Hot Rods Mart's three month 33 5W Survivor project

What a great car and documentation... Thanks alot for sharing this with us, Mart!!


Malcolm

 

Looking good I like

 

Mart, is there anything you can't do? Such great inventive problem solving and ingenuity! You are an inspiration to all of us backyard wrenchers!

 

Hey, I don't know if there is a USA direct equivalent, it does look later than the rounded Contour model, maybe the USA (NOT UK) Fusion??

But, as the saying goes, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and he will be fed for life.

I showed the process to make the template, just try it and you might find something similar off a completely different model.

Thanks for the kind words.

Mart.

 

I have a louvered top insert from Walden's and I am going to use this tech for mounting my insert am also going to use colored lexan inside to keep the wind and rain out . I should be able to seal it up good. Great idea on the top. Thanks

 

Looks great, I love the insert, wish I could fix my 34 like that but the opening is totally ruined by whoever it was that butchered the car all those decades ago.

 

Mart - great work on the top and the steering. You are showing some real hot rod ingenuity here!

 

Yeah, Nads, in your case you'd do better to just find a suitable panel and weld it in place.

Mart.

 

Had to come back and look at this thread again. I am heading down to the metal place to pick up my flatbar. I hope I can find a similiar piece of strap to your 15x5 mm piece. I am so going to use this idea. I'll post my progress on my thread. Thanks

 

Got my flat strap and started scraping out the old black gunk.

 

Cool!

Ok, an update on the steering conversion.

It's GREAT!

I just took the car for a 10 mile drive on a mixture of roads and the improvement is fantastic!

Well worth the effort an time taken to do the swap, and in reality it was fairly cheap.

Shame there aint more rhd bits knocking about.

Mart.

 

Damn you do good work. Very impressive and a cool car!

 

Love it, Mart! Very clever work, indeed.
Nads, I'm PMing you with details on how to weld a corvair coupe top into a butchered 33-34 coupe.

 

Mart this is a great inspiration for my wornout 32 steering, as i've got a spare 47 steeringbox. Great work mate !

 

Thanks Lads.

I have been chipping away at some little jobs after doing the steering conversion. I removed the toeboard to do the steering and while it was out I wanted to tie up some loose ends in that area.

Anyone that has sat in my car will remember the hole in the floor (actually the trans cover) where your heel goes. That was what I wanted to fix, so I removed the cover. I'd only put a couple of bolts in, so it came out easily.

I had done the repair before taking any pics, but here's the repaired trans cover.


And here are the rusty parts cut out and replaced with sound metal.

I didn't bother cutting out the steady rod bolt access notch, as I don't have one on the drivers side.

I ran a tap through all the trans cover attachment holes and sorted out some original ford bolts and used washers to reattach it.

But before that there was a couple of other little jobs. I removed the trans cover and drilled out the dowel hole to 7.5mm. I ground out the slot in the shifter until the shank of a 7.5mm drill just passed along the groove and made a new pin from a piece cut from the same drill, the part just above the flutes, which is harder than the end of the shank.

Amazingly the cap unscrewed bu just grasping it with a cloth and turning it by hand. I was expecting all sorts of aggro getting it undone.

The reduction in side to side play of the gearstick was quite remarkable. It was pretty sloppy before.

While the lid was off I drained the oil. The gears were quite rusty and a lot of the rust had come off and discoloured the oil. I refilled it through the open top which is by far the easiest way. I used sae 140 non ep. The gears looked pretty good, nice and shiny despite some slight pitting.

I'll probably give bit another flush through in the future.

I put the lid back on and made a note of the trans number. Just because I could while the toe board was off and I wouldn't be able to do it after it was refitted. The case is later - 1941 - and I'm guessing it was from a pickup -(Passenger cars were side shift) so doesn't match the car. Why someone put early gears in a later case I do not know.


I then refitted the toeboard, temporarily for now. I got my son to sit in the car and press it down while I put some screws in from the engine bay side. Later I'll remove it, drill the holes out and screw it in from the inside. I had to do it this way round to locate the holes.

You can see his footprints, because guess what? It was pouring with rain at the time.


So little bit by bit, I'm fixing the little things that need doing.

I'm enjoying myself.

Mart.

 

Good work, Mart. It is coming along!

 

Thanx Mart ! Fun thread to follow

Klaz

 

What an interesting read. Love the work you did on the coupe. Quite a few ingenious ideas. Thanks for the pics and posting. The coupe is looking awesome.

 

Mart, What a great thread. Having just caught this for the first time today I will consider it a very nice Christmas gift. Read it from start to date. Very good work. A tribute to attitude and stick with it mixed with a lot talent. Thank you and have a Merry Christmas from Oklahoma.

 

Well, I am impressed.

I live right next to Chatham in Rochester, next time pop in here for a cuppa tea if you want.

Love your story telling and the way you explain stuff.

I tend to feel I post too much detail on my various build threads but looking at yours, maybe they are OK, because I love learning from others, so hopefully people find mine helpful, like my Teardrop Trailer build:

http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=othrmod&action=display&thread=67389

I will be watching your build closely.

Thanks for posting.

 

Hi Mart.Sweet ride.Love the write up and picture details.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

Looks Great Mart

 

great build thread. the detailed pictures are great! that car is bitchin!! i would lke to see more pics of your pedals and how your clutch rod and stuff all works.

 

very nice job !!!

 

Any updates Mart?

 

One thing that had been bugging me on my coupe was a slight tendency to bump steer, or even worse, "roll" steer. There are traffic calming measures on my road in the shape of raised junctions. The car would give a little kick to one side as it went up the bump and a slightly bigger kick the other way as it dropped off the other side of the bump. Also when trying to drive fast down a country lane as I wind some steering on and start to turn right, lets say, as the body rolls to the left, the steering pulls harder to the right. Not good. It was a bit of a handful on the twisty stuff, requiring constant attention and correction.

I had an idea what was causing the problem. Hers's a pic to illustrate.



Ok, it would have been better taken from the side, but you can see that the drag link runs uphill from the pitman arm end to the steering arm ball. The steering arm is straight, and the ball is fitted sticking up, so the drag link attachment is quite high. All this is made worse, of course by the dropped axle. Fitting a dropped axle does cause a big list of knock-on effects.

I decided to invert and drop the steering arm. That meant that the drag link would no longer fit, as the end would be the wrong way up. As I needed to modify the drag link I decided to make it adjustable using the end of a track rod. A drag link has two different ends, one the same as a track rod end, and the other one is the opposite way around. This means one end has the shock absorbing spring for compressive loads, the other end has a spring for tensile loads. So I used the otherwise scrap drag link that was on the coupe when I got it, and cut the end off that was the opposite of a track rod end, and took a bent track rod and straightened enough of it to give me enough to make a drag link.

I drilled out the track rod tubing to about 12mm and turned down the drag link shaft so it pressed into the drilled out end of the track rod tube. I cleaned it thoroughly and welded it on full power with the mig. I then drilled and made a couple of rosette welds through the tube into the shaft of the drag link end. This is a highly critical weld so don't try this at home unless you are either confident of your own abilities or have a certified welder prepared to do it for you. Aussies would not be allowed to do this.

So the steering arm was heated and bent to give a drop, a new ball was fitted and the drag link built up and fitted.

Here's a shot from the front:


You can see the drag link end is about 4 inches (or more) lower than it was. What you can't see so easily is that the alignment is better, the drag ling sits on the ball more readily, without binding. Everything travels through the full range from lock to lock without fouling or binding.

And here's a shot from the side:


Although I do not have a "before" shot for comparison, you can see this angle is perfectly reasonable.

I took it for a road test and I could feel straight away that the "edginess" had gone, and the tendency to dart to the side over the raised sections was gone too, I could ride the bumps hands off and it just goes straight. The first road test showed me that the drag link length needed adjusting as the steering wheel was not centred. A couple of iterations of adjustment followed by a quick run around the block got that dialed in. Having the sweet spot on the box properly aligned to straight ahead driving seems to make it that little bit better.

So a good improvement for what amounted to a couple of afternoons worth of work. Now it's dialed in I can go around and fit the splitpins and regrease and go out and enjoy the improved driving experience.

Mart.

 

Great thread. Thanks