Took some screen shots of a video. His a Facebook/email/ swap meet guy. No website but will ship etc.
Good info @Tim ! IIRC, on the tape it's a 3M product. EDIT: I believe it's Super 88 which is the good stuff, but as you can see, there are options! https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/tapes/electrical/i/automotive/
Thanks for the info on the switches- that’s something I’ve been frustrated with trying to find what I want, buying it, finding out it sucks, then starting all over. I’ll check out his page after a bit.
He has a lot more than what’s shown in his reels. But if you watch them all you can get the jist. Every time I’ve asked him “do you have an xyz” he has just the thing
While we are talking about switches I Google reverse light switches for a cj2 because the top shifter I’ll use from a t90 comes in them. Genius! Bracket bolts to the back of the shifter plate and mounts a plunger switch in the tube the shift fork travels in. put it in reverse and the rod moves and lights turn on! One less thing to stick on the dash and worry about shutting back off
Alright lunch break update pulled the rear axle after measuring a hand full of points before it came off the ground to try and get it back to the same point with the new axle. The tape on the banjo is to write some reference marks and measurements on. got it all out of the way this worked over t spring will go in the roadster project pile but this 3.73 ish geared A axle is really nice and complete and I’ll sell it and move it down the road. hover car!
Alright a little update from the rest of yesterday before I get started today. 8” behind the car I used my laser level to help me find center and the points for the ladder bar brackets. Starting with the supplied Pete and Jakes measurments. I also went ahead and marked in one inch increments down the tube and measured some things like the existing leaf spring mounts to see if they are in the same place side to side ( not quite) so I knew if I had any extra measuring reference points moving forward. then I stopped and put the headlight bar and front apron back on the car so it looks like I a car again when I open the garage door now I needed to get the car sitting where it was with the old set up. When I set it on the stands after pulling the axle it dropped 5/8 roughly. So I put a piece of tape on the back and measured where it should be ( I think 22 1/8” ) and landed my laser there. then I lifted the car to that height via jack and wood block under the center of the rear cross member. Then moved the jack stands under the rails accordingly. This took about 3 or 4 try’s to get just right because (I’m assuming because of the forward take of the car) every time I sat it on the jack stands it dropped the back of the car a little more than expected. Just the weight balancing out is all. This laser saved/ saves me an enormous amount of time. This adjustable tripod is just right. With the car in position I took the wheels and tires off the 8” and slid it under the car and then jacked it up. These dodge steelies with 650’s aren’t the right height so I stuffed some 1” box tube under the tires to get the axle center line closer to where it needs to be. With the 750’s it was right at 15” from the ground measuring from the axle end. I jockeyed it around until it looked centered in the opening. I know what the stock wheel base is, but past that I did not measure front to back placement of the tire/axle because with the torque tube laying on the ground it pushed the rear tires back wards an inch or more. It’s obvious if you look for it in the previous photos. So seeing as it’s a hot rod not a restoration I’m going to reference both the rear cross member, what appears to be the top center of the fender opening ( looks like there’s a bolt to the body right top center so easy to reference) and what looks “right” and go from there. today I’m going to get the ladder bars mocked up and hopefully the rest of the rear package also. We’ll see something that’s got me curious is weather I’m going to be able to route the dual exhaust out the back center of the car under the stock cross member and over the rear axle as previously planned with this new much larger center section. guess that’s what mock ups are for! Stay tuned
Nice work! Not a great view, but I'm guessing NO! I've seen a few that have removable tail pipes that go under the axle. Once you have things tacked, check droop.
Yeah I’m curious to see it with the rear bumper/ license plate on. It feels like the car is to high in the back to pull off having the pipes under the rear axle but @IronTrap Matt just ran duals out the back of his 32 Tudor under the back axle and to the back bumper and it looks great so maybe. I’ll mock it up
Alright morning update. I made some duplicates of the ladder bar brackets with foam core. With everything mocked up in the car it’s just easier to wiggle a piece of this around. I don’t want to mess with beveling and fine tuning the metal when I’m just trying to see if stuff fits all together. speaking of fitting together I found if you assemble the front bushings by putting one half in first, then the metal sleeve, and then the second half of the bushing it goes together very nice and easy compared to putting the entire bushing in and trying to pass the sleeve threw. really happy with the hardware that’s come with all the Pete and Jakes stuff. all mocked up! Noticed they basically lined up with the rivet in the corner brace.
I need to confirm this after the axle is out from under the car but it seems this ridge is center of the axle. Handy when you can’t see the mark I made on the very top After I had the bars in place I put the rear bumper on. I wanted to check how it bolts to the frame because I wasn’t entirely sure how the last tab lands. As I suspected the tab actually goes inside the frame rail under the top flange and doesn’t sit on top. I’m not exactly sure how to tackle this when I box the frame. In stock form it really lets you put a lot of weight down on the bumper but I don’t know if leaving a slot in the boxing plate to slip the tab in is practical in terms of then bolting it together as well as what stress points I could create with that little rectangle cut out of the edge. I suppose I could cut the tab and weld it back on vertical and bolt it to the boxing plate but I’m just not in love with that idea. of course I mocked up “exhaust” as well. I think I’ve got plenty of room! The drivers side is going to need a extra bend or two to get it to the same spot as the drivers side but since I’m going to run small exhaust I’ve got all the room I could need. you can see here how the bumper bracket bolts to the back of the body then the top of the rear cross member and then tucks under the top flange. then I pulled out my parts stash for the rest of the rear end stuff. Used a giant magnet to hold the pan hard bracket and I think it’s going to land pretty dang parallel with the axle/ground with zero trouble. I did put the bar in place I just didn’t have enough hands to also take a photo of it. After my day was basically done I went back out to stare at the car. I’ve been texting, dm’ing and bothering all of my hot rod buddies picking brains as I go along and had a few things to check. I looks like I should be able to fit my 1/4 elliptical springs to the outside of the ladder bar brackets so I’m feeling good about that. I’ve been looking at my photos and measurements from @Primered Forever model A and asking him questions as well about mounting them and I think I’ve got it mostly figured out. Ended the night with my laser and tape measure. With everything together it really felt to me that the rear axle was around one to one and half inches to far back. I went as far as to take previous photos of the car with the banjo and scribe a line from the wheel center line up to some reference point. Thinking maybe it’s an optical illusion, maybe the car has so much take that it makes the rear axle look a little pushed back. I went round and round trying to figure it out. With the adjustment on the ladder bars all the way in (with jamb nut) I was 1.5 off best I could tell. So add in another .5 for adjustment and I was somehow off 2”. after lots of confirming I had the parts exactly where the directions say too I found it. The directions for the ladder bars show a straight cross member not a dipped one. Why does that matter? Because the straight cross member has the tabs pointing down so those tabs share a center line with the cross member tube. As you can see in the photo the dipped cross member has the tabs pointing back. This puts the center of the bolt 2” from the center of the crossmember tube. this is why stuff gets tacked. I think if I can spend an evening prepping I can take this all back apart, clean another section of frame mock it all back up and get it tacked into the new position. Keeping in mind I’ve got to be able to get a wrench behind the boxing plate in the new position so I can get the temp body mount bolt out later.
If I'm understanding correctly about the rear end being in the wrong location..............Measure the old rear end to see what the distance is from the CL of the axles to the center of the spring mounting brackets. You should be able to get pretty close by measuring the spring mounting bracket on the old rear end. Then compare that to what you have with the new rear end. As for mounting the bumper bracket to the frame if its boxed. I would take a hole saw and make a hole where you need the nut. Make the hole larger than the nut. Save the round piece that you cut out and weld a nut on the inside of it. Then weld the circle back in the frame and dress it smooth. Then the mounting nut is permanently located inside the frame. Hopefully I understood your questions correctly..........
Totally stinks, but this is why....as a reminder to me....mockups are important rather than just forging ahead and nailing it all down. Glad you caught it.
I'd consider a cutout for the bumper mount. If concerned with strength, make an inner flange around the cutout and weld inside. It looks like it might work, but under isn't that ugly!
Wonder if you could use some of that "oval" shaped tubing to get above the axle? Then swage each end of the oval to make it round so it fits the rest of the system. Maybe notch the crossmember ever so slightly and the weld some plate on each side for strength and a hanger mount.
I had been thinking 1.5” pipes but I may bump up to 2” as from what I can find that’s what the Stude had stock and it’s easy to find cheap 2” glass packs. when it’s actually sitting on suspension and shocks I’ll see what room is left but I think it’s probably right that I’m going to lose needed suspension compression room going up and over. I want to try to keep 3” before bump stop. Gonna be tight with that off set pumpkin but I’ll see what we can get. If I run a straight pipe with a tight u bend dip under the axle it should look the same. It would also make taking it on and off much easier. Pretty good chance I’m painting it all with flat black high temp paint so it’ll mostly vanish any way we go. Thankfully with such a huge tire in back those U bends will still be well above anything that might survive going under the front of this thing. Lol measuring to move the ladder bar cross member and boxing plates forward right now. Hopefully a good update tonight but I’m trying to take my time.
You seem to have it all laid out. I will mention that after an hour of driving, the pipes even back there are pretty darn hot and that the current brake flex line is going to be real close.
Got about 5 hours in today. Got the cross member and boxing plates out and cleaned up, trimmed and mocked up. Several times actually. I’ll post some photos tomorrow but it’s mostly the same stuff. Got the rear axle in a position I like, need to make sure it’s not going to move and then move forward
Alright so I’ll try to do this quickly and get you caught up. I stopped taking a lot of photos because at some point they start looking all the same so here are a few and a summary of yesterday’s efforts. Axle moved forward to where I thought it looked centered. After a day of cutting out the cross member and boxing plates to move it all forwards I came went into the garage after I got off work and started checking things and creating some reference points. The laser is centered on the end of the axle. Peaking under the fender you can see where it lines up with this fender bolt. Looking down at the cross member and the carriage bolt and accounting for the radical take that seemed about right to me. the drivers side needs schooched forwards about 7/16” but I’m also making sure I have 3/8-1/2” of threads available on the end clevisis to fine tune if needed. Measured with the jam nut in place. I’ve seen guys forget that and have all the adjustment they wanted to have avalible vanish when the nut was added. went up front and marked the front center line as well. I marked them on the ground. I know that with a big take and drastic rubber differences that measuring wheel base accurately is going to be a head ache. But I don’t think the wheels base matters right now, what matters is that this measurement is the same on both sides. All four corners got tape on the floor to reference later. I then rolled the 750’s back over to check centers. This is the curve comparisons with the tire centered as is. This is pretty close to where they land on the car, the 650’s are sitting on metal to raise the axle centered point to where it was with these bigger tires on it. and for anyone who argues 650-16’s and 750-16’s are pretty close in size I’ll share this. about 4.5 hours before work and maybe 45 minutes after work. It’s getting there. I’m hoping to move the drivers side of the axle to be exactly the same as the passenger side, trim the metal ladder bar brackets and get it all tacked and back installed in the car Sunday afternoon. Next step conquering the springs! hoping to find some budget-able wheel adapters/ spacers for the 750’s so I can get them back on the car once it’s holding its own weight. for now the 650’s work and weigh a LOT less than those knobby 750’s. Motor, trans, rear suspension and axle sorted I’m not sure what will be next. Maybe make drive shaft/ trans tail shaft clearance in the subframe cross braces. Thinking I need a 4-5” inside diameter circle of square box tube. I can weld that into the existing brace and snip out the piece that’s in the way. Not sure if those are commonly available so I believe I’ve got a lot of cut and weld bend creation in my future.
Good work Those 7.50s look exactly like to ones I just bought for my OT '70 Blazer project. I picked up 6 16" wheels today that I had powder coated at Less Schwab. Gonna' be a bad ass old school 4x4 again. Those look huge on the A!
@Six Ball aren't they great? I have a few friends that run them on their trucks. I’m just using them for mock up but I am surprised how often I see them on the back of hot rods in the late 40’s. Use what ya got I guess! I’m leaning towards running some of the new bias ply look alikes on this but we are still a ways off.
In the '60s it was always cool to see the snow tires the guys drove in the Mother Lode and Sierra towns in fall & winter. They had one car and the drove it all year. Somewhere I have a picture of my '60 Morris Minor wagon ready for winter.
Alright boxing plates tacked in. Cross member tacked in, ladder bar brackets cut and mocked on axle, ladder bars bolted to crossmember and axle brackets. Check to all of that. I made sure each clevis was adjusted to the exact same length and used the jam nut to stop them. Thus making the brackets parallel to the ends of the ladder bars. When I set the pinion angle I’ll just rotate the axle in the brackets until it’s correct and tack it. while spending all this time in the car I noticed and confirmed that that rivet holding the triangle brace between the frame rail and rear cross member is roughly, or exactly depending on what point your measuring front, the same distance apart as the ladder bars are recommended to be. Just a nice little point of reference if your trying to sit things in place or are trying to visually check if anything has drastically moved. It more or less went together as intended other than I did tweak the crossmember position ever so slightly. Just a slap or two with a flap disc and it went where it was supposed to be. I did as @BigJoeArt previously mentioned and mocked it up with absolutely every piece in place before I tacked it this time. Springs are next in the list followed by shock mounts. Once that is all done and the pan hard brackets bolted on I’m going to move to the front end and get the last bits finished on the steering. I need to put the pan hard bar in and finish up the column support. I have wanted to make it roll, make it steer, make it stop, make it run, and in that order.
The Jalopy Journal
