The little terminal panel doesn’t have fuses. Do you have a fuse panel somewhere? My little hot rod, my aviator, doesn’t have a fuse panel either. I bought a 12 circuit wiring harness and am going to install it. I love seeing your build. Keep up the with pictures.
No fuses. If you look up preservation hotrods you’ll see the panels they all build are this way. Mark Ford kills it in the electrical set ups. Jeff Peterson the owner is a baddass and is killing the game.
I totally agree. The Ford body quarter panels are bent around the subrails on the bottom, this gives you a base to fit the doors. You will have to cut off the back since you Z'd the frame rails and deal with that correction/modification. Build a work table with two sheets of MDF to assemble the body on.
I'm enjoying following your build. Good to hear you have it worked out. I see so many people complaining about how tight a Model A can be for someone who is on the taller side. I'm 6'2 and totally comfortable in my Roadster. I have no seat riser and am using a 28 coupe seat tucked under the rear tub a little. These Model A Roadsters can be made tall people friendly with a little work. The only real annoyance I have left is my knuckle to windshield clearance at the top of the wheel.
There is a column drop that solves that problem , it needs the longer bolts too. For some reason I can't turn this right side up . Listed in the Bert's catalog. Bob
You can’t see it in mine but I dropped my column just a little for me to allow for the wheel to not pinch. I also had to straighten up my windshield a little too. It looks cooler laid back but pinching fing hurts.
After LSRU I took a little break from the project and went on a small vacation. Upon returning I starting digging into the car. I realized I was able to sink a longer head bolt into the hole that spun and being an 8BA almost all of the head bolt holes are through to the water jackets so its fine. I did remote the copper gasket and went with a traditional Graphite style gasket and torqued all down to 55ftlbs. Which was nerve racking, but after a few beers i got it all down. I tried to get her running and noticed was not firing at the plugs. So i chased that down to the distributor. When I changed out the points and condenser I didn't realize the ground wire that goes under the plate was compromised. So sometimes i would get good clean spark and sometimes nada. So I tried to repair that wire with out removing the distributor which was a fail cause the connection i made under the plate was too large for the advance to move the plate. At this point I went with a dual point Mallory i had laying in my parts pile. I cleaned it up and sandpapered the points and sunk her in. She started right up with a little timing she was back alive. I am not a big fan of the red cap so i think ill paint it black at some point.
I heat treated the heads maybe 2 rounds, just getting them hot the touch and then let the motor completely cool and retorqued back to 55ftbls. Then I filled back up with water to really test the sealing of the heads with higher torque and graphite gaskets and be able to get the motor up to operating temp and under full compression If I feel good enough to give her a little cruise again. All seemed great so I took the wife out for a small ride around a couple of blocks and the heads sealed!
The passenger side door kept flying open during that little run so the next day when I got off work I shimmed out the catch and its staying good and closed now. I host a small car meet every other Monday in Austin at a bar on the east side of town and I took the car out for its first real venture this last Monday and it was so fun. Folks seemed to like the car as much as I do. When we were leaving sadly the car started up great, but the head lights popped off, but the tail lights stayed good and on. I assume its because the sealed beams I am running are 6v. Ones that i am running came with the headlights buckets and they lite up so i said fuck it let run em. In the video when were leaving you can hear me pop the accelerator, which would have spiked the volts to the bulbs which might be why they went out? Not totally sure, ill dig in this weekend. Over all im so happy, I need to time it again and go ahead and fully rebuild that Stromberg I have, it every once in a while seems to not pop all the way down to full low idle, so its a little sticky or gummy. Need to go ahead and paint the rest of the car, and i need to retorque those heads. Ill keep up dating here, but its amazing to have closed the gap and driven this car for the first time. I purchased this car in 2016, waited about 2 years to tear it apart to build an AV8. The banger that was in it was fun for a sec, but it was ruff as far as the body was set up. All of the body was tacked together with not much inner structure, sitting on a homebuilt subframe of 1x1" square tube. I have it about 1500 hours of time in it, during around 4 and change to 5 years of work. This was above and beyond the funniest car project I have ever built. Excited to see more changes i made improving during the rest of the shake down.
A friend of mine even brought me flowers for getting the car out to a car meet. Sorry for the dumb writing on the video only ones I have were from social media.
Following your build. Really like the older look.i have a 29 tub out of a Tudor with flat motor and all 40 running gear on a 32 frame.
Great job on your build and this build thread! Nothing beats a smiling wife when along for ride. You’ve done well.
My headlights went out leaving the car meet because I am running one 6v BLC and 6v Guide lights with a bulbs in them. Couple of people actually hit me up to buy them. I guess folks will pull the bulb out and convert to a 12 v socket and bulb. In the mean time I found one 12v sealed beam in my pile but I order two new wagners to be safe. Converting is cool but seems like a bit of work to make it happen and hold the new socket. Let me know if you have seen anyone do this on here.
Been really enjoying the roadster. Trying to work out all the shake down kinks. My brakes need to be adjusted tighter again, which is nothing, but on my list. My biggest issue is the belt is rubbing on the lower radiator hose on my pass side. I should have spaced up my motor mounts a little, but you live you learn I still might have to shim up if I cant get it to clear more. I have tightened down the belt considerably. I used to have about 1" of movement when I pushed on it. Now I have about 1/2 to 1/4" of movement (photo attached). While replacing the hose I must have cross thread the radiator bolts cause one is locked in and I'm going to have to cut it out. I don't think I am going to use the nylock style nuts again. I am going with the castle style so I can hit it with a pin. Boy taking the radiator bolts in or out being that they mount from the underside of the crossmember is a PAIN. So hard to get a good square grip on the bolt from the underside with the leaf spring and side of the crossmember. But I am just bitching now! I also found a cool old set of airplane seat belts ill run, they match the car pretty well.
Seem to have worked out the belt rubbing issue. The ears on the Canadian/Ford intake didn’t take well to the powergen strap mount so getting the belt tight was tough. Basically would get it to the height I liked and tighten it down to the intake. Then tighten down the strap cause I was unable to slide the strap mount like a normal adjustment. Took a couple of times but I got it tight and 0 rubs. Took the car out for coffee this morning. Longest ride yet. Stayed at 180 on both temp gauges with 40 oil pressure. She puked like hell when I got to the coffee shop cause I had to refill the radiator, ehhh. I did notice a little bit of smoke from the blowby/down tube but I’m ok with a little. I did switch to rotella 15/40 from reg 10/30 from couple of folks comments on here, maybe that’s why? Seems wrong though 15/40 is thicker.
Roadster has been so fun driving and going through the shakedown. Everything thus far as been very easy to adjust and or fix. Still planning on painting the rest of the car soon, been enjoying driving too much though. HAHA. I have noticed a little chatter/noise/vibrating coming from the trans when I'm in Neutral with clutch out. I assume it is the pilot bearing. I put a new one in when I installed the clutch, but doesn't mean I didn't booger it up or something. I have a buddy that said he has the same thing happen to his '39 toploader and it was slop in the shifter it self. Said the forks can become loose. When i push the shifter ever so small forward not in gear but just forward in neutral still the vibration and noise go away. They also go away when i push in the clutch so i think its pilot. Let me know if any of yall have opinions.
The Jalopy Journal
