Thanks, some of my wife's family were working for Ford in Geelong, it has been a while since talking about it - obviously - I think 1 still does??
I had thought that the Ford plant was at Point Henry that has been leveled - turns out that was Alcoa. Ford did keep a little corner where they have a R&D unit. My uncle was a VP at Ford and ran the Cleveland casting plant. It's all been leveled now.
I wish we had better enforcement! If you don’t understand the meaning of “limit” or “maximum” then your licence should be suspended and you’d be compelled to a week in a library reading a dictionary!
California has 2 speed laws. Basic and Maximum. The Maximum one says unless otherwise posted it's illegal to drive faster than 65 mph. The Basic one says it's illegal to operate a vehicle at an unsafe speed. The speed limit signs are for average conditions. Most of the time the cops won't bother you at up to 14 mph over the posted speed. You always seem to be safe at 10 over. However it works 2 ways they could cite you for 25 in a 35 if the cop thinks it's unsafe due to heavy traffic, rain, pedestrians, etc. Nevada had no max speed law until the Carter gas crisis when he put a 55 mph max limit in. Nevada didn't want to comply but in the end they had to. If you got a ticket for 55-80 mph they called it an environmental violation and charged you $5 with no points on your drivers license.
Hey Guys. After repairing the bottom of the cab, I was going to move onto doing the rest of the sub rails where it curves around the base of the cab. This is what I had in mind.
But before I could do that there was a major problem I needed to address, so I dragged the two cabs out to make a comparison.
Like their GM counterparts, Ford Australia still used mostly timber framing in their bodies in 1934. And that included in the b pillars, but the main difference between the local Fords and GM’s was The Fords did not have steel cover strips. I want to replace all the timber with rectangular hollow section, but I wanted to cover it over so I had an idea.
I have a corner shed with 34 Chev and Oldsmobile parts, these were collected when I still had the Chev Ute. I always had the intention of selling it all on, but over the years I found myself using some of the panels for other project. Then I remembered the remains of the Oldsmobile body still had an intact B Pillar. Being a four door sedan, I knew I could split it to make a pair of covers strips. Once split I placed it beside the Ford B pillar to see how different they were.
Aside from the locations of the latch housing and striker plates and tighter radius along the bottom and bulging outer edge below the swage, the two were remarkably similar. So I set about changing the Oldsmobile cover strips to match the profile of the Ford B Pillars.
The first task was to remove the bulge along the bottoms of the cover strips by grinding out a line of the metal and hammering them back in line with the upper edges. The second task was to fill the latch housings. I used a combination of clamps and vice to hold them in place while re-welded them.
By cutting along the stamping lines I was able to flatten the recess back out. I then filled the remaining hole with a fresh piece of metal. With that done, I moved onto cutting out the new housings, by using the Ford B pillars as a guide.
The remaining task was to reshape the lower radius, so it was less severe than Ford ones. To do this I notched it on two places, placed it over the timber b pillar, clamped it an welded it. It was dark by the time I had done that so I moved it inside where I could photograph it easier. The steel one is on the right. The length of 2x2 RHS on the far left was what I was going to use as the actual pillar but 3mm, the wall thickness is too hard to work with, so I most likely purchases some 2mm wall thickness lengths.
Hey Guys. After many hours, I was finally able to finish welding all the cuts on the cover strip. It’s now sitting inside the B Pillar.
I’m only getting at most a couple of days a week to work on it, so it’s very slow going and I still have to finish the other side. The other thing I need to do once that is done is move onto the b pillars themselves. As I outlined earlier, the original ones are made of timber, and while still very solid, especially with the cover strips fastened in place, I want to replace them with steel.
I was going to use 3mm walled 2x2 Rectangular Hollow Section that’s pictured to the right until I realised it was much heavier than I wanted, and also harder to cut through, so I have settled on 2mm walled RHS instead. The dimensions are almost the same as the timber originals. The difference will be the need to notch the bottoms to match the profiles of the originals and cutting away the inside edge and reversing it to match the stepped profile of the originals.
Hey Guys. I am moving on to the next stage, I decided early on that every last strip of timber would be replaced with steel. And the first area to be addressed would be the B Pillars. I intended to use 2mm walled 2x2 RHS for this, but had a truss from an old shed lying around that while the same outside dimensions had a slightly thinner wall thickness at 1.6 mm.
After cutting two identical lengths, I marked out and cut all the holes for the latch and striker plate locations, by using the original one as a pattern.
Not only did I use the 2x2 from the span, I also used 20x20 that made up the arch. This was welded to the outside edge to resemble the cutaway section that allows the timber original to be fastened to the side of the cab.
Test fitting it to the left side of the cab, left me very pleased with the results. Once I have got the opposite side up to the same level of completion I will be moving back to capping off the sub rails and fastening them to the sub rails.
Hey Guys. I got a bit more done yesterday. After finishing off the other b pillar, I moved onto the cross bracing. I didn’t have any RHS wide enough for the job, so I decided to repurpose this old bench frame.
A laid the cab up onto a sheet of corrugated iron sitting on top of a 44 gallon drum with the inside facing up. I then braced it up and clamped the new b pillars into the old ones, effectively creating a makeshift jig.
From there I measured the width and set on 55 at the centre belt line with a gap of 48 between the b pillars at the base. With the latter dimensions, I then cut up the bench frame to the same dimensions, welded one side of the frame up and then proceeded to weld the frame to the b pillar.
I kept some of the cross framing intact on the frame, this will be used for when I create the curved section that will follow the contour of the base of the cab. The idea being this section will have a lower, middle and upper section that join the two sides together.
I've often wondered why when looking at almost every build in Australia there's box section steel with blue paint on it. Does this stuff grow on trees or something? I'm guessing it's salvaged from something but am curious to know what. Chris
The Jalopy Journal
