Am I making any mistakes with the design and construction of this Model A frame? Help before I start welding it together. Have the main rails cut from 2x5x.125 tube. Front X-member is a Deuce Factory replica. Centre x-mbr is a 2x2 tube dropped in the centre 2 to mount the rear wishbones and a driveshaft loop. Rear Spring will mount in a replica inverted U channel. . Front and rear facing K members will be 1 ½ rectangular tube angling down as close as possible to the pivot point of the rear wishbones. Transmission mount will be mounted off the front K members. (Frame shows up as BLACK in attached drawing) Front axle is a 4 drop located by split 41 wishbones. Rear axle is located by 35 rear wishbones and 2 torque struts from front of arms to top of differential. Rear spring is a 41 Merc front spring. Steering is cross steer using a Saginaw 122 box. (Control arms show up as RED in attached drawing)
Very nice design work. Just a couple of considerations that you may or may not have already considered: 1. Panhard bars may be beneficial at both ends. 2. Do you know where the exhaust will go? (My buddy does exhaust for a living, and I can't tell you how many times I have heard him complain about people that don't design in enough space to run the tubes and mufflers....) That is just what came to mind. I am sure the resident geniuses will have more comments soon......
I used the 35 rear radius rods on my 35 Ford pickup. Do NOT think they will have any effect on torque. They are incredibly weak! I put my 350/350 in gear and the 35 radius rods WRAPPED AROUND THE AXLE---at IDLE!! I added ladder bars. I used one Heim joint located under the front u-joint. A long bolt goes thru the heim end for both radius rods and ladder bars ends. The ladder bars are black pipe from Home Depot. I have pulled heavily overloaded trailers thru 4 states for 5 years with NO problems. Once my overloaded truck sank to the axles. The tires dug deep ruts but my radius rod/ladder bar connection has held up with no problem.
Uhmm that has got to be the most serious thought ought frame I have ever seen. Looks great but definatley required a college edujumacation. Good luck with your frame it looks great,
All Bosses are ***holes. It must be some unwritten rule in Nature.***********Unkl Ian You are right. Ideally, Man is in charge of himself. Giving up responsibility for yourself to government or a business is a perversion of Nature.
Panhard bars are definately in the plan, juist waiting to see how much room is available in real life. The exhaust should have room to go over the centre x-mbr and the radius rods with the muffler between the radius rods and drive shaft. Hopefully
Hopefully the 2 torque bars running from the front of the rear wishbones to the top of the diff pumpkin will help, I hope.
If the rear axle tubes are welded to the '35 wishbones securely, you don't really need the torque struts. Omitting them will leave much more room for the mufflers and pipes. The front K member doesn't need to be so close to the transmission. The forward end could attach to the frame at the point where the front running board bracket is attached thereby allowing much more access without any real loss of strength or torsional rigidity. The Wescotts catalog has some nice blueprints of the early Ford frames that are really useful when constructing a frame from scratch. Happy welding and keep a level head. (Frame too.) pigpen Manyoldcars may have had a bad set of radius rods, possibly degraded due to internal corrosion. I've always found them to be pretty tough. Then again, they were designed to work with the torque tube, which you are not using, which acts like a torque strut also. Some beefing to the radius rods may be in order or go with a new four bar setup. The stock transverse spring also resists w****** up the rear end.
Like the idea on the front K member. Was not going to make them until I have the brake pedal ***embly and master cylinder in place to see how much room there is. Using a 48 F1 ***embly.
Nice drawing! Did you scale dimensions off acutal parts? You may want to check your pedal swing next to that bell housing and clutch mechanism. Looks like when you push on the pedal it will interfere. Mine is real tight through there. I had to switch to a hydraulic throwout bearing to eliminate the clutch fork. A cool type of device that eliminates the front pan hard bar is a center pin on the axle that rides in a slot attached to the center of the cross member. Just bolt a plate with a slot in it to the bottom of the spring perch. Here is as far as I got with my ACAD plan! oh well
All dimensions were taken off parts I am going to use, so if not exact they are very close. Brake pedals may require some modification to fit, knew that. May not end up using a standard trans, but would like to keep the pedal set up so could be changed at a later date. All depends on whether I score a good 4 or 5 speed. Interesting idea on the panhard replacement. Remember seeing that somewhere.
Frames rails jigged up and ready to tack in the front and centre crossmembers and start fabricating the kickup over the rear axle. Front spreader bar made and installed. Thanks for the advise.
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