Projects The Wag-Tag Roadster

Will the floor be removable when it's done, or welded to the chassis?? It will certainly make the chassis stiff

 

The floor will be welded to the chassis, but this car will have a trans tunnel that will be removable.

.

 

No wasted space! Love ya work mate!

 

Good stuff Joe, I'm staying tuned!!

 

Annnnd we're back.

I cut the tacks on the steering mount, and cut an inch out of the mount, lowering the mount into the frame.



I did a test fit of the pipe in next to the floor pan and started planning the part of the tunnel that will cover the pipe.



I decided that I needed to install the cowl so I could get an idea of where the firewall would be.

so I had to dig the cowl out.



And finally, after 6 years of me staring at it, I finally cut out the inner structure and automatic trans tunnel.



that felt good.



Mocked it up, and got an idea of where the motor and distributor are going.



Unfortunately, lowering the steering box made my recess in the cowl in the wrong spot.
so I'll have to decide how i'm gonna fix that.



Then I remembered that I've got a new (to me) cowl top tank to install.

The inside of this one will get cut out as well, but hopefully I don't warp the top near as bad as I did on the old one.



With that mocked up, I was able to see where stuff needed to go.



I think I may just build a small notch for the distributor in the cowl, and I think if I take the cap off, I could get the distributor out if I needed to.

Of course, I haven't had any reason to take mine out in 16000 miles, so maybe that's not as big of a deal.


Hopefully this weekend I can get some firewall stuff figured out.


.

 

What was the thinking behind the 5 feet of weld along the bottom of the windshield? I can’t fathom putting that much weld on it and not warping it all to heck

 

well, I was dumb.

I welded up the filler cap, cause I was installing the Hallock windshield, and in doing so warped the top something awful.

not knowing any better, I decided the right thing to do would be to bolt the windshield up to the cowl top, and weld a rod across the front, cause that would surely hold it in its place.

.
.

we all know how that worked.

so now its warped to high heaven multiple ways, and pretty much junk.

.

 

Funny how steep the learning curve can be isn’t it? Be good fodder for patches and practice welding for the little ones lol

 

back at it this weekend, I started building the firewall.

I started with the upper flange.



I started with a nice tight circle around the distributor,

Then I had to expand the notch, cause it didn't fit the vacuum canister.





but then I realized, that on the passenger side, the valve cover was under the cowl, and would not be able to removed, without taking the cowl off.

so that needed to be fixed.



I only have to have to make a 1 inch notch in the cowl top to take the valve cover off.

So I moved on to getting an idea of where the brake/clutch pedals go.



normally I wouldn't use such an ugly master cylinder, but its gonna have a full hood, so it's fine.

then I grabbed a lawn chair and sat approximately where the seat will be.

I realized that if I moved the steering box, just a little bit, I could install the steering column, with no U joints.

SO......



Whoops.



After some cleanup, and tacking it, cutting it loose, moving it, tacking it, cutting it loose, ect...



Ta da! a (mostly) centered steering column. so now I just had to rebuilt the base for it.

So with the side panel removed,



I got it welded up, and started on the clutch arm cover/ floorboard/ kick panel/ firewall.



I welded up a bunch of filler plates, so its all tied together.





And I got started on the bottom kick panel, Its angled so you can get to the set screw on the base of the steering column from the engine side of the firewall. (the steering column is not fully pushed down in the photo)



As you can tell from this photo, moving the steering box sunk it into the frame more, and in a neat twist of fate, made it fit into the swoop in the cowl again.

.

till next time!


.

 

Made it out last night and worked on trying to piece together the firewall some more.

I refined the panel to support the steering column



Note the tabs on the bottom



they hold the bottom of the steering column up, and keep it from falling down on the coupler for the steering box.

I also added a straight piece of tubing across the bottom of dash area, and I wanna start hacking up the dash i'm going to use, so I can figure out a upper column mount.

.