but it would allow me to address a lot of my concerns. That'll be a future me problem though, for now I'm going to keep rolling with what I have until something falls in my lap.

Still searching for what the correct rear seals should be. Without those I don't want to put the rear drums back on cause it woukd just get them all coated in grease. Which ultimately means no test drives.

 

If you have a calipers so that you can measure the ID where the seal goes and the OD of the axle where the seal rides you can take the dimensions to a bearing and seal sales business and they will get you what you need.

 

I need to get some calipers, but I actually think I found it....

Turns out the Green Bible is pretty handy once you understand how to find what you need I had found the diagram I needed but struggled to find the specific part in the charts. You all probably already know this but the charts in the book don't follow the diagrams. I'd rather not say how long it took me to figure that out.

Rough measurements were just shy if 3 1/4" ID of the bore OD of the seal.
B 1175 seal is 3.19" as listed in the chart.
That's fractionally between 3 3/16" and 3 13/64s (it's 25/128th for the needs out there lol). Long story short that is the seal I need.

Looks like at least the drums are '38 or 37 and not a '39 like I thought.




Ordering a couple seals and 1 snap ring tonight and should be back in business.

 

That makes since as I recall other threads discussing 37 drums being used to convert 39’s to a normal 5x5.5 now that you bring it up

 

37s are still wide 5 though.

 

Well then I don’t know what I remember lol

 

Still waiting for the rear seals to arrive. Could be fixing my screw up with the front brakes shoes but I'm being lazy.

I did get my aluminum fir the gauge insert. It's 1/16" and I'm thinking it may be too thin though. It feels OK now but I wonder how it will be with the extra vibrations and bumps of driving around.

If I do get a thicker piece. I'll probably get bigger hole saws too. I had purchased some carbide ones on Amazon cheap they worked well but left the holes just a touch too small so I had to file them to open the holes enough to fit the gauges.

Anyway here are the crappy pictures. I still haven't cut out any more of the old gas tank so with the gauges in the dash is angled out at the bottom and not sitting exactly where it will go.

 

Looks great!

don’t know about aluminum but I bet your steel dash is thinner than that and a million of them have been hole sawed and survived just fine. Just make sure it’s all snug when you put it together.

 

Well haven't forgotten about it and you all. Got close on the brakes but then the house closing and the end of a store build at work which is always nuts the last couple weeks meant I could either finish what I was doing on the car or keep my wife happy and start moving into the new place. You can all probably assume what I chose lol.

We've been in the new house a couple weeks and been slowly moving things from the rental over. Then my dad came to town this weekend and while he was here I chose to just rent a U haul car hauler and tow the car over while I had the help. So the car is at the new place and I'm still working on setting up the new garage and putting things away.





I'll be back on the coupe shortly. As usually happens moving it gave me some juice to get back on

 

Oh and I spray bombed that off white stripe a few weeks back don't remember if I ever told you guys that lol.

 

Looks great! Congrats on the shop space get it set up FAST before it turns into box storage :S

 

I did the same thing with the brakes on my roadster, put the front wheel cylinders on the back and backs on front.
None of the hoses fit, dummy! Shoes on backwards, oh man! I learn best the second time

 

Lol if you didn't do it twice... did you really even do anything haha

 

best news I've heard all day.

 

Started digging the other day.... good thing I have new roof pieces. Lots of mud and thin metal. Really need to get after the brakes before I really get started fixing this though.
Per usual I can't leave well enough alone.

 

Grabbing the bull by the horns there I see

 

Those horns are for a TEXAS car. Gonna have to pick another theme since you moved.

 

Didn't need to since I have all the pieces to replace what's here but it was kind of fun exploring lol. Only parts I intend to salvage and reuse are the visor area. Ill leave a little extra here and then either sneak up on what I need to keep. Or just make a new filler piece when that time comes. Now that I've made it look ridiculous. Back to the brakes and trying to get to a point of drivable.

 

Gonna peel that top open like a can of sardines?

 

Had a fairly productive day.

Got my front brakes fixed. @FritzJr caught that I had the shoes backwards on the rears. And when he said that I knew I had goofed up the fronts too. I accidentally put both long shoes on the right and both short shoes on the left wheel. Product of doing the front wheels at different times.

Anyway I got them swapped today. No pictures, but you've all seen it before I'm sure.

Put on the rear brake lines I made a while back. Getting closer to the master at least. I still need a couple things before I can homerun the rest of the lines. Residual valves, replacement master cylinder and I'm sure a fitting or 2. But hey it's closer.

Then I reassembled an old signal stat 700 I took apart and painted a while back. Finally got around to modifying it so it would work without having separate tail lights and turn signals. Although now that I'm typing that I wonder if I didn't need to do that since dual filament bulbs are still 2 separate circuts. Welp... oh well it's done now lol. Should still work as intended.




Then I pulled the dash out and got to work welding up holes and adding tabs so I can actually mount my gauge panel to the dash. I'll dress the welds and add rivnuts next.



Today was a good day.

I also recently acquired some food grade stainless sheet that were leftover from work. So I think I'm going to redo the gauge panel in stainless too.

 

Awesome progress man

if you have enough that stainless would make a nice work bench top/ cover

 

Welp... haven't done much.

I did get a bug that I wanted to look for a stock model a frame to build and swap under the coupe. Found one real cheap in NC.
31 slant window cowl. Front sheet metal etc....

Planned to buy it remove and sell off everything but the frame and then I'd basically have a free frame (hot rod math)

Well got it home on too small trailer I had. Sold the cowl and front sheet metal for half what I had in the whole thing. And the sheet metal was ROUGH. About the only part of that was semi cool was the grill shell but even that was missing the bottom part.

That left me with the engine and trans which although looking pretty shitty are not stuck at all both spin easily. The trans even shifts as it should. I don't have a spare distributor, starter or carb, otherwise I would see if it would light off.

Front suspension is all there and in decent condition except for the spring itself.

Same story with the rear... but after looking closer at it the frame isn't going to he usable for me. It's pitted real bad in a bunch of spots. Could be fixed but decided it wasn't going to work as I thought. So instead I'm stealing the center and rear crossmembers to keep on the shelf. Scrapping the rails and front crossmember, and I'll still try to sell the suspension and drivetrain.

Anyway after I get this detour out of the way and the summer heat and humidity drop some I'll be back on the coupe. There's a ton of cars and car guys in my neighborhood (sadly no hotrodders) and seeing them driving constantly I need to get my shit together and just get this thing back on the road.

 

The Hot Rod Maths sometimes works well & sometimes the benefits are not quite what we expect. Nice little interlude all the same

 

Alright been a couple weeks. And the start of Husker Football season isn't nearly as depressing as recent years and that's got me back in the mood for garage time. So I forced my self to stop being lazy and get out and do something. In full honesty I may have started too many little projects at once and was starting to get overwhelmed with this thing. I'd gone out a few times but then the first excuse went back inside cause I couldn't get myself to just start of finishing something.

Well that changed yesterday I told myself just pick something and get to work. So I went out to finish the dash. And then that changed to the steering column/ignition switch since that had to get done for the dash anyway.

Last time I was in the garage I got the column bolted into the car with the new dash. That meant relocating where the column drop landed. After all my effort getting the ignition switch working I wanted to make sure I was actually able to use it and with the new location that meant welding up the old plunger hole in the column and drilling a new one.





It's a weird shape and I miss measured and drilled the new one too big. It shouldn't affect the functioning once installed and painted you won't see it but I did kick myself for that one. If you're not familiar with these ignition switches there is a plunger that slides in and out with the key to lock the on off switch when the key is out. There is also a thing on the steering shaft itself that this plunger engages to lock the steering wheel too but my shaft doesn't have that (phrasing lol) so the steering wheel lock isn't going to function but the switch still needs to IMO.

Here is a shaft with the piece I'm talking g about that I have but I was going to have to get it aligned right and drill/tap a hole in the shaft which is still mounted in the car and decided just to move on without it. There is a slot on the back side of this that the plunger locates in to lock the column.

After I welded it up I needed to smooth the welds back down do I could slide the switch on the patch ended up a little low and you can see it if you look but it's a Hot rod and there's lots of other areas to look at on the car like that so it'll fit in just fine.

Anyway I stripped the paint, DA'd the whole column and primed it last night. Then tonight after work I fit the switch taped off the parts I didn't want painted and sprayed it semi gloss black. I'll let it dry for a day or so (hard for me cause I can never seem to leave wet paint alone) and I'll install it later.















Also if you're curious a jack handle makes a great holder for painting a steering column.

Next I'll get back to the gauges. I still need to mount the insert to the dash, drill holes for starter push button (since there is no key start with these as you all probably already know) and Light switch. Then I can paint and it will be ready to put in for good. Then I'll probably start on wiring since that will be easier with the dash out. After that I'll have no excuses left to not work on getting the brakes finished and functioning.

Summers over, humidity/temps dropping, it's way past time to get this thing on the road..

 

Good progress. You’ll be cruising when everyone else you know has chattering teeth and every cost they own on.