Projects Building My First Roadster in San Francisco

Thank you! With a mini road trip, rusty parts in the passenger seat and an In-N-Out burger in hand, I was really living the hot rodder's dream.

That's incredible. It was so fun learning about minute differences between different A's from him. Nice truck, by the way!

They recommended this particular spring for a flathead application. If I were going with a Hemi or something heavier, they mentioned a different line of transverse spring (1001 Heavy).

 

I spent this afternoon smoothing out a few parts on the headlight bar and painting the spring in the driveway. I'd like to finish both of those tasks tomorrow.

I can feel the project gaining momentum. Over the past few days, I've gotten a whole lot of good stuff in the mail. I'd post photos of it all now, but it's too dark out.

So, I'll close with this snapshot from earlier today. We now have shocks, and I couldn't be more excited!

 

Joey,

This is your lucky day !
Call me today.
Sent you a text as well.
Cob

 

Me: I just need to swap the front spring and install the front shock mounts and the chassis will be finished!

Later that day:

Looks like the front passenger frame rail is bent. Not ideal. Full update happening soon.

 

Hopefully it'll just be Version 2.0!

One has recently been added to the arsenal, so hopefully that'll do the trick.

Thanks, Tim! We will figure it out.

 

Sidebar 32.X: The Right Way

Things have been moving along smoothly on this project. Every time I go to the shop, we're able to check an item or two off our big cardboard list. Last Saturday, I showed up with a very clear plan of atttack. It went something like this.

1) Disassemble front end and swap in new front spring
2) Fill one more hole in the frame where the driver's side shock mount will go
3) Mock up final shock mount position
4) Install all four shocks

Bonus: bolt-on headers with new stainless hardware?

That would then close the door on chassis fabrication, other than the steering box and pedals. Sounds simple enough, right?

Before we dive in, here's one of the day's visitors. David did a great deal of work on this survivor Model A.
The throttle linkage is a signature di Falco piece.

The chrome trans is a work of art.

 

Pardon the interruption: it's been quite the afternoon.

To kick things off, I removed the front suspension. We then swapped springs and realized that, although it went on easier, it did not make a difference. We measured, measured and then checked again. It was at that point that we realized that the passenger side frame rail was bent. My heart sank. How could that be? We checked everything when it was a bare frame. What could have changed?

There was no other choice: we had to tear it down to straighten the frame.

Much to my surprise, I had the whole thing torn down in less than 30 minutes. To quote my old boss Steve Coonan, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." I will say that throughout the course of this build, I've gotten pretty proficient at taking this thing apart.

Right around this point, David's longtime friend Jerry came by the shop to say hello. Without asking what we were doing, he asked if we needed any heavy duty four-inch I-beams. "You know what?" David said. "Those would be perfect. Let's go get them."

With that, we took a field trip to Jerry's house. Jerry is lifelong hot rodder and an extremely skilled machinist. He's lived here since 1972, and his garage is perfect. Everything in there has a story. My favorite was the floor jack that he traded a 1940 Ford coupe for. "I still have the jack!" he said, pointing to it. "Seriously?" I asked. "Really. That's it right there!"
This is his Deuce pickup, which still wears its two-tone paint from the late-'60s.

After our visit had wound down, David and I returned to the shop with a truck bed full of heavy metal.

 

For the rest of the afternoon, we focused on building a frame table. We made sure everything was square, and we made a centerline out of string. Next time I'm at the shop, we'll use every trick in the book to whip it back into shape.

***
​

It's hard to pinpoint what it was about this frame issue that took the wind out of my sails. In retrospect, it was because I felt like we were getting so close, and Saturday was going to be a relaxing day of simply bolting things together. But this isn't a kit car. It's not a mail-order car. It's a traditional hot rod built out of dozens of 1920s-1950s parts that were never meant to go together. It's not supposed to be easy.

As I was tearing down the chassis, David volunteered to get lunch.

"How are you doing, Joey?" he asked.
"Okay, I guess," I replied.
"This is one of those times that all we have is our positive attitude," he said. With that he slipped into his yellow roadster, fired up the flathead and drove out into the world.

 

Intermission: The Road to the Roc

I'll be interrupting the build progress this week, because I'm on the road to the Gathering at the Roc. Last night, I took the redeye from San Francisco to Detroit. Earlier today, Dave Gray and Colton Leigeb picked me up from my brother's house in Lansing.
From there, we got rolling. It's going to be a hell of a trip, and I couldn't be more excited. If all goes to plan, we'll be in Oklahoma by Thursday. If you're going, please let me know so we can meet up! In the meantime, stay tuned to Ridetech's Instagram (and mine too) for all sorts of updates.
And yes, I am taking plenty of notes for my car's future road trips.

 

Thank you, Matt. That really means a lot to me. After being away from it a week, I'm really looking forward to jumping back in. Those hose clamps are going to look so good on there!

 

That's what we're going to do! We shape metal all the time on these machines; this should be no different. Thanks for the encouragement!

 

Hi Art,

Thank you for the message. First and foremost, I hope you are feeling better. There's nothing worse than being out of commission. Also, thank you for reading my TRJ piece and this whole thread. We've covered a lot of ground, in the past two years, that's for sure.

To address your questions:

1) I considered a high-compression head on numerous occasions, but I ended up never pulling the trigger because of the condition of the babbitt. The engine is an older rebuild, and I didn't feel it was necessary to tear it down when it seemed to be doing just fine. I knew that this version wasn't forever, so my number one goal has always been reliability. I need to keep this thing on the road!

2) I never ended up running shocks. The main factor there was cost. Friction shocks were out of my budget, and I don't have the facilities to weld on tube shock brackets here at my home garage. For how I use the car, it seems to be fine without them?

3) The body on the car is actually really nice. The "wonkiest" part is near the tack strip on the passenger side where there's a homemade patch panel. Other than the filled bullet holes in the doors, brazed door handle holes and the usual rust in the wheelwells and lower cowl, it's a presentable body. The subrails are just about perfect.

Best of luck with the health and the firewall. Post some pictures when you're done!