What about the "open" portion of the roof on the older cars? I am speaking of the part (like on a Model "A") that has the chicken wire and vinyl/leatherette covering it up. I have heard that the stamping press capacity at the time was not sufficient to make these parts, but more and more I think that is not true. There were some monster Niagara Presses in the 1930's, and to form a large low crown sheet for a roof skin would be easier than prog dies stamping, say, a fender. I am thinking that it was just easier and cheaper to do this way with the poor (by today's standards) Fit and finish of the time. And since nearly 'Everyone' did it this way, nobody noticed or even cared. comments?
I was always of the understanding that they did them that way due to not being able to stamp a full roof with the multiple compound curves in once piece. It was cheaper and easier to stamp multiple smaller pieces and weld them together Could be wrong, but thats what ive always heard Tony
"Compound" Yeah, I can believe that. I was (probably) too focused on just the "Hole" part, not the sills and down to the door. Thanks
I have heard the same as Tony. I also heard a story once about how '37 Ford headlights wound up in the fenders because they couldn't get the draw right in the stamping and kept tearing that area. So one bright engineer suggested to put the headlights in the fenders where the tear was and wala. Don't know if that is true but it's a story I have heard.
According to the people who worked at the metal suppliers they could not make sheets of steel wide enough at the time. This info was told at one of the Airflow meets years ago. They had invited people who were employed at the suppliers in 1934.
Sheet metal stamping technology. The 'turret top' was perfected by 1937, look at the cars and you'll see the fabric roof insert was gone starting in the 1937 model year.
Pierce arrow patented the headlight in the fender design, the year after they went out of business, most manufacturers put the headlights in the fenders 1938. http://www.pierce-arrow.org/features/feature27/index.php
Never seen fenders in a prog press, they run off a strip and the strip is pulled thru the line by various methods. Fenders can be run in transfer presses, which look like a prog for the fact their in the same press frame. It really took the Japanese to figure out fenders in a transfer press though, the shut height is typically not very high in a transfer line. Look at the 1980's toyotas, none of the panels have any depth to them so they will fit in a transfer, compare the depth to 80's even 90's US cars and they are much deeper fenders. The US finally caught on and started designing fenders with less draw and moving the hood line outboard to allow fenders in a transfer press.
I'd say he is pretty well correct. The technology at the time both on the supply side and the stamping side wasn't there until the late 30's.
I always read that they couldn't draw the compound panels that large. The first Ford's with all steel roofs were the late 31 pickup, but they are individual panels screwed and nailed in place. the 32-34 pick-up roofs are alittle more complex.
Aside from the lack of technology issues, I've read that Henry for one felt that the fabric insert in the top tended to minimize the "drumming" or "oil can effect" that a full metal top might present in real world use.
And then, of course, there is cost. Steel pressings represent a huge capital cost. It's not so much not being able to do it technically as being able to do it more cheaply with a fabric insert. Paradoxically it was the enormous capital cost of pressed-steel construction which led the major manufacturers to embrace it. The greater the degree to which pressed steel could be established as the dominant praxis, the more the smaller manufacturers were confronted with the choice between adopting a technology they couldn't really afford or yielding all but the very top end of the market to the big guys. The aim was obviously to go to unitary construction. Hence the Chrysler Airflow (Chrysler having been in bed with Budd for a long time via Dodge) and the Lincoln-Zephyr: both technological absurdities, lacking the dynamic configurations to exploit the torsional rigidity afforded by unitary construction. It is as if they had gone out of their way to put together a car in the most difficult possible way. Both were efforts to define the "car of the future" as expressly something a mom-and-pop start-up - however clever - can't pull off. This approach always left a back door. In 1948 Citroën demonstrated how the advantages of unitary construction could be achieved with a very light body-on-frame design, the 2CV, surprisingly after the Budd-developed Traction Avant of 1934. William Allison at Hudson had been thinking along similar lines, as had Alex Moulton in the UK. Unitary construction might have become obsolete if government had not stepped in (I believe at the behest of some in industry) with regulation which has increasingly effectively required that cars be of unitary construction, or for all intents and purposes so.
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