Model A and 32 Grille making Tech and Something for you math teachers too!

This is not mine but a great tech article by a very talented guy.........

worth a repeat. PJ


Im going to build a 32 grill insert----Wanna watch
Bunkie, this is not for a car thats going into the Oakland Roadster show.----Not exactly for a rat-rod either. I have built 2----- 32 grill inserts in the past, and now I'm going to build one for the roadster pickup. Why----cause I'm not a fan of the expanded metal look, but there ain't no way I can afford $500 for an aftermarket grill. This grill will look like a 32 grill, and will be painted flat black (which will really go good with the chrome yellow paint) It will weigh about 15 pounds, and be made of 1/4" diameter cold rolled steel rod. I know that a fibergl*** 32 grillshell will support it O.K., cause both my earlier cars are still running around the country wearing the grills I built. My total cost?----I just bought 80 foot of 1/4" cold rolled steel rod at the local metal shop for $18.00 Throw in $5 for a rattle can of flat black Krylon, and thats it----a $23 nineteen thirty two Ford grill clone.----stay tuned----pictures will be posted.







This is how it starts---I use fairly heavy cardboard to make an exact pattern of the inside of the grillshell, which will of course be the outside of the grill insert frame. This step is very important to get right. I use a glue gun and many small peices of cardboard to follow the inner curved shape of the grillshell opening.---Try not to glue the cardboard to the shell---see the vicegrips and c-clamp at the bottom. What I do is clamp a peice of cardboard to the shell at the bottom and build out from it with my other cardboard. You have to glue the cardboard to the shell at the top to get everything to stay put, but only do it in 2 or 3 small places. That hot melt glue really sticks, and we don't want to wreck the pattern when it is removed from the shell.




Okay---next step. (this is happening real time, the computer gives me a break between stages). Carefully remove the pattern from the grill shell and trace around it onto a peice of 3/4" plywood. (You will see that I have 2 peices of plywood joined together, thats only because I never throw any plywood s****s away I reuse them over and over). Cut out the profile with sabre saw. When you remove the pattern from the grill shell it will not be flat, but will follow the contour of the shell----don't worry about that----flatten that ****er out on the plywood and trace around it.----here's the deal---we are going to use that cut out hole in the plywood as a forming buck to form the perimeter frame. I will use 1/4" cold rolled round bar for everything---if you want to use flat bar for the perimeter frame, go for it. I prefer the round stock).---When I made my first 2 grill inserts I formed the rod around the peice which was cut out, minus 1/4"---the problem with doing that is there is a lot of spring-back to this rod, and its difficult to do it that way. This way, forming into the cut out, I think it will be easier to form the rod without the spring-back factor.---It is almost impossible to form the entire perimeter out of one peice of rod, so I will use 2 peices, with the split line exactly on the vertical centerline of the insert.---The top weld actually tucks back under the upper grillshell nose, and the bottom weld will be hidden by one of the vertical rods.



There---first side of perimeter frame is done. Before you start to work on bending the rod, establish a centerline to use as a reference---this is just square and tapemeasure work. For a full length (unchopped) 32 insert like mine, cut a peice of rod 52" long, and starting at the end of the opening that corresponds with "bottom" of the grillshell, let the end of the rod extend about 5" past the centerline. NOTE--you do not heat this rod to bend it---its all bent by hand, a bit at a time to get the radius at the first corner. Once you get the first corner close, put a clamp on it, and using a medium size hammer, give it many small forcefull taps into the radiussed corner, while forcing it with your free hand into the corner, to help it take the exact shape. No big whacks---you dont want any localized bending under the hammer blow, you just want to "convince" the rod into the same curve as the plywood untill it holds its own shape.---Then work your way up to the next corner, clamping, tapping, and "convincing" the rod into shape. This requires a bit of practice. When the rod will hold the exact shape you want, your done. Take your hacksaw and cut the extra rod off that extends beyond the centerline at both ends.
---Then repeat the process for the other side. Tomorrow we will trial fit the 2 perimeter peices into the shell, and when we are happy with the fit we will clamp them into place in the grillshell and tackweld them together. (thats how we get around the fact that you flattened out the pattern when you cut the hole in the plywood)




This post shows the result of fitting the 2 halves of the perimeter frame into the shell, and tack welding them together in place, to achieve the proper fit and angle. After they were tacked together, they were carefully removed and welded solidly together on the bench. A word of caution---this is not an easy thing to do---you need one hand to hold each peice in place, one hand to hold the welder, one hand to hold the light---in short you need more arms than an octopus. I had the individual peices in and out half a dozen times t******* them to length, etcetera---then I tacked them at the top only, took the ***embled peices out, trimmed some more at the bottom, put them back in the shell, tacked the bottom---you get the picture. Once they were welded to my satisfaction, I stuck them back into the shell, marked what I beleive is the center, and cut the center rod to length (cut it a bit long and keep grinding the ends a bit at a time untill it is a perfect fit between the top and bottom of the frame. Then tack weld at the bottom only. Then get out your carpenters level and make absolutely certain that the rod is dead nuts vertical, then tack the top. You only get one chance at this---cause the other rods are all spaced out 1/4" from that center rod. My next post will show how I space the bars exactly.

This is it for tonight, my back is killing me---damn rain----damn arthritis. You can see that I am doing all the welding on the back side where it won't show. I find it very difficult to control the size of bead with a mig. The first 2 grills I made were welded with my oxy-acetylene torch, where it is far easier to control the bead and penetration.--When I am finished positioning and welding all the bars on the back side, I will flip the insert over, and use my gas torch and some small mild steel filler rod to blend the ends of the bars into the perimeter frame.--Oh Yeah---check out my high tech spacers for maintaining perfect 1/4" gap between the bars.

April 29, 2005 - 7:28 AM I built an insert for mine also but approached it a little different. I made the two cross (horizontal) pieces and bolted them into the shell. I used 3/16" cold roll but ran into a problem with spacing. After laying it out several times I finally turned to the Fibonacci Number and used it. The spacing came out looking pleasing to the eye and in proportion. Painted it red, just like the wheels and firewall.
April 29, 2005 - 8:15 AM O.K.---I got to ask----what the heck is a Fibonnaci number????

"In words: you start with 0 and 1, and then produce the next Fibonacci number by adding the two previous Fibonacci numbers". "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ..etc. As you can see, each number beginning with 2 is the sum of the two immediately preceding numbers."

Now that we all know, could give us a demostration on how he used it to solve his problem? Please.



oK, don't want to sound like and egg head but here goes... Da Vinci discovered that just about everything in nature boils down to that number which is actually a ratio. Length of nose to face, length of arm to body, etc. The actual number is square root of 5 plus 1 divided by 2 which comes out to about 1.618. Now, you are using the 1/4 cold roll so it would be 1.618 X .25 which is about .4 or 4/10 of an inch space between each bar. This is the spacing that will give the best eye appeal. Hope I didn't scare anyone and by no means am I a mathamatic...mathamyth....numbers guy!

Well, how do you like it so far?--I got this far tonight and ran out of 1/4" rod. So far, I have $18 and 3 evenings labour invested. I still have to gas weld the front side to blend in the joints with some mild steel filler rod, but I think this is going to turn out nice. Tomorrow I will buy some rod to finish it, and will add a post showing the studs welded to the back side of the insert which will go through holes in the fibergl*** shell to secure it in place.

One thing I have to tell you about----if you look at the center vertical bar, it is a bit crooked----here's why. When you first weld it in, its as straight as an arrow. Each time you weld in an additional rod, the metal shrinks microscopically at the weld as the weld at each end of the rod cools. By the time you have welded all the other rods in, this shrinkage factor gets multiplied by the total number of rods. The total shrinkage becomes so great that it causes the center rod to buckle. How do I fix that?---well, after all the welding is done, I take my small cut-off wheel and cut the center bar off close to the top where it attaches to the perimeter frame. As soon as a peice the width of my 1/16" cut-off saw wheel is removed, the rod straightens out, then I reweld it.





We're Finished. The insert has had all the bars added, then I turned it over and gas welded the front side, using a 1/16 " diameter mild steel filler rod. This is where it would be nice to have a tig, but then if I had a tig, the insert would be made from stainless.---There is a lot of movement and heat distortion from using an oxy-acetylene torch, but I don't let it bother me too much---after everything is well cooled down, a few well placed whacks with one of my hammers and it is quickly returned to the proper shape. I decided not to weld the studs onto the back of the insert right now, as I am going to blow the car all apart for final paintwork, and it will be easier to do with the grill shell on the bench while I have it apart. TOTAL COST---$20 (I had to go down town this morning and pay $2 for one more 10 foot length of rod.) Now, don't get me wrong here---nobody is ever going to look at that grill insert and mistake it for one of Dan Fink's. On the other hand, nobody is going to see my car coming down the road and mistake it for an ornamental fireplace screen. Thanks for watching---

O.K. Guys and Gals---I promised you a picture of the finished product---Here it is. It fits perfect, and looks better than the picture actually shows. The total cost of this 32 style grill ended up at less than $30, and I am well satisfied with it. I have always heard that you couldn't run a 32 style grillshell on a Model A without a V'eed headlight bar, and its true----sort of. That headlight bar in the picture is a crusty old fleamarket survivor, and it is setting in the stock position and it is not V'eed. There is room to get a cigarette paper between the center grill bar and the headlight bar, and thats about all. The previous 2 rods I built had custom headlight stands, so I have never actually seen this before, only heard about it. Thanks for following my posts. Brian



__________________
In my old age...
Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked.....
the good fortune to run into the ones I do.....
and the eyesight to tell the difference.

 

Heres some final pics....

 

I just noticed...


Man is that lightbar ****ed!

 

Can we get a picture of the whole car out in the daylight??

The grille looks good...proves that you don't have to spend a fortune to have something cool if you're willing to do some work!

 

The grille looks good...proves that you don't have to spend a fortune to have something cool if you're willing to do some work!

Yeah--now it's time to reprint that great posting on making a '32 type shell out of bits of GMC truck!

 

Petejoe - nice work - how does the insert fix itself to the shell?

Do you still have that RPU you won?

 

Thanks for the insight into your project - this is what the HAMB is great for - helping us do it!!! Great job and one I was thinking of doing too for the same $ reasons.

now how do I save this in a format that allows me to see the pics and the text off line. I know it has a particular suffix (not jpg) after the do***ent ***le.

Cheers

 

That guy does a lot of tech stuff on another forum, clubhotrod.com. Not exactly a traditional board but some great stuff. If you want to see pics I think he is still in the process of getting it all together, get to club hotrod and look for brianrupnow, that's his roadster truck. I thought there was more to his tech on that grill shell over there too, but maybe not. He did some paint tech also and some interior fab tech too.

 

Cool tech, I like it.

 

Great work. Thanx for sharing this. This is what I love about H.A.M.B.

I agree with Fat Hack - can we see some more pics of the whole car.

Den

 

I like the looks of the round stock grille.
This guy used a mig but I would think a tig would eliminate some of the warpage he had.

 

looks good,

we need something like this by a HAMBer and posted here first so we can archive it.

this is worthy tech but because it has been cut and pasted from another site I don't think we want to... at least not without permission.

Paul

 

Looks like it came directly from here:
http://www.streetrodding.com/sr/index.cfm?fuseaction=forum.discussion_detail&topicid=13159&forumid=6

.

 

Good looking insert. Enjoyed the tech.

 

Hey PJ,
Thanks for posting the great tech! I made one similar for a T bucket a few years back. I agree with the tech, it doesn't have to be near perfect to be mucho better than a piece of screen or expanded metal!

 

I did that with 1/4 round for the perimater and 5/16 for the bars. worked great!! I also built my own grill shell. came out ok.

jeff

 

Great tech,
Thanks for posting.

Jaypee

 

Maybe someone can explain,in English,
what the **** he's talking about,
with the "Fibonacci Number" ******** ?

Each number is the sum of the two previous numbers.

OK.And then what....... ?

 

Fibonacci sequence: every number is the sum of the previous two numbers.

1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89....

If you track the ratio of a number compared to the number preceeding it, it starts to converge to 1.618...

1/1 = 1
2/1 = 2
3/2 = 1.5
5/3 = 1.667
8/5 = 1.6
:

and so on. That number, 1.618, is sometimes called the "magic ratio", or "golden section". It pops up a lot in nature (like spiral expansion in shells), musical tones (ratio of Hz of a two notes), etc. Early artists and philosophers thought it had a Godlike quality, and they applied it in art and architecture -- for example, windows and doors are sometimes designed to this ratio; Height/Width = 1.618.

As I understand the grille bar spacing thing, he designed the spacing so that there is 1.618 units of space for unit of bar thickness; if the bars had a diameter of 0.25", he spaces 'em (0.25 x 1.618) inches apart.

 

Awesome tech....

 

If you took all the things that look "right" they would probably have that same ratio. It's like the balance you see but take for granted. kind of like trying to duplicate an egg, it only looks right if its in the exact proportion that the chicken made it. Its wierd but I tend to see it in a lot of ****.

 

oh, i get it......32 3w is divisible by 2....that gives you 1.6 something......that's why they are cool

cool tech....are there some pics missing.....

 

Didn't I mention Golden Ratio & Fibonacci sequence once, and it killed the thread?

 

My question is.....Why would you know that? Mike did you get beat up a lot in school?

 

Good stuff

 

Damn! Tech for math teachers with Model A s. Must be my lucky day

 

In the old days, we hid "Rod&Custom" inside a math text...now you geeks have gone and hidden a math text inside a rod article...
WTH??

 

Donald in Mathmagic Land has a great explanation of this stuff.

What? Everyone likes Donald Duck, right?

Slonaker

 

One time some playa haters from AP calculus got all up in my grill, dissin' my derivatives and sayin' my mantissas didn't represent. So I pulled I my slide rule and smacked them 400-SAT *****es wit my 4-dimensional pimp hand. And my pimp hand is strong, yo.

Here's another wacky thing about the golden section (sometimes called Phi):

1/Phi = Phi - 1

Try it!

Phi = 1.6180339887498948482045868343656

1/Phi = 0.6180339887498948482045868343656 = Phi - 1

 

I wonder how that ratio applies to chopped cars. Do the cars that are considered a "good" chop come close in the ratio of m*** above the beltlin to the m*** below it? Has this thing just got me thinking too hard?