Hot Rods bringing my Model A pickup back after the fire

I had painted the steering arms and was assembling them when i noticed just how close a grease zerk fitting was to the steering arms. I noticed this when the zerk broke off as I tightened the steering arms.

 

But the stub of the grease zerk came out easily with a very small E-Z Out. It spun right out by hand! I couldn’t believe it.

 

And I got my new front tires mounted. I finally decided to go with the 1935 Ford wires rather than the 60s slotted mags. And those are 5.50-16 Excelsior radials.

 

I decided to do a cable style clutch setup, so I got an early mustang pedal box. I wasn’t too keen on it for this application, and found a pedal box for a first- gen Bronco.

 

I don’t know why everyone isnt using these. Simple design, good size and uses what looks like mustang parts. Or so I thought.
I had a mustang kit for a roller bearing conversion, but almost nothing fit.
So here’s what I did. I milled out the pedal pivot to .815 in order to install the roller bearings.

 

I greased the rollers and reassembled the pedals. The pivot shaft on the early bronco is the same diameter, but longer.
The fit was good, but there was some side-to-side play in the clutch pedal, so I fit some bronze shims that I found at a local hardware store.

 

So now I have early Bronco pedals, a mustang T10 4 speed trans, and a clutch cable kit from a fox-body. but it’s all Ford stuff, so it’ll all just fall together in the Model A, right?
I just got a clutch and have had the flywheel resurfaced, so I will start mocking it all together soon.

 

Fun to see the 289 going in your rebuild.

 

I have a clutch, I have a flywheel, and I have a bellhousing. Beanscoot had said I might have a truck bellhousing, and it might be deeper than a car bellhousing.
It is definitely not aluminum, it’s cast iron. But measurements I took seem to sync up w the depth of the trans input shaft.

 

It looks like the pilot bushing will match up completely with the input shaft .

 

I thought I would mock up the rest of the clutch and start to figure out how to get the cable linkage to fit.

I didn’t get far.

I could only get one bolt started because the bolt circle is 12 and 1/4 on the flywheel. The clutch is a 10 inch, so has bolt holes in a circle only about 11 inches in diameter.

Bad news/ Good news: My clutch wont fit.
But I can put in an 11 inch clutch that has more capacity.

 

I wound up buying a great Ford Motorsport billet flywheel. I installed it with the 11 inch McLeod clutch. It’s a diaphragm style so I can convert to a cable style clutch linkage. And it uses 3/8” bolts instead of the 1/4” bolts used in the 10 inch clutch. So I’m feeling good about that.

But I’m still struggling with fitting those 35 ford wires. The back of the wheels were just making contact with my calipers.

 

I had already modified adapters ( the center bore was too small) and got a good fit, but as it turns out they don’t move the mounting point of the wheel quite far enough either.

 

So a friend of mine made some spacers from aluminum plate. Really nice. 1/4 inch thick.

 

they sandwiched between the face of the hub and the adapter.

 

I thought they turned out great.

 

But I have one side very close and one side just kissing the caliper. I thought the interference was less than 1/8 inch but 1/4 inch spacers werent quite enough.
Has anyone else had trouble adapting for the 35 Ford wire wheels? I really wanted to do disc brakes and Ford wires.

But I do have a Plan B

 

Thicker spacer, those look a little thin anyway.

 

I need to modify the bellhousing so I got a fox-body clutch arm and pivot. The arm looked good but the pivot needs to be adjustable, so I made one from a good quality nut and bolt.

 

This was a very hard bolt, so rather than try to cut it on a lathe, I chucked it up in my drill. The head of the bolt looked a lot like the nut, but ground down pretty nicely.
The grinding wheel was pretty soft, so as you can see, the bolt wore a rounded grove in it pretty quickly. That helped the arc to be consistent, I think.

 

I filed a couple of flats so I could get a wrench on it,

 

And put the arm on.

 

I just eyeballed the placement, and drilled and tapped the bellhousing.

 

After getting the bellhousing and trans back in, I thought I should finally do something about the shifter. The shifter wants to live right where my right leg is gonna be, so I got a new stick with an offset. When the new stick came in, I went out to install it. Just 2 bolts- easy as that, right?

 

Except mine is an early model shifter that has the stick as a part of the pivot mechanism- the receiver, they call it. No bolts. It’s welded to it.
I was all ready to start cutting and decided to do some research. I found some great howto videos and realized I could update to a receiver that uses a bolt on stick. Cool.
The new receiver came as an assembly, so it took care of some worn parts I found when I tore it down. It’s kinda the same only different. It’s taller than the other stick, and has the dogleg to the right so It’ll fit me.

 

The other thing I’ve been working on is fitting the dash. A dash brace was getting in the way, and after considering large hole saws and making my own dimple die, I just got a large ball peen BFH and took care of it.

 

Fortunately it didn’t need much, just a little for clearance. Now the dash sits nice.

 

Something I forgot to mention- the new sheet metal in the floor and toe boards! There’s a repro underseat pan and some sheet metal instead of wood on the floor.
I haven’t done anything to them except drop them into place. I’ll cut a hole for the shifter and clearance for the trans as I need, and then prime and paint them.
I guess I am “credit card “ building this thing in places.
But I would’ve just bought a wood floor kit otherwise, anyway.

 

Great work.....keep going !