I used to build models all the time as a kid. I have a bunch waiting to get built right now but haven't found the right motivation yet. Is the salt on the body/tires just paint or some other effect?
It’s mostly water with a little white acrylic paint flicked off a paint brush. On the tires it’s a small painted brush and the same white but not watered down. I had to keep myself from adding to much detail because at the scale it would look wrong/ too in focus. So I just aimed for the right energy/motion/ general areas
Reminds me of when the first AMT 3 in 1 kits came out with the '25 T roadster. They were $1.25 and I only had $1.00. I walked the alley behind the hobby store, picked up a few Coke bottles, and "returned" them to the grocery store. I bought the T kit and sent years building those things. I'm almost done with my new greenhouse. Send me that hot rod seed and we'll see if it grows.
I wish I still had my models. When I went to college my mom moved (but I found her anyway) and gave my models & one of my Lionel electric trains to my feral cousins. The wild children destroyed them.
At the risk of derailing Tim's thread, I gotta comment. While I was in the Navy my model cars, Hot Rod (& other) magazines, and baseball cards all disappeared. They are probably 100' down on the bottom of the landfill pile in the town where Mom/Dad lived at the time. b-t-w; most of those models came from the local Rexall drug store and also cost $1.25 in the early '60s when I was in elementary school. Back to Tm's Model A...
Spent the afternoon allotment of garage time taking a wire brush to the 16x4 wheels I had picked out. Elbow grease reveals one good wheel and one that needs some repairs. For the moment I’m not feeling like that’s an added project I want to add on so I’m going to take a tape measure to a few more of my wheels and see if I havnt got another 4” floating around. I think that I’ve got one in the mix in the rollers I took off the 46 when it got the chromed wheels put on. the weathers looking cold and the tire changing station isn’t exactly climate controlled so I’ve been trying to get these ready so when a “decent” day presents itself I can be ready.
Another wheel update. This time with photos. this is the wheel I want to do some work on before running it. It’s an otherwise nice 16x4 ford wheel but there a little pock about 10:30 on the valve stem hole and the center rivet is a little dished in the center. Nothing a little weld can’t shore up but I’m just not really in that zone right now. So I’m gonna clean the better/good one up and pull this black one off the roadster mock up. it’s to my knowledge a 16x4 1939 Lincoln wheel but I’ve never measured it. So I measured from the center ring on the back side to the back edge of the wheel on both and they are the same. The face/front was a little harder to measure with a wheel on but I think they are the same. If they are different it’s a 1/16 or less at the wheel lip you can see in the photos above the hoop/rim of the wheels are differently shaped. Where my thumb is on the ford wheel is wider with a crisper corner to the shape, where the Lincoln wheel is narrower and the transition in the corner is rounded. anyhow it wasn’t fridged today so I opened up the paint booth and got after it. I wire brushed it for half an hour yesterday and uncovered a lot of black paint and lines and today I took some co**** sandpaper to the lip where the bead of the tire lands. Laid on the paint with a brush, should have waited til I had a foam one because picking bristles out with a pick wasn’t any fun, but got it done and dry in time to bring it inside before dark. gonna wait for another nice day then go bug my buddy with the tire mounting rig and get the rubber swapped around. pretty excited to see the front on steelies to be honest. oh and the ford ring and cap fit the mopar wheels! Very very tight on the center cap but I damn near had to tear them off the ford wheels so seems about the same. Don’t think I’ll run the rings or this cap but good to know on could.
Little update. I got about 70% through installing a pan hard bar in the rear of the car. after a little head scratching holding things in place I gave the guys at Pete and Jakes a call to confirm that the rear pan hard on the 8” they sell runs from the drivers side to the p***enger frame rail. Not sure why, maybe it’s because the pinion if off set and it seemed stronger to run it from this side? Who knows. Either way everything lined up nice but it was just to snug to get the smaller bracket on. I tried opening a hole with a rat tail file and couldn’t get it there so I took a step drill that had a size juuuuuusst a hair bigger than what was already drilled and ran it through. That on I put the larger bracket on and put the through bolt on before snugging them up. The third member bolts seem plenty long enough to hold the bracket, and the pinion bolts were enough to easily catch threads and so I’m unsure if I need to get longer bolts for that or not. Any opinions? After getting that all together I mocked up and measured the bar, the frame brackets and the bushing tube that goes on the end of the bar. Ended up with a bar around 21-22 inches long. Happy with my measurements I mocked it up again before running it through the band saw. I’m really impressed with how beefy and thick all of this stuff is. All that’s left is making a little dish/cope/ notch for the bushing tube to register in the end of the bar and tack it all together. It’s about 1/8” deep so I think I can mark a center line and tap it with a rough flap disc a few times and be there easy enough. The frame side brackets, double sheer, end up right on the boxing plate but I havnt cemented that area yet so they’ll just get a quick tack to stay in place. I don’t need this to do anything other than confirm it doesn’t bind and hold its place in the 5 lb sack as I try to shove in ten more pounds. Should be able to get it ****oned up early next week and move onto shocks. Also because it was hard finding a photo of this bracket online I’m gonna add this so it pops up in peoples search’s in the future. Pete and Jakes panhard bar 8” ford.
Alright let’s make the bar part! cut the bar down last time in the band saw and roughly marked the depth of the little notch the bar came with. Hit it with a flap disc and made a new 1/8” deep belly and mocked it up wanted it centered and square or at least as close as I’m gonna get it. I've been really pleased at how thick everything I’ve received from Pete and Jakes has been. Nice little bevel/ counter sink on the threaded end to help get the threads started easier. put the bushing and crush tube in the end and bolted the tabs to each side of the bar. Bumper bracket is in the way so I just used a big *** magnet to hold it in place for the moment. plenty of room. I’m happy with this set up. Got a few ideas brewing for the rear shock upper mounts. I’m mainly having to work around the rear bumper brackets at the rear cross member but I got a little light bulb of an idea today so we’ll see how that turns out next.
So moving onto the shock mounts. My current plan is the previously shown 90 deg bracket with stud similar to an AD Chevy truck for the lower mount and these Pete and Jake uppers. you can just barely see the bracket welded to the axle where the lower will bolt to in this photo. These beefy bumper brackets are what has caused my head scratching at a few spots. The very end folds and goes inside the top frame flange, and the bracket where it goes over the rear cross member is in the way of my running the shocks as far out and vertical and I would like. My pending solution for the first issue, the tab inside the rail, is to get the bend very very hot and hit it with a hammer. Folding the bend flat I can then weld a nut into the backside of the boxing plate and just bolt it in. Its probably not going to take as much leverage as the stock situation but in all honesty all I’m asking of this “bumper” is a place to hang a plate and exhaust hangers, somewhere sturdy I can push the car around in the driveway, and in the future a mount for a deck or trunk of trips. It hasn’t got to be able to hold the entire car up. Though to be honest that would be really nice lol. I think the angle is about right with the upper in the same place as the bracket that holds the bumper mount to the top of the rear cross member. Sitting them on top of each other it clicked in my head that if the bumper bracket and the shock bracket want to be in the same place just make one bracket do both jobs. I’m 90% sure I can drive the two rivets out of the bumper bracket and make it bolt to the shock bracket and be right where I want to be. The first mock up will be removing the entire bumper and brackets and taking it apart so I can put the p***enger side bracket on the drivers side - which doesn’t line up anything at all but does put the bracket on the other side so I am free to put the shock mount in place with out swearing at nearly 100 year old ford rivets four an hour or two first. With “hold it up and look” mock ups the only other interference I can see being an issue is the upper dust shield might rub. But it might not. Anyhow that’s my ideas for now.
The Jalopy Journal
