Projects A Farm Truck Comes to the City—’29 Pickup Build

What you're looking a now is a reverse eye main and 7 leaves.

 

You did kinda skip over that part

 

I need to update more often while I remember stuff.

 

Yes you do At least we would appreciate it!

 

I wonder how this one fit? The rearend is a 36, which will also readily fit an A spring.

 

I'm assuming I'm doing something wrong. Or they're not correct. I'm not saying T springs don't work. Its gotta be something to do with what i have. Too many guys have reported using them for it to be a myth. This discussion is probably best for another thread though as not to hijack Clark's thread further off course.

 

I had a '27 T chassis sorta yard art that needed a rear axle under it to roll around. No spare T axles so I stuck a Model A rear axle on the T spring that was already on the frame. Wasn't a big deal to make it fit. Now that rear axle and '27 T spring are under a '30 Tudor of a friend that is listed in the HAMB classifieds. I believe '26 '27 springs are a little different than earlier cars as the set lower. Rear T spring perches on '26 '27 are different too and are farther apart than earlier T's. Maybe the late springs are longer?? Dunno.

Dave

 

From some of the older threads it looks like you need a 26-27 Model T spring.

 

I believe I'm owed an update

 

Man, it’s been so long, this will be more backdate than update. But here goes.

So about this engine. It’s a rebuilt 8RT, which apart from the heads is an 8BA for all intents and purposes. I got it from my brother, who got it off Craigslist. It sat in his shop for a long time before I got my hands on it. Hitchhiker and I dug into it, oh my gosh, more than a year ago. I was delighted to see that it was in fact a rebuild; you never really know when you get a motor with no paperwork until you open it up. But it was clean, marked up to show what had been done, and even had a nice new (and somewhat costly) oil pump.


Of course it had to come apart completely, not only because the old assembly lube had fossilized, but also because we’re changing it to a 59AB configuration (for fit in this tiny engine bay), which means changing out the cam.


We discovered a few issues along the way. The cylinder cross-hatching seemed to be only OK, so we figured we’d give it a hone. We discovered a couple con rods were missing a PAL locknut, which was a little disconcerting. We looked hard but never found them, so they must have been skipped or overlooked during assembly. Also, one head-stud hole was missing half its threads. It still had some bite, so they must have figured it would be OK, but we opted for an insert.

But the most concerning thing we found was some odd discoloration and scoring on the main bearings. We surmise this came from somebody turning it over excessively after the assembly lube had dried out.

We could have done this ourselves, more or less, but we decided the smart thing to do was send the block and crank to the machine shop. But only after it got to ride around in the back of my daily for, I kid you not, six weeks while I waited for an opening (long story there). Anyway, they polished the crank, checked the bore alignment, fitted new main bearings, installed an insert, and gave everything a thorough cleaning.

By the way, you know you’re in the right machine shop when you see something like this on the wall. Some of these posters have been reproduced, but this one is the genuine article.



Then it was back to Hitchhiker’s shop, where we reassembled the engine, complete with low profile truck pumps and an Isky 77-B cam. (Oh, and ARP nuts on the rod caps, so we didn’t have to deal with those pesky PALs.)

Here it is at the end of the process, being transformed from a rather poorly painted red to a cool-if-somewhat-garish gold, which I think will add to the under-hood surprise factor. And then into the truck it went.





Now, as anybody who’s ever done an AV8 know, this is only the beginning of our installation Odyssey. The next obstacle is all the fussing and fiddling of adding all the needed components and making them fit. And of course, this is especially challenging with a ’29 (such a small bay) that will run a hood (can’t move the radiator) and, as-God-is-my-witness, will have a mechanical fan.

OK, I’ll be honest, this is kind of the fun part. More on that to come.

 

Is this the hero's quest part of the story?

 

WOW! New to this thread but what a great bunch of people to follow as I begin my first A project. It's a 29 Roadster PU that was cut and hot rodded in the late 50's or early 60's.

 

This is looking good. Keep us posted.

 

I have been wondering about mech fan & early steering box. Looking forward to the adventure

 

I demand an update or I'll buy a new louder swap meet horn or start taking this thing apart at night

 

I was thinking perhaps a hand held train horn...



But that's too modern for my tastes....maybe i need one of these?



Clocks a ticking @ClarkH...

 

Man, I'd do an update a day for a week if you'd promise to get rid of that damn swap meet horn.

 

At this point I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge how fortunate I’ve been in having help on the truck. When I talk in this thread about how “we” did something, I’m not using Queen Victoria’s “royal we.” The fact is, my project has been adopted by a collective of hotrodders who gather at @Hitchhiker 's shop one day every week.

The names of these guys are, I kid you not, Matt, Matt and Matt. And no, this is not some schizophrenic Three Faces of Hitchhiker thing. It’s actually three individuals, specifically Hitchhiker Matt, Texas Matt and Arlington Matt. Or collectively Matt-cubed, if you will.

As you can imagine, this plethora of Matts leads to a lot of predictable low humor. Something went wrong? “Matt did that.” A tool is missing? “Matt has that.” It has been suggested that it would simplify things if I were to change my name to Matt. So far, I am resisting.

Anyway, thanks to the help of the Matt clan, the project is moving at a greatly accelerated and accomplished pace, especially when compared to what I could manage on my own.

So, back to the project.

Our collective challenge now is fitting a flathead with a mechanical fan into an early A engine bay without moving the radiator or cutting the firewall. Can it be done?

Let’s start with the intake and fuel pump tower. On an 8ba, the oil fill and road draft tube are located forward, away from the firewall. But this 8ba block is running an early 59ab intake, which doesn’t have those provisions.

To compensate for the lost road draft tube, we shortened the vent tube in the valley and added a grommet and PCV valve. This was connected to an elbow at the bottom of the intake. Condensation is a huge issue in the Pacific Northwest, so this should run cleaner. And it declutters the engine somewhat.




(And yes, that’s a scrap pile of brake lines lying under the PCV valve in that picture. While this was going on, Matt—Hitchhiker Matt—was working on the brakes. More on that later.)

But now, where does this leave us? Instead of using the small and easy-to-fit 8ba fuel pump tower, we have to use a 59ab tower, which is topped with oil fill and cap (specifically a breather cap to accommodate the PCV).

We’d already stretched the firewall with an air-hammer to make room for the tower, but that left the oil inlet basically tucked into a little cave, with no room for a stock fill tube, let alone a breather cap. Matt fixed this (Texas Matt, to be specific) by fabricating a serpentine tube, which he pieced together out of unused exhaust pipe remnants.

Here’s a photo review of the process and result. Sorry I couldn't get any tig-weld action shots:










I’m really happy with this: Solves the problem and looks good, kind of like it was supposed to be that way all along.

As you can see, we've started running plug wires. Here's a shot from the other side. In the background you'll also note a freshly installed oil filter canister.

 

Reminds me of a situation I ran into in a hick town in Arkansas I was living in twenty years ago. My name is Ryan. I was friends with three other gear heads named Ryan. The four of us ended up hanging out at the same gas station one Friday night with our respective hot rods. We were all standing on the sidewalk near our cars talking shop. When one Ryan would want to say something to a specific Ryan he'd just say Ryan and the correct Ryan would respond. Really tripped out the drunks staggering by lol

 

IT'S GOOD LUCK!!!!

 

Stating the obvious, the steering box is a common challenge on these AV8 projects. I decided long ago I’d use an F1 box on the truck, and got a nice deal on one in the Hamb classifieds. I put an F1 box in my speedster years ago and love it; as they say, it feels like power-steering compared to a stock A box.

(As a courtesy I’m tagging @Outback here, since he expressed particular interest in this subject.)

A flathead in an A frame is tight, and you have headers and steering competing for the same limited space. A key benefit of the F1 is that the box is relatively small, and also the steering shaft comes in at the bottom of the box, which allows a little extra clearance.

When fitting my speedster’s box, I used the Tardel method: Cut the flange off the F1 box, then cut the flange off a stock A box and weld it to the F1. Easy to do, as the sector shafts are the same diameter (stick the old A sector in there to keep it in alignment while you weld). However, this leaves you with a stock-length flange, which puts the box several inches from the frame rail. Fine with a banger, not so good with a flathead. (If you want to know more about the Tardel method, click here for the page in my speedster thread with several posts on the steering conversion.)

There are several guys out there who do steering box conversions. I’ve seen their work first hand, and it’s top quality. And they charge accordingly, which is only fair. But perusing the Hamb classifieds I spotted an ad by @chaddilac for his DIY steering box conversion kit. The ad has a link to his YouTube video on installing it. I watched it, and figured even a lunkhead like me could do it. And at only $85, it’s a fraction of what a pro-built version would run.

The kit comes with a replacement flange and outer brace-plate. You also get a jig for redrilling the frame (the jig is important, as the tolerances are kind of tight).

Here’s a run-through of my experiences:

Start out by cutting off the flange ears with a cut-off wheel, then use a grinder/flapper disk to reduce the diameter of the sector housing until it fits the new flange from the kit. How far up the housing you choose to grind is a function of how close you want the box to the frame rail. In my case, I wanted it as close as possible.





Next, use the jig to increase the size of the sector hole in the frame; you’ll need a 1-7/8 hole saw for this. Also use the jig to drill three mount holes for the new flange. We chose to weld-up the original mount holes while we were at it; I guess you wouldn’t really have to, but it’s simple to do and much cleaner this way.



Next up, you mount the flange to the frame rail, insert the column, and mock up your steering column/wheel placement. This involves a lot of fussing with seating and column drop options and driver comfort factors. Keep in mind there’s a taper to the frame rails and the column is also at its own angle, so the flange will not be at a perfect 90-degrees. I needed to grind down the sector housing some more for a looser fit to get the angle we needed. We tacked, cut, and retacked a few times before we were fully satisfied with the positioning. Then we welded it up (by “we,” I mean Texas Matt, whose welding makes mine look like the rubbish that it is.





Something to note on the above picture is that we chamfered the outside lower corner of the flange to eliminate interference with the lower frame rail. Not a big deal; I’m guessing I positioned the jig a hair too low when drilling.

Now that we were finished pumping heat into the thing, we went ahead and rebuilt the box: New sector bushings, new bearings and races, fresh gaskets and adjustments. Incidentally, VanPelt sells a nice rebuild kit (click here to view) with quality Timken bearings. $96.

By the way, purely as an aside: The last time I replaced sector bushings in an F1 box, I borrowed an old USA-made wheel cylinder hone from my brother to do the job. After 20 minutes of drilling, I returned it to my brother in fine shape and he still uses it. This time, I bought a Chinese-made hone (all I could find in a pinch). It wore out in 7 minutes. It’s replacement also wore out in 7 minutes. Fortunately we were close enough to finish the job with 400-grit on a stick. I swear, corporate America has made us acceptant of shoddy tools. But it’s kind of our own damn fault, I suppose. If I had it to do over again, I would buy a proper reamer.

Anyway, we positioned the box and boy oh boy, were we pleased to see how close we were to success.



Nevertheless, when we went to install the header, we found interreference with the rearmost tube. This was expected. We marked the header and clearanced the offending tube with an air hammer, then finished with a body hammer. I figure we reduced the tube size maybe 10-15 percent. I’m not sweating that. After all, the middle tube has to service two cylinders, the rear tube just one.





I’m sure this hammering didn’t do the ceramic coating any good, but experience tells me not to expect that stuff to last long anyway. Especially when you consider these are bargain-basement Holley closeout headers—kind of the exhaust equivalent of my crummy wheel cylinder hones. (The pair cost less than the box rebuild kit, for crying out loud.)

Anyway, finally finished, we installed the header and gasket. Everything clears! Second picture shows how tight the box is to the frame rail. Happiness.





Before ending this post, I’d like to close the loop on the headers. In addition to the above work on driver’s side header, we also had to alter the passenger side. It extended out too far and hit the Model A frame rail; I’m pretty sure it was intended for a ’32 or later frame.

We went the quick-and-dirty route: Cut off the flanges, bolted them to a junk block as a jig, shortened the tubes, rewelded flanges. It worked fine.







If you look close in the “installed” picture, you can see where each flange has half an inch of high-temp silver paint over the welds. This is another reason I wasn’t stressing over bashing the ceramic on the driver’s side.

Also in the above pic, pay no attention to that generator-mounted fan. That was just one of many dead-ends in our ongoing mechanical fan quest. Details on that soon.

 

I would like to say, in my defense. Most of that got used on shorter brake line runs or your oil filter lines. The floor is just my storage method.

 

Thanks so much for the tag, that was very inciteful, & encouraging to see the fault finding process happening

 

The Matt Pack lol.

I can see a beefy Warner brothers style rat painted with a flannel shirt and a mustache on the dash lol

 

Humble beginnings

 

Hi all, I guess @Hitchhiker 's recent (sand)blast from the past of my truck's bare frame is his way of crying out for a thread update. So here goes.

We recently arrived at the supreme challenge. When it comes to fitting a flathead to a Model A, this is The Big One. The Big Kahuna. The Grand Poobah of challenges. Specially: Fitting a mechanical fan.

With my engine and transmission affixed to a stock A diff/torque tube and the K-member welded accordingly, the engine placement is fixed. This pretty much left three options for squeezing in a fan: Move the radiator forward and remove/modify the hood; swallow my pride and use an electric fan; or conjure some kind of ninja voodoo that would reduce the fan profile. The latter one is the hardest, so of course we went for that.

Charging and cooling are intertwined, both belt-driven off the crankshaft. We were already part way there, having converted to a front-mount distributor and low-profile truck water pumps.

So next order of business was to get some kind of charging device in there. We had a few misfires here. First up was a cool swap meet find from ages ago: An 8ba generator that had its guts removed and replaced with a 12-volt alternator. Kind of a poor man’s PowerGEN.



It’s a neat thing. But in our new 59ab configuration, there was no way it would work. Even with a replacement wide-belt pulley from Offy and the locator pin removed from the mount, there was no way the unit could be mounted far enough back. It’s already packed up for the Portland swap meet. Somebody with an 8ba needs this.

So next, we tried an early generator with fan provision. We thought it would be brilliant, killing two birds with one stone. But first, you have to find one. This is no mean feat. An externally regulated generator with a pully that accepts a fan was only made for a couple years. I recall a thread where @IronTrap described them as a “Unicorn.” (Incidentally, IronTrap’s real name is Matt, and for that reason alone he warrants a mention in this increasingly Matt-tastic thread.)

But sure enough, a unicorn popped up cheap on the local Craigslist almost immediately, misidentified as an earlier unit. And, to my delight, it was in the town of Redmond, WA, which is just a few miles away from Seattle. Or so I thought. Only after I contacted the guy did I discover he was in Redmond, Oregon, which is more than 300 miles from me. Fortunately, I have a buddy in nearby Bend who picked it up and shipped it to me.

Here it is, mocked up, great so far, but…



Sadly, the gen-mounted fan interferes with everything: it hits the radiator hoses and water fill neck. I should point out (with shame) that I’m using a cheap aluminum radiator, the subject of much derision on the Hamb. My reasons are simple: It should more-or-less do the job, and I’m not going to invest four figures into a nice brass radiator until I’ve proven the concept (and financially recovered from a lot of other unexpected purchases).

We debated relocating the hose inlets and fill neck on the Chinese Wonder, but decided it was doomed to fail.

At this point I threw up my hands and bought a PowerGEN. One of those afore mentioned unexpected purchases. Sigh.

We moved on to exploring what could be done with a stock 59ab remote fan, i.e the kind that mounts to the generator bracket and is driven by a short forward belt off the crankshaft. We mocked up the radiator and an old oil-filled truck hub/fan and discovered that we were close. The fan was just touching the radiator. I have the bent fins to prove it, because someone didn’t initially take time to protect the radiator with cardboard. (Still, I regard this as validation for proving the concept with a cheap radiator vs. a nice brass one.)

But then we noticed something else. The fan pulley above did not align with the crank pulley below. To my joy, the crank’s fan pulley was actually closer to the engine. This suggested that with some finagling, we might be able to move the fan backward, away from the radiator.

So we finagled. First we separated the fan hub and mount. Then we ground down the face of the remote mount. We were able to remove 1/8” or so before reaching the forward mount bolt.

We moved on to the hub. The fan shaft has two locators that position the fan hub 1/2” or so away from the mount. We flipped the shaft and used a die grinder to cut new locators, thereby positioning the fan right against the mount and gaining an additional 1/2".





Here's an image of a greasy stock fan hub for comparison. You can see how much we ground, and how much the shaft is shortened.


As an aside, the nice clean fan hub/shaft pictured was another of those unexpected purchases I was talking about. I started with a stock hub. But those stock oil-filled hubs have a bushing instead of a bearing. My worry was that a 70-year-old bushing has got to have slop in it, which could translate to wobble in the fan. Not good with the tolerances we’re looking at. Plus, I got fed up with the damn thing leaking all over us during mockup (there’s a stand pipe inside those hubs; it doesn’t leak when upright, but it leaks in any other position).

So I bought a new sealed-bearing unit. I looked around and found several vendors selling them. The cheapest was, I kid you not, Bob Drake. (To my knowledge, that sentence has never been previously uttered on this planet.) And Drake had it in stock (same comment applies).

The Drake hub had a bonus: It comes with an outer cover plate that appears to be strictly esthetic. I think it’s to match the look of a stock hub. I left it off, gaining another 1/16”.



Lastly, we come to the fan itself. These big truck-style fans come in 4- and 6-blade configurations. The blades are riveted on and have a forward sweep that puts them closer to the radiator. Here’s an example of a 4-blade, a big honking fan:



Going through my swap meet pile in preparation for Portland, I was dumbfounded to find a hub with a more-conventional 2-blade fan that does not extend so far forward. I’ve never seen another like this, and can only imagine it’s from what was originally a 2-piece 4-blade fan, and one of the pieces was removed. Net result, it’s something like 3/16” shorter.

Here it is, with Texas Matt doing some final die-grinding:

When you add up all those fractions, we’d moved the fan back a little more than 3/4". We mocked it up with a battered stock early A radiator, and it fit with ease.



Then we mocked it up with the Chinese Wonder (3 core, thicker than stock), and it still fit. Maybe not with ease, but good enough! Here it is with its day-late-and-a-dollar-short protective cardboard. And there’s another 1/4” behind that cardboard.



We declared it a win, and I did my happy dance.

Of course, we are left with a few questions.

First question: Will this two-blade fan be enough to cool sufficiently? I’m hoping with 3 cores and 160-degree thermostats, I won’t suffer the Chinese Water Torture. I’ll let you know.

Second, and really puzzling to me, is what is the story with this crank pulley? We took it off a junk 59ab, it’s mounted correctly, and yet for some reason it did not align with a stock fan hub. I can’t figure it out. But I’ll take the result!

 

"Perfection, cannot be rushed"
Balance weights (Pennies) taped to old fan blade, ( Cheshire grin )

​

 

Man that fan dance feels familiar lol. Congrats on figuring it out!

 

No...I was digging for another picture and came across that one. Thought it was cool how far it's come. Though I do like reading about myself.