Squablow, I also like those breathers with the circles on top. Haven't found one yet. But I'm pretty sure they were made by Badger.
I started buying fenders for the 5W a few years ago, trying to make up a good set... And then more fenders... And more after that... Everyone seemed to have more issues than I wanted to deal with after I got them stripped. These were really nice fenders that had been body worked inside and out and then hung on the wall as spares. The guy had several black 32's, so wanted to have a spare set incase something happened to one of his cars. After he passed, his son started selling off parts and I bought these fenders out of the collection But they seemed too nice to strip to bare metal for the 5W, and my friend who is going to paint the car was hesitant to paint over someone else's bodywork. Being that they were black, I decided to swap out the fenders on the Fordor. Being as Fordors are just parts cars anyway... The fresh painted fenders bolted up and fit very well, so it was a relatively quick swap. We did it in four hours, start to stop. And now I have a pair of nice original fenders that I am pretty confident in, but we'll see when they too are stripped to bare
A kid that recently graduated high school and was in FFA with my daughter wants to learn to run a lathe and mill, so he started helping me a few hours here and there. He is a good TIG welder, so I've had him lending a hand on the 5W project. I bought a pair of the Boling Bros Lincoln brake drum retainers. I figured out that there are designed to fit their aftermarket backing plates and will not clear the splash guard ring that is spot welded around the outside of original Lincoln backing plates. They need about 1/4" more so they can be bent up around that ring. We figured the easiest solution was to cut and add a strip of material. He took it from there. One more little project off the list...and I'm getting a young man interested in traditional hot rods along the way.
I have criticized others for what I ended up doing here, but I understand now. The original dash had been cut to fit the 8 gauge panel. To cover the original oval gauge reveal, they had to mount the SW panel low on the dash. The outer ends of the panel sat up on the lower bead of the dash. I was OK with all of this when the car was going to be somewhat rough and dirty, but then the build progressed into something entirely different. The dash needed to be filled and recut to position the gauge panel up off the lower rib. Working towards a deadline to get the car to the Gathering at the Roc in October, I decided to just order a new United Pacific filled dash and start from there. This goes against the way I usually build, but life is full of compromises... You can see how the corners of the gauge panel set up on the lower bead of the dash The back side of the original dash. It was going to take more time to repair than I felt I had right now So here's the new UP dash with gauge centers marked out And cut out, compared to the original Now the panel sits nicely in the flat area of the dash, not riding up on the lower rib Now to get some purple paint sprayed on it...
Wayyyyyyyy more than 3 ppl with their jaws on the floor following this thread... I love it. Keep up the good work!
A couple local guys did the same as you, ordered up fresh clean UP dashes. Me, I seem to collect the worst ones available and they have yards of welding scars when they are done.
Doing that also. Couldn’t bear cutting up a good stock 32 dash. That’s a great hole locating pattern!
I'm glad you're posting this one here Neal. One of my favorite builds happening right now. Hope you don't cringe too much at the dash I just cut up for the fendered 5w we're doing at the shop!
I stripped the fenders that I appropriated from my "parts car". It was kinda hard to pour paint stripper on them, but I had to just get past that... I was happy to find really nice original fenders with no repairs. They will make very nice fenders for the 5w and the Fordor now has better paint on the fenders that replaced these, so all good. I will get them detail sanded and scotch-brited then we can fit them to the car
I'm sure some other people would use different adjectives... But after the number of fenders I've gone through to finally get to these, I think I made the right decision.
My fronts came off a pretty nice coupe, too. I don't blame you. I went through probably 6 sets to find mine... and I drove all over the west... finally getting a good enough set in Southern California.
Neal, If there was a counter somewhere I imagine that you'd find that there are a couple of thousand (or more) of us subscribed to this thread. Most of us just don't speak up very often.
I'm following this one as well, don't have much to say beyond what has already been said. I think you bought a bunch of stock Model A parts from my dad and I about 20 or so years ago too, I'm almost positive.
Prepped the stainless scavenger pipes to go to the polisher. Butt welded the partial u-bend to the secondary pipe and saddled it to the primary but left them loose so they can easily polish 4 separate tubes, then they will get welded together after polish
The Jalopy Journal
