I'm baaaaaaccccckkkkkkk... After getting rid of a few things in my basement, tearing down what passed as my spray booth, and moving a few bikes upstairs I have enough room to work on this thing again. No guarantees but I'm hoping to get back into the swing and make some progress before the summer is over. I decided today that I can't figure out the details of the seat, the pedals, or the steering if I don't know where my feet are going to be, so I worked on the floor. I probably could have gotten the plywood one done if I hadn't fallen asleep when I got home from work, but so be it. I got the first version of the cardboard template done. I normally wouldn't even bother posting such a small step, but it's the first progress in ages and I need all the motivation I can get. Right now I just have a piece of plywood fit to the stock seat riser, and I tossed a couple deck chair cushions on there. Still haven't figured out the final solution for a seat but ya gots ta start somewhere. I was hoping to use the stock riser with a (much nicer) seat pad but now I'm thinking it will be too tall. I'll probably end up pulling the riser and starting from the floor. And then the floor template. Pretty close for a first stab. I'll tweak it a little then figure out the kick panel up front. It looks like the pedals will need to be shortened and probably bent a little but I should have enough room for a gas pedal too so that's a plus. Can't figure that one out until the kick panel is done. Looks like I won't need to do a transmission tunnel but as I'm typing this I realized I have the body mounted higher than it should be. Oops... I'll have to fix that before I do template v2.0.
Great to see you back at it, Craig. Since you have more than stock foot room you can sit much Lower. As for the kick panel you need to make it as thin as you can so you have room between it and the steering column for your left foot. As for a seat riser, check my 26 T #1 album on page two of my albums, may give you an idea. Looking forward to future progress. JW
I've got the plywood floor in for now. The wood scrap on the upper left is just to hold the pedals up for photos. I think it will likely lose most of the front 6" or so once I get the front panel done, but I didn't get started on that yet because I got distracted. The distraction: A while back I was trying to figure out the clutch actuation. When I bought the transmission it had a lever right next to the case. This picture wasn't meant to show that but it works. When I put the pedals in, the clutch pedal had it's pushrod connection on the left. So... I got another shaft for the transmission along with all the stuff to move the transmission shaft's lever to the left. That kinda sorta got things where they needed to be, but the linkage between the two wasn't straight forward, the levers weren't oriented correctly etc... Yesterday I was looking through one of Tardel's books and saw him using a 1939 pedal assembly that had the clutch pushrod lever on the right side of the pedal assembly. This looked like a good solution, then I found out the repro '39 pedal assy's are $275, which is more than I cared to throw at it right now. But I got to thinking that I could extend the shaft on one of my pedal assemblies, pin a lever on the right side, and go with the original transmission shaft. All I'd need would be a new shaft, a lever, and a couple bushings. When I got to looking at it today trying to figure out what I'd need, it occured to me I already had everything right there. Well, mostly anyway. If I cut the left side of the clutch pedal off I'd have a lever arm, and since I was only moving the arm from one side to the other, the current shaft would be long enough. Plus, the right side already had a hole for a pin. If I drilled the lever arm for a pin, got a couple pedal bushings, reamed the pedal housing so they'd fit in there, and then slide it all together... why wouldn't that work? Once I get the linkage worked out and figure out where the pedal needs to be, I can mark the orientation on the shaft, pull it all apart, and then weld it to the clutch pedal. Here's the current set up. Not a great picture but you can see how the lever arms aren't oriented the best. Here's the set up with the split clutch pedal I'm sure I'm not the first one to try this, so someone tell me why this won't work before I put more time into it. I'm not sure if the new lever will line up with the transmission shaft lever, but it should be pretty close. Famous last words... EDIT: In the last photo the lever is backwards. The cut edge will face out so the original edges will always be towards where things are moving. I spent some time trying to figure out how to cut the pedal square, then realized it wasn't all that critical if I oriented the parts right, so I ended up freehanding it. If I drill a couple more holes in the shaft I can tap into the grease supply so the fitting on the end will still be functional.
I got a temporary front panel down for the floorboards and then rememebred I STILL haven't dropped the body down where I want it. No big deal for where I'm at right but I really have to do that before I go further. For a proof of concept though it works fine. I'm now thinking my seat needs to be about 2" lower. Maybe more? The highlight of the day for me though was when I put the modified pedal assembly in and did some rough measurements. From what I can tell, the lever on the pedal and the lever on the trans will be within about 1/8" to 1/4" off of inline with each other. And I can make that up by shaving some off the lever I cut from the pedal. Woo freaking hoo, assuming I don't run into an issue trying to put bushings in the frame for the pedals, this will be a cheap/easy fix for something that I wasn't sure how to make work. Cell phone pic, the angles look weird but in real life it looks fine. The shaft I need to install in the trans is on the floor.The lever on the pedal is backwards too, installing it the other way around moves it into a better position.
I got home from work to find my wife and my dog were both somewhere else, so I headed downstairs to see how far I could get switching out the shaft in the transmission. Ended up pulling the engine and trans together instead of proving I could pull the transmission by itself. Didn't get everything buttoned back up again, but got far enough to see how things will work. The geometry isn't what I'd call ideal but I think it'll be good enough for who it's for.
The pedals needed to be shortened about an inch and a half. I could swear I saw this offset cut method in a Tardell book but can't find it now. In any case it makes sense to me this will be a lot stronger than a straight cut so that's what I did. I welded the clutch lever at home but tacked the brake lever and took it in to work. Bigger welder, more talented operator...and yes, I beveled the ends on everything first. Speaking of welders, I finally stepped out of the stone age. I've been lusting after a TIG for years but it finally sank in a MIG made more sense. I'll still gas weld some things I suppose but MIG certainly is faster/easier for a lot of things. I also tacked the clutch pedal onto the shaft so I now have a working assembly. I think I screwed up when I tacked it though... I'll need to cut and re-index it I'm afraid. Oh well, that's what tack welds are for! I still have to ream the bracket out for bushings since the shaft now moves. I welded up the old grease holes and drilled new ones in the right spots on that. New bushings showed up yesterday but I'll wait until I'm going to paint it before I tear into it again. Now that I have pedals and a floor I started trying to mock up the seating and steering wheel postions. Yeah... I haven't come up with a combination that works yet. If I put everything where I can drive the car, I can't get in or out of it. Hmm... I've been playing around with wheel position. Can't be too high or my hands will hit the windshield. Too low and cant' get in. Too far away and I can't reach it when seated. Too close and I can't get past it when getting in or out. As for windshields, apparently I have a frame for a coupe or something? Oops... It still works to get an idea where the glass will be. I've figured out the seat base needs to be removed and the new seat should be maybe an inch lower and not as deep. Maybe a removable steering wheel? I'm rethinking the bear claw door latches, wouldn't the post make it even harder to get in?
It looks like a Model A Roadster windshield frame. I like your thinking about column placement and angle, that makes the car more enjoyable to drive. Keep up the good work Frank
Your progress is looking good. This may be of use, my seat base made of 2 mm sheet and bolted together. What set the height was to clear my battery box and i wanted at tool etc storage place. As for the steering wheel position, i can only say what i did, but it is something that needs to be worked out with everything else. I don't know how tall yo are but being able to use the peddles without you knees getting tangled in the wheel is paramount. The lower i sat the higher my knees were and having very thin seat back helped a lot. As for getting in an out, i can do it by screwing myself around the wheel. Mounting the gas peddle in the right place was last and took a lot of working out to make flow in regard to the brake peddle. JW
I've pretty much decided I'll be building my own seat and riser so yeah, riser info is useful. Thanks. I looked at what it takes to remove the factory seat riser, and realized when I do that I'll also be taking out some of what's left of the structure on this thing. Long story short, I think it's time to rebuild the body. I have no idea what I'm doing there, but it has to happen at some point so what the heck. The plan is to replace the missing wood structure with metal. I guess I'll start from the front and work my way back, reinforcing the cowl first? I also still want to fit bearclaw door latches. Time to look over a few other builds to see how other people have done this. I'll probably order a "universal fit" '32 dash from Brookville and fit that up while I'm messing with this too. Then once I get the body in line, I might be ready to do the turtle deck. THAT'S going to be a pain. At least with the body I kinda sorta know what I want to do. Not so much with some areas of the turtle deck. Well, I have one idea I'm looking in to... but it's too early to talk about yet. I wanted to keep making progress while I thought about how to attack the body, so I modified the front shock mounts and bolted them in place. I had been putting that off for at least a year for whatever reason, buying a welder gave me incentive I guess. I know it looks like it's leaned back too far, but I measured both sides multiple times before welding, and they are laid back 6 degrees relative to the frame, which is about where the axle will be too. No, really, I know they look wrong but by my logic that's where they should be. I was literally tripping over things when I was trying to get those done so the next step is to clean the basement, but then I'm jumping in to the bodywork. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.
You can use some thin wall tubing to hold the body in alignment before removing the seat riser. It can be a pain to work around at times, but will insure that your sheetmetal will still be where you want it when you are finished. It may be heplful to also build some adjustability into you temporary bracing, and you will want to triangulate it as much as possible, without beating your brains out over it. Being temporary, you can also remove and replace it if neccessary, or redesign it as needed.
Here we go. Looking things over, some areas aren't as scary as I thought, others are a little worse. I was looking at the hinges on the passenger door, and the lower one seemed to be a little tweaked. It seemed to me that if I bent things a little here and there I could make the door close better. Yep, it didn't close all the way before but close like a champ now, with an evven gap along the rear edge. Well, it's even if I flex the body a little. There's going to be a lot of measuring to do before I brace thing up. Stress cracks on each side of the body are something I glossed over previously, but I'll have to address them at some point. I think I'll weld them up with oxy/acetylene?Not sure why, just seems like a better idea than trying to MIG them. Starting from the front, I'm thinking the subframe will be the first thing to address since it holds the body mount. Gotta get the body mounted solidly before trying to align anything. And to make getting to the subframe easier I may as well cut the rusted body away. I started with the "bad" side and as expected the rust was worse than it looked. I was hoping to cut a patch out of the patch panel, but it looks like I'll have to use the whole thing and then some. It's a touch too short for one thing (from firewall to door) but also the body metal is so thin in spots I'm thinking I may overlap the joint instead of tryig to do a butt joint like I wanted? There is still some cutting and thinking to do here. The subframe is pretty trashed. Got to start somewhere though. I removed the dash also. The replacement (A Brookville "universal fit" '32 dash) is supposed to show up tomorrow and I'm curious as to how much work that's going to be to fit in there. In other news I figured out that bear claw latches won't fit in these doors, so I'll be using the stock set up.
Cool plan. I haven't had any issues with the original latches. When you do the body mounts, leave room to have shims, this is how you align the doors. JW
If that's as bad as the subframe is, you're in good shape. I ended up lucking out and finding one on epay when I decided to abandon my DIY effort. My original subframe is REALLY bad. I will probably not need the back 2' of it so if the back end of yours is garbage, shoot me a PM.
The body mounts will all have stackable rubber shims under them so that shouldn't be an issue. I have one door that will need work to mount the stock latch mechanism but nothing major. Good to hear you haven't had issues with them. I'm more concerned with the lone bullet hole (do they ALL have at least one bullet hole?) and the lack of the bottom of the inner panel on the driver's door. Actually I'm mostly concerned with welding the patch panels on with all the rust pitting in the original steel, but that's going to be a different post. That is the worst part of the subframe so I should be good. Luckily I just have to get a couple things held in the correct position, I don't have to copy how anything looks. The other side isn't as bad, and as you move back both sides get better. Thanks for the offer though!
The dash showed up yesterday so I played around with that a little. I know the '32s are wider than my car but I've seen comments on how the dash can be trimmed to fit. I guess I thought the top was all that got cut but not surprisngly, no. It's too wide to fit the car as is. So here's how the embossed part of the stock dash compares to the '32 dash. There is roughly a 3" difference. I noticed one of the corners on the new stamping isn't as defined as the other, but decided it's not enough to matter to me. If that's the biggest issue people can find on this thing, I'll be happy. I was having second thoughts about doing this, but couldn't think of anything better. The stock dash is too small... so what the heck. Tape is about as wide as the flanges on the stock dash so I used that as a guide. This is what the ends of the dash would look like behind the cowl if I just lop the ends off. Not the end of the world, but not what I had in mind either. I thought about how to take about 3" out of this thing and here's what I came up with. On the top I'll take it out of the middle. On the bottom I'd take it out of the only sections of the outline that are relatively straight. In my mind this will preserve the most height of the dash, will still fit the stock cowl, and won't destroy the curves on the bottom. The two circles on the top are the center hole on the cowl, laid out from each side. As in, the dash has to be narrowed enough to bring those two circles together. That's a lot of welding... at least it's new metal. The gauges will cover/cut out some of the seams too, especially if I go with an insert. It's doable. I traced an outline of the dash on paper use as a mock up for the cuts, but I wanted to scan it at work first so I can print out another one if the cuts don't work on the mock up.
Be advised that lap welded v butt welded body panels have a tendency to show a shadow of the lapped area. It bothers some folks (Im one), but not some others. You may also want to look into panel bonding adhesives, I can't think of a better place to try that than over some thin, pitted sheetmetal.
Something along these lines I guess. Now the fun starts. I think I need to practice welding a little before I dive in though. I'll give the new MIG set up a shot on some scrap but suspect I'll end up doing the dash with oxy/acetylene. I need to buy some gas lines for me gas saver so I can set the torch down without having to mess with the settings every time I start it back up.
Yeah, I bought some new hoses for my gas set up, but the MIG tack welding was going so well I continued on with that. After getting the two sides tacked together I put a couple of rods in the lower radius to hold the edges in position and started fitting the middle section FWIW this is about what needed to be cut off of the center to get everything to fit. After a lot of cutting and screwing around to get it to fit how I wanted, I tacked it in with the MIG. I was going to switch over to oxy/acetylene but the tackign was working pretty well so I pressed on. Then it wasn't working well. No idea what changed but I started having issues and then started blowing holes in the dash. I hadn't changed any settings, didn't think I was doing anything differently, but after changing a few settings and trying it out on some scrap, I blew another hole in the dash and decided I was done for the day. Edit: Forgot to mention. When I was doing some practice runs before welding the dash, I took some of the rusty metal I cut off the body, cleaned it up and tried to weld it to new metal. It worked great, so that was a nice surprise. I was expecting issues with the pitted metal but didn't see any. As for the issues I had today, I read up on it and think it was a combination of things, mostly too fast wire speed added to moving too slow and not having the torch at a good angle.
And the punchline is, I bought some gauges a long time ago. From a '39 Ford. They're too big to fit the dash. As is the gauge panel that was my second choice. Oops. Looks like I'll be buying new gauges, probably aftermarket, and they will not be in the typical 5 guage panel.
I've been looking at gauges and think I'll probably hit the "Easy" button and get a a set of the current Stewart Warner "Wings". I'd prefer a 100mph speedo over a 160mph one, but so be it. I spent some time after work figuring out how to group them to fit on the dash and came up with this (along with an "inline" version I don't like as much) The circles are what I think the OD of the bezels are. Obviously might need some tweaking once I have them in hand. I may try fitting a tach in there too, but I'm afraid if I add it to this set up it will put the speedo (or tach) behind the steering wheel rim. I may just put a tach on the steering column if I decide to go with one.
I ordered new door latches for a '27 Roadster. They came in and I discovered I have doors that used the odd "pyramid" style latches so what I ordered won't work without a lot of mods to the door. The good news is, I came across a post where someone shows that '28 roadster door latches will work. The great news there is, they cost about half what the '27 latches did. Subframe progress. I thought I'd be further along by now but life happens. Here's what the original looked like: The metal was gone where the body mount attaches so it didn't provide much stability. I cut out what I thought would be good but found out the top surface was rustier than I thought. I'll cut out more on the driver's side. I don't have a metal brake so I improvised. Yeah it's hard to figure out what's going on there. Basically I clamped the patch panel to some metal plates and beat it with a hammer. And this is where I'm at so far. I'm surprised how fast the new metal rusted. The piece I cut the patch from isn't nearly as rusty after sitting around for a lot longer. I must have cleaned/burned off whatever oil was left on it or something. I have the new brace made too but didn't get it put in this weekend. I have to clean the rust off the firewall first. The plan is to weld it to teh subframe and bolt it to the firewall in case I need to move anything as I progress. Right or wrong, I'm going to position it by flexing the cowl until the door fits the best. I've added a body tab on the frame so I can use the original mounting hole on the subframe, and put the body mountpads in position. Now with a slight tweak of the cowl, the door lines up to the rear part of the body pretty nicely. Yeah, I'll measure things as a reality check but I'm basically going to make the body fit the frame and see if it works out. I want to get this side done before I start on the other side so I don't completely lose the original positioning of everything. I also spent more time screwing with the dash. I got a chunk of aluminum that should be just big enough to cut out two dash panels if I don't screw it up. Those are just pictures of gauges BTW, I'm reading that people are having issues with SW electronic speedos? I'm not sure Autometer would be any better? Also if I get an electronic Autometer speedometer, it'll have digital numbers for the miles. That's a showstopper for me... As much as I'd like to order gauges I'll hold off for now and let the toy fund recover a bit while I look into my options.
Started the day off "finishing" the subframe and brace on the passenger front. I tacked the brace to the subframe and bolted the brace to the firewall in case I need to do any adjustements when I get into fixing this; I had only planned on getting that far today but I started sort of early and next thing ya know I was tearing the quarter panel off the car. When I bought it this was my biggest worry about the project. No idea how I was going to fix it, way outside my experience with this stuff. But, today was the day to just start doing it. The passenger side door closes pretty well now that the front end is bolted up. The driver's side is a mess. The post is bent/twisted/rusted and the door doesn't come anywhere near closing. I just started unbolting things and basically tearing rusty metal until it was free. Here's what I tore off. Yeah... I'm pretty sure the bracket is supposed to be straight and at 90 degrees to the post... And a whole bunch of hours later than I was planning I stopped at the "What the hell have I done now?" stage. The good news is I don't have a beat up quarter panel anymore? I know this doesn't seem like much to the guys who can build these things in their sleep, but it's a pivitol part of the project to me. For years I've been wondering how the heck I'm going to fix this. I hope this doesn't stall me for months/years, it's been known to happen with this stuff. And when this is done, I can stress about my NEW number one worry. How the heck am I going to make a flat (reproduction) decklid work with an arched tulip panel? I have confirmed it's the lid that's wrong, not the turtle deck.
Mindover, here on the HAMB, has a pretty good video that you may find helpful in your panel shaping quest. I got one back in 2012 or so. Funny thing, but the last I knew nobody was reproducing those panels, and I would think there would be a market for them.
That does look a task and a half to repair that. You may get lucky and find one in better shape, also i remember some years back that a tulip patch panel was available....i just can't think of where from. JW
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