What should I build?

I built the chassis on my T and on the Fly.
What I did was I went and bought some 2x3 tubing like Sam said. Then I blocked up the body on sawhorses and took digital pics of the car from all angles. Uploaded em to the computer then printed em out. (cause I am no good with photoshop). THen I started drawing on the printed copies, dimensions etc.

For example , I measured the distance inside the cowl, the height of the cowl etc. Then I would find that pic and write those measurements on that sheet. Put em all in a binder for future reference.

Next I drew out the chassis that I thought would work on paper. Transfer those dimensions to the shop floor with a chalk line and a framing square. You need a couple of reference points to ensure that you are square. Maybe one through the center of the frame and one perpendilular to the CL.

I laid the 2 main frame rails out and tacked some temporary braces on the ends to hold her square til I could decide the ride height and crossmember construction. This is probably way more than you wanted to know but too bad....

 

BTW, here's a link to my old bucket so you can see what I started with. Root's junk

 

That T-bucket looks pretty sweet. I have a Model A chassis to start with so I suppose I won't have to worry about tubing.

 

The way I look at it...unless you are building your absolute "dream car," you'll cut corners, loose interest, and just end up mangling some rare bits of tin that someone else would love to have.

Also, the idea of building a car to sell to help fund the next project is flawed in that you rarely can make a whole lot more more money than you put into it and could probably just sell the parts as-is and make just as much.

I say just jump right in and build your dream car that you plan to keep forever. It will mean just that much more to you if you had to learn everything along the way just to put it together.

 

Perfect answer. You pretty much described what is circling my head day and night. I have the feeling I may lose interest on a car I don't intend to keep. Now I just need to hurry up and get all my parts gathered up so I can get started.

 

As to welding, I started a chassis project once with a stick welder and had experience stick welding, but did not like the look of the welds and bought a 220V mig. After burning up a couple tips holding it too close, I mastered it within a day. It really is easy to mig weld, but you might want a friend who welds to stop by and help for a day so you get the hang of things like penetration. Also plan on mounting things and taking them off again after tacking so you can roll the frame over and do all your welds horizontal. I'd keep body mods to a minimum. No more than a chop. There is more skill required to weld sheetmetal without blow throughs or distortion. After you get it together, if you want to do body mods a few years down the road, you still can.

 

I don't really have any body mods planned other than a nice chop, so hopefully I won't have too hard of a time. I do have some rust through that will need fixed, but it doesn't look too complicated (yet).