Projects 50's Roadster Resurrection....

HAHA! nice one Malcolm! yeah, i held off for a long time so that i could get some of the basics taken care of. I'm now into the fun stuff and will be posting the transformation regularly....in the mean time i will continue with the "Felix and friends drunk in the garage on a sunday" instagram shots!

 

Thank you sir, I really appreciate the compliment.

 

no doubt,real nice hotrod,good luck with it...........

 

Everything about that roadster says traditional hot rod. Congrats on the find!

 

After I'd run the little roadster round the neighborhood for a few months I was finding it more and more difficult to keep it running in a healthy way. there was water in the oil, it was leaking more and more oil every run and I could not keep it cool. eventualy I got a big end knock and realized it was futile to go on. I dont know how long this flathead was in the car, I do know its been with this frame for a while so I want to be sensitive to the fact that i may be separating a large part of the cars history from its frame. as I was pondering this a killer deal on a 53 Merc flathead came up complete with Bog Warner 3 speed overdrive. some guy had decided he didnt want to deal with the stick in his Merc anymore and pulled the whole deal out to replace it with a 350/350 combo. This made up my mind. I pulled the old motor and put it aside for later and prepped the Merc for installation. Pulling the intake and the pan off revealed a very clean engine which spun over very smoothly with good compression. The Cylinder bores still had crosshatching visible so i ***ume it had been rebuilt not too long ago. It cleaned up nice and I decide to do a little bit of a clean up on the block casting. after a few nights of grinding and sanding I had smoothed all the ugly out of this motor and gave it a good coat of paint....I always wanted a gold engine and I knew this was the one. I had already sourced a Navaro intake from the cl***ifieds along with a couple of Rebuilt 94's and when my Headers arrived from Geardrive I couldn't resist a mock up.

 

couple of shots

 

having problems up loading shots I hope this works. here's the Merc mill as i found it and after a bit of a clean up, smooth out and dressed in gold and jewels

Felix

 

That flatty even looks faster in gold!!

Dave

 

I know what you mean Dave, I was so stoked once I got it to this stage. With headers on it just looked like it wanted to Go! My pal reckoned it looked like an early satellite so we nicknamed it Sputnik...... I would call the whole car that but it wouldn't make sense with '53 cut off date for the build

Felix

 

Progress has been slow on the Resurection what with new kitchen demanding Job and impending fatherhood taking up a lot of general life hours...but I have got a bit done recently. I got the motor in and sourced all the components for a trad looking fuel system, even got myself a hard line forming tool ready to fab up a fuel system and practiced on a couple of oil lines and brake lines. I bought a Moon Tank to go in behind the seat and thought i was ready to put all this stuff together. then came the crunch. I knew that the supports from the floor to the deck between driver compartment and trunk needed work but I had no idea how much. as i got into it i realized it was time to tear it out and start again. the deeper I went the worse it got. Once I pulled the old tank out I discovered that the floor was barely held in, there were gaping holes where the body was chanelled over the frame, there was rough, hacked metal everywhere and surprise surprise, the fuel line was just shoved through a jagged gash in the floor.

First the horror show as you can see i even found some ikea fasteners in there

 

it took me a little bit of time to figure out the best way to to proceed. I decided to remove the step altogether between the trunk floor and the ****pit floor with a flat sloping panel. and just make up a couple of filet pieces to box off the ends and tie trunk sub rails to those of the rest of the car...they weren't connected and instead had been bolted to the ch***is separately. I made up some card templates marked out some thicker steel than the floor and started bending and hammering until I had something that followed the contour of the frame and gave me a nice straight edge to weld a floor panel to. My welding is not great but practice makes perfect right? and its a hell of a lot better than the stuff that was there before..

 

you're doin' a good job on your ride

really the blue wheels made the difference

 

finally I had a structure in the floor that felt solid. and was tied to the sub rails. I've gotta point out at this point that I discovered that the p***enger side of the car was about 3/4 Inch out of alignment but the more i looked at it the more i realized that i would have to take the whole quarter off the car to correct that and i felt that was more than I could handle, you don't really notice the difference anywhere so I decided to make some allowances....this was never intended to be a Riddler build after all...just good and strong like a guy might have done it back in the day. I realized that just welding some sheet steel in to fill the hole in the floor wasn't going to cut it so i picked up a HF bead roller, marked out some lines to match the stampings in the trunk floor and got stuck in...kinda pleased with my first attempt and the panel is as stiff as a board...I welded in a length of square tube to stiffen the floor pan and give me a good crossmember to tie in to and after rosette welding it in I finally had a complete and solid floor from bullhead to trunk....

I also got a surprise from a new friend of mine and all time hero, Steve Caballero, we got to talking hot rods in a meeting at work and I invited him down to take a look....He loved it and it gave me a boost to keep cranking and get this thing back on the road

 

So here I am...finally got somewhere and I think I'm nearly ready to mount the tank. Last weekend I fabbed up a simple X section bulkhead brace and then fitted the back section of the seat base to it. The car is soooooo much stiffer now and I'm going to feel a hell of a lot safer in it now that I know what is holding it together. The one Think I need to figure out is the recess at the front of the trunk, behind the seat that I created. The tank will mount on two steel struts that will go from trunk floor to bulkhead and there'll be a handy storage space beneath it...I think thats probably gonna be great for a tool roll and other essentials....

 

what a great looking roadster. thanks for letting us follow along in the transformation. this is really motivating me to tear into my coupe, I have to make all the same improvments.

Jeff

 

Yeah Jeff, its been daunting. when i realized how bad the car i bought was I nearly just p***ed it along. but despite all the stuff wrong with it i felt there was something very special about it. I've never done any of this before so I'm kinda learning as I go along. Read a lot on the Hamb and I pay attention when ever i get a chance to see how the pro's do it....i guess i just tell myself if I get it wrong i can always cut it out and do it again.

 

dude, I just checked out your Bikes...those things are sick. I spend a lot of time in China and often wondered whether there is a market for customizing over there...car culture has accelerated soooo fast in the past decade in China. you do some rad work man.

 

seems to me you have attacked each issue the same way I look at it. I also plan on cutting out some offensive parts and re-engineer them, very similar to how you have done. I too used the merc overdrive trans.

 

I gave up on the overdrive trans Jeff, it was going to require too much chopping about of the K member for me to deal with so I just stuck with the 39 top loader for now....might still tackle that at a latter date.

 

Oh, I understand the decision. If my ch***is wasn't soo cut up from stock car days, I wouldn't have gone that route. But I do love overdrive, trying to keep up with Malcolm on the road.

Sent from my DROID device using the TJJ mobile app

 

Took a little time away from fab work to take care of a couple of other bits and pieces I knew needed doing before I could fire this Merc motor up. I scored a nice Navarro intake and a couple of rebuilt 94's here on the HAMB last year and new I needed to takle that old PCV conundrum. After tial fitting the intake I was relieved to find that the oil fill tube had a lovely pressure fit straight into the manifold..this would give a direct crank case vent so i scrounged through the PCV's at O'Reilly's up the street from me to find an older looking metal one that might work vertically. I drilled and tapped a whole directly over the fill tube and then fitted an insert into one of the intake runners in the same manor. with a little bit of rubber oil line and a couple of br*** clamps I ended up with what I hope will be a functioning PCV set up with out it looking out of place or too modern. Of course, I'm open to opinions as to whether it will actually work or not.

 

Love the roadster, Felix...I would have bought it too, (I've bought and repaired more than my share since the '50s)

Any chance of raising the rear about 2-3" and radius the rear tire with the well?
Just a suggestion...(maybe set the floor jack under the rear with a towel, and raise it 'til you love it? LOL)

Like I said, just a suggestion...

 

Mike, that's the plan. It just sits a little low, I want the swage line of he wheel well to line up or be just a hair above the tire.....

 

First the horror show as you can see i even found some ikea fasteners in there[/QUOTE]

The Robertson screw is a Canadian fastener. Ford used Robertson screws on their Canadian production Model T's and A's and I have to tell you they are a lot easier to take apart than slot screws. Robertson was a Canadian patent and the USA wouldn't pay the patent fees for usage so you guys invented the torx.

Back to the car, nice job on redoing it. They never are the way you would build them, but you will end up with the car you wanted, just keep up the good work.

Oh, by the way, I ended up with the original dropped axle from that frame. It was an original 37-41 Ford axle dropped 2 inches by the first speed shop in Vancouver, BC. Blackie Green did the axle in the 50's. Pat

 

Here is a pic of your car several years ago when it still had the deuce body still on it and the axle I have.

 

Pat, Thanks for the info....just ***umed that it was an ikea fastener cos it was the only one i found, it was holding one piece of interior trim in a non tapped hole and the standard of the rest of the car made me feel that was likely source of hardware...

Now, the Axle you have is interesting as I was led to believe that I have the same axel....actually it was one of the main selling points of the car to me rather than get pissed i'm just finding it even funnier.

would love to see some photo's of the axle...just so I know what i don't have

 

I hadn't heard the torx connection before - but when Henry wouldn't pay Mr. Roberson to use his screw (Roberson wasn't willing to give up the patent), in stepped Mr. Philips who would... Felix, if you find a Robertson screwdriver you will wish Henry had ponied-up for the square hole screw - none better!!

p.s. Any dash parts leftover?

Dave

 

Hi Dave, actually I was gonna drop you a line. I scored a complete dash so would be willing to part with everything I have collected over the past couple of years....drop me a PM and we can discuss it.

 

Finally got my tank mocked up today. Decided to rotate the Moon brackets through ninety degrees and hang it off the X frame to get it in the right spot. It seems a shame to hide the castings but they were designed to be functional right?.....now just got to figure out the filler tube so that the vintage, cast, flip top filler cover doesn't end up sitting in the middle of the deck and I'll be ready to weld it all strong, paint the whole wack, and add fire and fuel to the Merc mill!!!!!

 

photo's....