Hot Rods Reunited After So Many Years

Wow a true Hot Rodder still thinking about the truck and 16 and in the presence of some old time "Garage Pinups". The "pinups" would probably been my main interest at that age knowing what some of them were like.

 

OK, so it's been a while and you may be wondering why you haven't seen an update since the original post. While there are always a bunch of excuses handy, I have a decent one this time for the delay. Most of the summer, I have been struggling with my Model A having problems shifting the Mitchell from straight drive to overdrive. After making whatever adjustment I could make to the linkage, it finally wound up stuck in overdrive. Long story short, I called the company and shipped it back to them for repair. ( It's a family business and they are wonderful to work with). Meanwhile I have been living with the car up on blocks until last week when the UPS man dropped off the repaired unit.
On to reassembling the car. I have to say that this whole rear end feels a hell of a lot heavier today than it did 11+ years ago and to make matters worse, I have to work under the whole car not just the chassis as I did when it was built. It can't be that I'm older. Whatever the case, been there before as I had to replace broken axles a couple of times on the pickup and pretty much understood what I was up against. Finally on Sunday, I called for reinforcements and my son came over. I had everything pretty much lined up and set so all he had to do was spin the one free rear wheel so the universal and drive shaft splines meshed. To help with the process, I rigged a ratchet strap to the apex of the rear radius rods to the front axle to help keep a bit of pressure so that when the splines aliened, it all clicked and the torque tube etc. inched forward. That part took 5 minutes. Putting the rest together is another story. I have several hours invested in that endeavor and I still need to hook up the speedometer cable and bleed the brakes. Progress! (Picture added to show "it happened"



So, the pickup project waits for now, however after 48 years, It's pretty used to that. I thought I might share al little more about what the plans are for this project. The plan has been to keep it pretty simple. Add a Y block Ford engine (turned out not so simple- at least not for me) so I could move up at least one step on the Ford evolutionary ladder. Second, over the years, I have become very fond of the '37 Ford truck grill. Given the front fenders interchange between '35, '36 and '37, why not try to be a little different? Keep in mind the windshield on the '35 is flat and that of the '37 is somewhat V shaped, I wondered how the two would look together. To test the concept, with the help of Moose on the "photoshop to end all photoshop" HAMB thread, the following was tested: Before picture of my black truck with the '35 grill up at Hemmings last summer:

And the after photoshop version with the '37 grill:


I like the thought of being different enough to have people ask questions so think this could be a neat idea.
Having found this along my travels at Fitchburg a couple years back and the sheet metal that goes under the grill as well as the one that goes between the grill and radiator, I have the set and plan to use them in this project.


More to follow and thank you for reading!

 

...that is an awesome combo @AVater and a nice inspiration @themoose

 

Having not posted for a bit again, I thought it would be a good time to provide some additional information and be up front with something here and now: The alternator. I realize there are differing views on these things so please understand, having that "A" thing there was not the first choice. From best I could tell, having a generator in the stock position just wasn't going to fit. The fact that I have the engine pushed a bit to the passenger side, while helping the steering and oil filter clearance on the driver side, definitely does not help generator clearance one bit. Another problem was what kind of A would I use? Most commercially available stuff seems to be GM one wire and frankly, if I had to settle for not having a generator, I was not prepared to have GM stuff in there, After all, if this is going to be a Ford in Ford kind of project, there had to be something from the blue oval that would work.

Thankfully in town, there is a rebuild shop for electrical stuff. These folks have been at it for years and have done a number of starters and generators for my cars and tractor as well. A quick visit there got me permission to go through their recycling trash and the hunt was on for something that could make electricity and fit. Thankfully, they let me take some samples home to "what if" with and a Ford version was found. As luck would have it, Hot Rod had an article about Ford alternators and noted the gen III versions were quite good. Having a junk one in hand, I went out trying to figure how to make a set of brackets that could work.

With the help of some cereal box panels, I made a cardboard template for a bracket that attaches to the head by way of the bolt holes already present there. I next sketched out two S shaped forms that could hold up the fixed (left side) mounting point of the alternator and be mounted to two bolts that go through the timing cover into the engine block. I then took my templates over to a metal shop a few towns over and had them plasma cut into stainless steel. I next needed to locate the holes properly and drill them. This was difficult/risky because all the holes needed to line up and I didn't have more than one chance to get it right. To help my drilling accuracy, I made simple center indicators by chucking a bolt in the drill and rotating it while a grinding wheel shaped a point on the rotating bolt. I threaded the bolts in the engine holes and tapped the bracket blanks in place to make a mark and drilled. It worked. I then took several hours at the buffing wheels to make the brackets look decent.



So here you can see what was done to tuck that A thing in as close as possible to the space allowed in the Y block design.
Since these pictures of the mock up were taken, I have a newly rebuilt alternator properly clocked in place and have since replaced the dual pully with a single. Additionally there is new stainless hardware to complement the bracketry.