Projects The bucket of ugly! A de-uglifying thread...

I kinda like it when it rolls over the edge; but not over the body line. I formed a tack strip and fastened it around the perimeter on the top edge, rolled the upholstery over the edge, stapled and trimmed it, then covered it with some hide-em that I had my daughter-in-law (Stitchbitch) sew up for me.Tough to see with the black; but everything sits above the body mold line, like on a stocker.

 

Cool Rich B! I do like that very much, but I think I'm considering something a bit more low profile, if that makes any sense. One of the things I have always dug, is if you look at some of the early T-bodied drag cars, their Upholstery is removable just by unsnapping it and pulling it out. What I'm thinking would mimic that, make it semi removable if I have to or decide to change it, and maybe make more sense of the lack of pleats and rolls and such that is in my mind making me a bit nervous about this looking a little too "high tech".

Good to know that you are part of "that" clan! Titus and I have talked back and forth a bit, and they live just a mile or so from my Uncle's place out there. I hope to stop in and say "Hey" next time I get up there to the frozen tundra of my youth.

 

Well, Let me try the pic deal again.

 

Oh,Gee,Shucks. You want to see pictures of my littleol car. You know how I hate to post.

OKAY! OKAY! OKAY!

You know maybe I should try cleaning sometime.

 

So what if you created a lip on the top of your seat back that just sits on top of the body line without extending past it. Do you know what I mean? That way you can still attach the material to the seat and not the body which will allow easy removal.

 

All I can say Chip....that rear cover you made fits your car car perfect.
Some great suggestions from the gallery. Some very nice interiors guys. I learn something new here every day!
Have you done any concept sketches of different styles?
Draw what is in your minds eye......it usually sees clearly, and saves alot of material.
I'm sure you'll get it right!

 

I like this idea. I've been planning on screwing a sheet metal lip to the top of my seat back that extends over the top lip and run the upholstering up and over it.

 

Nah, what I sketch up usually looks like stick men and balloon dogs... And that is when I'm designing car stuff. Truly sad. But I am friends with JEEM, and he could probably do something for me, but not as quickly as I need this to go down. I have one more buddy who's opinion I truly trust, my "pop" Ronnie Olmstead. I am heading out to Albert Eschenbaugh's Salt benefit tomorrow with him and I'm going to run this idea past him. He usually will happily tell me when I'm about to completely mess things up.

 

Okay gang,

I have been promising stuff on doing the upholstery on this car for a month now. The seat base has been done for about that long, so that I could try to con Judy into riding in the New Years Day cruise with me... she proved to be wayyyyyy too smart for that deal, and stayed home in bed with the dogs while I froze my ass off. But that's not where we are gonna start this mess. No, that would be too easy!

First, let me clarify something that has been bugging me. You guys no how whacked I get about terminology, I'm about to throw another at you. Chairs are "upholstered", cars are "trimmed". Not the same as say, Trimming the tree, but you get the idea. Trim it is from here on out from me.

Let's start this mess with the tonneau. By far this bit of business will be the hardest part of this deal unless I do actually get to do the top for this car. We'll see if that happens or not. This tonneau could have been as simple as cutting a piece of vinyl, binding the edges, setting some snaps, and calling it done. But what fun would that be? No, because of my nature, and the fact that my gas tank actually sticks up above the bed rails by a tiny touch, it meant that it would have to be padded a bit to make it work. I also required it to be removable, and I wanted traditional snaps instead of a higher tech hinge and latch system that would have again made this deal easier. So, where I started this deal was with the base board. Made of the finest what ever I had around the shop (turned out it's 3/8" semi finished ply wood left over from a head board project Judy and I did). I made a pattern out of light chip board, cut it out and test fitted it on the bed. This really sounds like it might be a waste of time, but it is kinda important. These bodies are rarely ever completely square. Having this as a reference marked side for side is golden. Trust me on that. once that was done, cut, hack, or nibble out a base board. Mine, with a couple of holes gacked in it for fuel sender and block off clearance looked like this after a couple of coats of poly urethane.



Now, that done, what are we going to pad this stuff with? Well, the couple of minutes that I hung out with Gary at L.A.R.S. this summer jogged my memory as to a remarkably inexpensive yet very adaptable material... Carpet padding! I have some buddies here in town that own a chopper seat making enterprise call Haifley Bros Choppers, and they told me about this a few years ago when they did a mini bike seat for me. Gary mentioned his car used it in the seat back, and my brain re-comprehended this immediately. Gary's interior is damn comfy, too. The "rebond" carpet pad is a bit stiffer than high density foam blocks and an eight the price. I bought a remnant roll chunk from a local carpet place that measured about 11'x8' for the princely sum of 8 dollars! It's being used throughout this interior, and I will have lots left over for a few more projects. I used my handy-dandy pattern and cut out what I needed of that. I cut it out over sized by a bit at first, bonded it to the board with Weldwood brand contact cement, straight from Home Depot. it looked a little like this...



And, when trimmed and on the car, it looked like this...



Once it was cut to a more or less good to go size, I cleaned off the rough stuff you see here with my die grinder and a 36 grit grinding disc. Mucho better-o.

To back track just a bit, I grabbed my pattern again, made sure it was correct side up, laid it on the fabric I am using, which is Merritt "True white" and traced it around. I quickly, just before bonding the padding to the board did a quick fitting to make sure things were fitting as tight as they needed to. Not much to show, but here it is.



So damned exact that you can't see the pencil lines! Perfect!

I'm gonna take a break and make some dinner, back in a bit.

 

Damn I hate these ad breaks in the middle of the program

 

So, we have a base board made, we have it padded, and we have a piece of fabric roughly marked and cut a bit over sized.

The next thing on the list, is to figure out how big this thing was gonna need to be. I don't have a picture of this, But with the board and pad on the car, I measured the depth of the rail, board and pad, and came up with 1 3/4". So, I had to mark that all the way around on the material I used. I again set my pattern down, lined it up on the proceeding pencil marks, grabbed my handy dandy metal yard stick and measured and marked my cut lines 1 3/4" larger on three sides of the pattern. The front edge will be cut to size to match the board... We are going to handle that in a different way. I gave up on the pencil at this point, and check on a piece of scrap what Sharpie might do. Worked like a charm.



Next, we forge on to getting the corners ready to cut and sew. We need to leave what is called a "seam allowance" of 1/2" to give us room to sew the corners together. Marked out in good old Sharpie pen again.



Nothing left to do but grab my sharpest scissors and cut this puppy out... And then walk back out and check fit for the first of about 900 trips...



Yup. that'll do!

Next up I threaded the machine with some good Metrosene long staple polyester thread, and sewed the corners together on the 1/2" seam allowances I laid out a couple pictures ago. At this point I was done dealing with pictures, so just did my stuff and shut up. Here is the result.



Something else just appeared in this pict, the binding for the fuel filler hole... We'll talk about that in a minute.

 

Chip...You RULE...!!

Don`t forget to take a few pics at Al E`s tomorrow....Pleeese.....

 

Wheh! Got Mr. Hei hei Chan, eighteen year old wonder dog out side in the nick of time! Well done master Chan!

A couple of quick things about doing this sort of thing on a household sewing machine. The first is that our own Dana has written a thread about this that is good stuff, and if you are interested in trying this, read it!

The disadvantages are
1. You can't really run a very heavy thread through a household type machine. Industrial machines have much larger clearances for heavier threads that house hold machines. Yo make things work well with what I have, I get really picky about thread quality. I like good, European, long staple polyester threads. Most big fabric stores will sell them under names like Metrosene, and Gutterman. Thin, light, flexible, and damn near strong enough to pull a truck out of a ditch!

2. Most household machines don't have enough stitch length to go through very thick fabrics. The average household machine has a longest stitch length of about 4mm. Some of the older machines and some of the newer computer machines can do a 6mm stitch length. That's what you want. It spreads the needle holes out more so they don't weaken the fabric, and 6mm allows heavier stuff to walk through a bit better. Commercial upholstery machines will often have a stitch length of about 8 or even 10 mm.

There is so much more to consider, but those two facts are the most important, that and use a good quality #16 needle when working vinyl. Hopefully if you have an old machine around you 'll dust it off and try it.

Okay. so we have our corners sewn, everything laid out, and surprise surprise, it fits! now comes the fun part - binding this mess.

Binding is when a strip of material is laid face to face with the tonneau cover, sewn around the outside edges, folded under to the inside, and stitched from the out side... Huh? Ya, just what I said. I can't think of a better way to explain it, and it's kinda hard to photograph. I'll do my best. Tonight we are gonna start with the front edge of the tonneau. Remember how I cut that to match the front of the base board? This binding is gonna end up being a sort of "faux" binding, 'cause it's actually going to get stapled to the underside of the base board when all is said and done. It's a simple strip of vinyl 2" wide, sewn 1/4" from the out side edge of the material. It looks like this when fitted on the car - again.



I also took this time to cut out and sew a ring for the binding around the filler neck. the neck hole is 3", so the circle was cut to 7" O.D., and the two were sewn face to face again, about 1/4" in from the fill neck's hole. It too will eventually be pulled through the filler hole and stapled to the base board. Well, shit. My computer is not happy about posting pictures at this point in the evening. Just look a couple of pictures back and you'll see the ring sewn to the filler neck, trust me, it's there. I told you not to worry about it a bit ago, remember ?

At this point, my asthma medication is wearing off, my gin and tonic is getting low, and my hinky computer is rebelling. More tomorrow.

 

Will do Kiwi!

 

Chip, My 2 cents, take a look at Marty Strodes' race car,, really good lookin' interior and comes right out on demand. Its done the way Bob McCoy drew them in his drawings. (rip)

 

Did somebody mention Bob McCoy?

Now there is a Competition Orange T bucket.

And look it's got my front suspension.

 

I like this look, the upholstery up to the body but not over it.
looks clean and outside the norm of going over the lip.
I'll be doing something similar I think.

 

I can tell you none of them do! Sorry for the late answer on this, but I was trying to look for some info and missed this last weekend. In the foreground is Bud Lakeman's bucket, behind it is Chuck Penry's black car. behind that was a bay area car that belonged to Koogie, although his first name escapes me at the moment. All three have been discussed on this thread before, with Penry's car being my toss-up favorite with either that or Roland's redo of Ivo's car. Different day, different answer, but it'll always be one of these two.

 

As promised from the other day, here's a profile shot of my T. I've been playing with the front and rear springs a bit. Removing a leaf from the front dropped it an inch, but severely limited my shock travel. So I put the leaf back in front and used some spacer leaves in the rear to raise it an inch. That put things right on the money. Caster is at 7*, and the frame rails have a 2* rake. I still think the rear needs another inch, so I'm still leaning towards a pair of 7.50-16's.

My chassis used to sit dead level because I planned everything before I got the rear tires, which were 1.5" shorter than advertised. Well, as it turns out, when I had my body mocked up, it was initially channeled 3" in front and quite a bit more in the rear by my mistake. So when I got my windshield posts where I wanted them, they were actually tipped forward from what I had thought. SO long story short, I think they need laid back a few degrees than what you see in the pic.

It's really tough to photograph the car in the dark, and once I push it outside, it's on a pretty steep slope, so it always looks funky to me. I took about 20 pictures and this is the only one that somewhat resembles its stance in person. I have to work tomorrow, so this will have to do!



Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

Pretty nice car, but two questions. Why two tanks, and why did you go old wires?
I actually likes the wires, but I'm I doubt to if the match the era. But still I like them

But the front moon tank? Does it have a purpose?

An 1 picture is just teasing! Need a side shot to, and maybe a picture of interior or pedal/collum position.

 

Tim
Looking good. You are on the right track. Your right a little up in back and a few degrees back on the windshield. I love the way the engine sits. Nice and high and level. Actually when you rase the car another inch up in back and it will be perfect.

 

I agree on the windshield, but not on the rake! That's perfect! Un less you mean rubber rake.
But I fail to see the. Red for a rake on a rod that is set up se level. And especially one with such an early look. This is right between how job and early bucket.

 

Volvobrynk,

I have no good answer as to why I went with wire wheels. When I first started collecting parts for this project, I had a set of Torq Thrust wheels I was going to use. Then, I started looking on the HAMB a lot. Not really reading the posts and not really understanding WHY certain parts were chosen for a build, but I looked at A LOT of pictures. For whatever reason, I decided I liked the wire wheels and wanted to run them, even though now I realize it wasn't common to do that. My car is not at all period perfect, but I like the late 1950's-early 1960's T buckets the best. I have quite a conglomeration of new, used, and reproduction parts. I'm happy with how it's turned out, but the next car I will be A LOT more picky on what I use, and I will be a little more strict on fitting a certain era.

As for the two fuel tanks, I sort of touched on this earlier, but with my very short wheelbase and very small pickup bed, I had very little room for a good sized fuel tank! I tried about 5 tanks before I decided I liked the 5 gallon MOON tank in the back. But then, I was worried about only having 5 gallons of fuel! So, one day, I mocked up a 2 gallon EELCO tank on the front, and you can see that in my avatar. I really liked it, but I have OCD about certain things, and there was NO WAY I could have a MOON tank on the back and an EELCO on the front So, I saved up some coin and ordered a 3.5 gallon MOON, which gives me 8.5 gallons total between the two tanks. It will be 100% functional. I have a valve near the fuel pump that allows me to control which tank I pull from, and I ran a choke cable to the dash which allows me to control it from inside the car.

As for the interior and pedal position, I haven't fully finished that portion of my build yet. I have redone the floor about 4x now, but finally landed on a 1.5" channel. You can kind of see where the steering column and pedals are if you check out post # 5575, which is a few pages back. I had hopes of finishing my seat frame and seat back this weekend, but if I get back out to the garage at all in the next couple days, it will be an accomplishment in itself

I will try to post another shot of the car. I wasn't kidding when I said I took about 20 pictures last night and was unhappy with ALL of them!

 

This is for blue one a few pages back. 70s Honda CB gas cap

Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

Thanks Gary,

I think you're right that the windshield posts need laid back a bit and the rear needs another lift. I will do that at some point by throwing a pair of 7.50's on the back. And when I say at some point, I mean when I am not feeling poor haha. For now it's just gonna be me trying to finish up all the little things before I pull the chassis apart to be finish welded.

 

But of course, I posted with out thinking, I reply solely on the picture, I should have look on the name to, silly me!

Like it so fare. I like them wheels, the ain't wrong to me!

I most confess that I don't like the front tank, but I get you reasoning, and fully understand the need for it. You could even run the front with a nitro mix and the rear one street fuel

Really dig the low almost Gow Job styled windshield. And with them wheels, a little rake in the WS will make it look more the part.

Plans for paint?

I go an look at you photos.

Like the pic, and placement. Love the floor!

 

Terrible pictures, I know. The passenger side of the car is uphill quite a bit compared to the driver side because of the slope in the parking lot. Even though it doesn't look like it, the windshield is perfectly vertical. To me it looks tilted forward in the photos, but my level and degree finder say otherwise. They will still be laid back.







Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

Volvobrynk,

Thanks for your comments and honesty. I am not completely sold on the front tank, either. If I find a better tank for the rear, I would probably get rid of the front. But for now it's staying!

As for paint and upholstery, I have gone back and forth a million times. I am pretty confident I have it sorted out finally. I think I will paint the body and frame Kewanee Green. I want to paint the firewall Wimbledon White, and I want to paint all the beads on the body black with white pinstripes. Similar to how a Model A was painted from the factory. I got some marine grade vinyl on sale about a month ago, which is a vanilla / off white color. I want to do a basic tuck and roll interior with 1.5" pleats/rolls. To spice up the vanilla vinyl, I want to use green piping. I found some "Moss Green" carpet that seems to match Kewanee Green pretty decent, so that's the direction I was leaning for carpet, but I want to trim the carpet with the vanilla vinyl edging. If you look at Tweedy Pie's interior, replace whatever is purple with green and that's what I'm going for. I THINK it will look good that way, but it seems like if I change my mind about one thing, I end up changing EVERYTHING. So that's my plan, and I'm gonna stick to it. Until I change my mind again haha.

 

You know Tim my roadster went through a lot of changes through the ten years it took to build and now the twenty-five I've been driving it, including 16" spoke wheels with motorcycle tires in front. Although I never drove it with those. Instead of building multiple rods I just kept updating my roadster.
Just saw your new photos and I like your roadster more and more. Sometimes like with your windshield you have to just make it look right and not worry about what it is. I learned that back in my building remodeling days. I was helping remodel an old school building. the school system wanted to use the building for the district office instead of tearing it down. Being old it's foundation had settled and nothing was level. I installed a dropped ceiling in a long hall. It was lazar perfect level. But when you looked down the hall it looked funny with a door which was way off level. The boss came and said fix it. I told him it was perfectly level. He said Fix it so it looks right. He was right I lowered one edge about an inch and it looked perfect. My point is your windshield might be perfectly vertical but looks like it leans forward. God Chip I dare you to have a longer explanation to make a point than that.

Gary

Just looked at the photos again. Look at the center one and try to make your windshield follow the same angle as the dash and it will be perfect. That's what I mean by get back and look. Especially at the profile. By the way i love the wheelbase.

 

That rod look likes a hoodlum got hold of a nice barn fresh early bobtailed with a broken flat head, and had two goals:
God damn, got this weekend to make room for my tool box, and what do I do about that old water boiler, before going back to work Monday.
In comes junkyard find OHV v8 and a small section of a bed and busted tailgate.

And woila, introduce T bucket, except rear end and front tank don't match rest of era. But rear light, wire wheels and WS looks like early rod, tank said drag racing.

I can only say I like it!
The green color sounds like a stock looking color, but I can't be sure.
Like the pinstriping and vinyl plan.
Looking forward to next update.