I was talking with Myke (HAMB) about '32 ch***is stuff, it was his opinion that nothing looked more "street rod" than a tubular k-member. I can certainly understand his point but it got me to thinking (o-****), that this was a damn shame. Why?! Well, I'll tell you. Why is it a custom built piece made of round and/or square tubing should not shout HOT ROD as much as some un-earthed original Henry piece? Yeah, the Henry piece IS orig. but there it is again, we sound more like restorers than traditional hot rodders. The custom fabb'd piece is built with your own two hands and built to exactly tailor your needs from the ch***is. Any of the hot rodder/historiansold-timers that I know would just as soon make their own version of a k-member as use a gennie piece. Once again, as a newer generation of trad hot rodders, I think we're getting WAY too hung up on BS!
I agree. The coolest guys back in the day were the one that made it different and cool. The evolution of the dragster was a prime example. It went from old, heavy frame rails to chrome moly tubing. Hotrodding has always been about innovation.
well hell, I think I agree with Myke here, a frame and or cross members made of dimensional materials deffinately looks "Street Rod".... but, there is a place for that too, I would like to build a true to the Nth degree traditional car with all original parts, but if we don't have what we want, we build with what we have. if we build right it will not only fit the purpose but look like it belongs too.
traditional doesn't require building. All it really requires is extensive clean up and extensive parts searching. Once you acquire all the proper parts, you merely ***emble following what was done back in the day. While the final product is very cool to view/drive, there doesn't seem to be much there to provide a challenge. Seems like traditional is leaning dangerously close to restoration.
I take it that you never had your arm pinched between the door and quarter of a stock 32 ch***ie when it flexed
So . . . how many street or hot rods have you - including me - crawled under? Not many I'll bet. Granted, you can see things from the back, but most times the crossmembers are difficult to see so what difference does it really make? Other than perhaps self satisfaction in either using period correct pieces or simply doing a good job. Today, home-builders have consideraby more and better tools at their disposal than the guys from back in the day did. A few had gas torches, as did I, but few home builders had stick welders or access to one. An arc welder - at the time - was the ultimate in car building technology as far as most were concerned. Many of us think we're pioneers, but we're not. We copy to a great extent what's gone before and that's especially true with the trad builders. Not an insult to the trad guys and gals, just that I don't see much done differently nowadays when using trad stuff. At least not like it was during trad's hayday even if we didn't know we were living the era. And when somone found something that worked, whether from junkyard or steel supply house, it wasn't long until the rest of us climbed on the bandwagon. Still true today....
I guess it depends on the running gear (and the style of car).....if you want to run something other than a Ford trans, don't ya have to hack up the K-member anyway?? I've felt this way for awhile now as well........it's getting a little out of hand IMO,(one of the reasons parts are so much) but to each their own.
there is no way in a million years a restorer would ever be doing the things a hot rodder would do. I look at it as It's just as simple as one being a period correct hot rod, using only vintage speed & ford parts from a certain era and one being a traditonally styled hot rod (as liberal as that term has become) using repoped speed parts and other current improvement applications
The trick is to build it with a 50's look. Anything that you can build in your garage without special tools could be built in a 50's garage too. I'd stay away from a tubing bender and stick with straight sections of tubing. Maybe miter cuts and welds instead of a smooth bend from a modern bender. If you really want bends, try heating the tubing and bending it around large round objects. If you look at old original tail pipes, most had very large radii not available from modern benders. Long sweeping bends intead of the modern roll bar look. Modern benders usually have 3", 4" and 6" dadii. You can get long sweeping bends by simply heating the tube on one side and watch it "walk" around into the arc you layed out on the garage floor. It will be more work than having a muffler shop bend up the tubing for you but it won't look like a muffler shop bent up the tubing for ya. One of the things I love to study when I see an old survivor is how did the guy make that back then? Most of the time it was pretty crude. We used a lot of angle iron back then. Lots of window lintels ended up in hot rods. Not so much the box tubing used today. 3 and 4" channel iron made many a crossmember. Some were crude but many guys too the time to craft them with rounded ends. to get a finished look. Clean and neat but not street roddy. That doesn't mean your work should be crude or sloppy, but the tools you use and the materials you select can go a long way in getting the look you want. IMHO I was looking through an old Hot rod from the 60s. One of the feature cars in the green ink pages was a drag racer of some sort. I laughed when I saw the slag bubbles still hanging off the crossmember where he made a clearance cut with a torch. I don't think you need to be that period correct. Being an old east coast construction worker may have biased my thinking. I was always scouring the job site for useable s****s of steel. I bet the first guy to put a 4" iron screw pipe push bumper on a Willys was a plumber or a fitter. The guys that grew up in the airplane industry probably will have different views.
My car doesnt sit still very long. So if you get a chance to look under my car long enough to be critical, no problem..... It just makes it easier to kick you in the nuts with my traditional engineer boots.
It's interesting what is acceptable as Period Correct and what is not. For example, z'd front ends seem to get a p***. I've been a hot rodder since the 50's, and I never saw a z'd front end until a few years back at "Cruisin the Coast." I guess they could have been out there, and I just missed them. I'm not talking about a tall perched suicide deal, I mean where they actually "step" the frame at the firewall. Not my favorite look, but I might have to do it in order for my overweight senior citizen body to be able to get in my "coupster" (doors welded shut) and still have a deep enough ****pit.
I'm right with Tommy here, I think we must be about the same age. Angle iron and channel were readily available. I got a torch set when I was 16 - suddenly I had the best equipped 1 car garage around. Used to tack stuff together and take it to a local shop if I thought it should be electric welded - mostly brackets on rear housings. Did a lot of ch***is work with gas welding. Got a buzz box a couple years later and didn't have to go out for anything but lathe work. As far as exhaust work - straight sections of pipe were heated and bent - saw a lot of bendable (corrugated) or flexible (the wrapped stuff) exhaust systems. I usually selected some tail pipes at the parts store with appropriate bends and cut, fitted and welded them. Used the muffler store bender as soon as there was one in town. Don't know for sure but MIG welding may disqualify a build from the traditional ranks. Seriously though, I still use the same torches and welder, although I've had a TIG machine at the top of my list for 40 years. I've gotten to hate the look of angle iron so I use square and round tubing tube too.
I hope this doesn't degenerate into another ...you're a restorer not a hot rodder thread. I'm certainly not trying to convert anybody to my thinking, but I do like exchanging ideas with guys that care about this stuff. I understand that many don't get into the period stuff. That's cool, but let the few of us that do exchange ideas without being labled. There aren't too many of us so it will fall off the page soon and not irritate you too long. Without the exchange of ideas we are doomed to create cookie cutter traditional hot rods. I promise I won't bad mouth your disc brakes and alternators.
The front Z's I remember seeing (and I can't remember more than a couple) were done right behind the front crossmember, not in the firewall area. I kinda like the "Bleed sweep" myself, nice clean way to get that stance.
I feel like a mutt...I got an original frame, but a P&J Model A front x-member...got an original A rear x-member, but a P&J tubular center section...got 3 pedals but the shifter rows a Ricmond ******...my flathead has valve covers... my quickchange says Winters...my original Ford 16" steelies mount repopped bias plys...you get the idea. ...oh, and my "Henry Ford Real Steel" body has a candy coated shell... ...but I like it.
I like Tommy's point. At the historical society where I work, when the restorers want to recreate a look or feel of an artifact, they just limit themselves to the tools that were available at the time and often get results that they didn't expect and a deeper understanding of the process.... For the average builder it's not hard to limit yourself, most of the time it's unavoidable. It's an interesting exercise anyway.
First off, the 32 frame never had a K-member. If they were put in like some said, it would be something you had laying around. What ever works for you, its your build.
In 56' when my buddy and I started to put a flathead in his 28 A cpe. we didnt know a thing. then we met the 'RODDERS'! Just like here in the hamb. Dont go to far into 'correctness', it will start to be like 'restoration'! It was like a 'formula'or 'kit' to building a A V8! And included using the 32 K memember and front end ***embly,along with the flathead, 39 trans.48 ford radiator, 40' hydraulics, and it all bolted together to the stock A rear end. The welding was usually done in town, arc welding was a buzz box at the blacksmiths shop, and gas welds at the muffler shop. that was the way to build it. The day of finding these parts are gone.Today we have almost all the tools etc. at our finger tips.
Stop building your cars to impress others... Build your car how you like it. If you think the tube x-member (flowing bends and flawless welds) looks right for the car you're building, then rock it... If the rest of you car is calling to you for an era correct crossmember then your question is answered another way.... Would 90% of the people looking at your car notice the xmember? No... Would you know it was there? You betcha... And speaking as someone who has had cars that had little things that I didn't think were right drive me nutz as I was driving down the road... Pleasing YOU is the most important thing you can do... Just don't spend about 10 years agonizing over the little **** without a 31 roadster project on the road...
Thought #1: If the spectators can't see it from the grandstands, or the sidewalk, as you go by, you're just strokin' yourself. Thought #2: There used to be some cabinet makers in New England ( I think) who prided themselves on their well made, perfectly dovetailed cests of drawers to the extent that they would add a decoration to the back side of th back panel of the drawers. Now the only way to see this decoration is to remove the drawer from the chest and look at the rear of it. Also, any "fine" jewelery like a ring or broach will be finished and detailed as well on the back side as it is on the front and that's how you can tell it from "costume" jewelery. With that said, if it's a "hotrod" 4 banger it would have bellhousing side mounts and a V8 era car with a swapped in engine and trans that doesn't conveniently bolt up to a Ford crossmember it would likely have had motor plates bolted firmly to the frame at the front and rear of the engine, effectively making the engine a stressed member. "home made" crossmembers and motor mounts have been around as long as the need for them to swap in parts that don't fit a frame. Lots of "real" hotrods had all tube frames anyway. And finally, if a hotrod has a license plate, it IS a streetrod, so what's the problem? It's just a hobby, and a game, so play it any way you wish.
This what I did on an old '32 drag Car. It had most of the X-member torched out to make room for its LaSalle Gearbox. So I folded pieces of 1/8th Sheet to build it back up. I made the angle of the driver side different so it would accept a '39 or '40 pedal set. And I welded on some ears that support some bellhouse mounts I made ( using early Ford rubber Engine mounts) I made some Brackets on the bottom of the K-member for the '39 rear Wishbones, and I put som extra strength into the frame by welding in two more legs pointed backwards, and to keep the materials as peroid as possible I cut up a Model T ch***is for its U channel. Right now I'm covering it all up with a new floor I'm building for it. But I know its there, and the owner of the car does too. We felt that this car deserved the trouble and extra work to make it so it doesnt look out of place with all the period stuff that was put on this car long time ago...
dag Mr. Metalshapes sir, your work sure is a pleasure to see 'might have to steal an idea or two there...
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