I've been gathering parts to build a cool little Model A coupe for the past couple years. I had a really rough dirt track body I was going to start building up that I had started a little thread on a while back, but I never did much to it. As I was about to start major work on the body I was hanging out early at one of the local swap meets after wandering through buying some parts. In rolled a guy with one the nicest unmessed-with original coupe bodies I've ever come across. I met him at the gate of the swap meet and followed him in asking questions as he was backing the trailer in. He took one strap off the truck and showed me how perfectly the doors shut and I was sold. We struck a deal and I had him drop the body off here at the shop at Eastwood. The seller told me how he had owned the car 15+ years and it was a car native to the Berks County and ran around Reading, PA. for a long time. He got it from a friend, took it apart and stashed it away until he had some health issues that forced him to sell. Just a matter of the right time and place I guess! I decided to nickname it the "Pagoda City Coupe" after the Pagoda that is sits atop of Reading where the used to run around "back in the day". I've been meaning to put up some photos of the progress I've been making, but I always end up finding myself tinkering with one of my cars instead of posting a thread here! Anyways I figured I'd catch everyone up. I started by building up a little rolling chassis table from some I-beams and material I bought from the local metal salvage yard. All in all the table cost me under $500 to build. Should serve me well for years to come. I then got some 3x2 box tubing and rough cut it to length. I was lucky enough my old body was an old circle track car and came with some cool old parts like a an old dropped axle, juice brakes all around, etc. that got me jumpstarted. I grabbed the front cross member and blasted and painted it and notched the box tubing to slide the cross member in. I then set some caster in the cross member and welded it in place. After that I added some original A horns to the front. I then took some inspiration from some of the other guys on here and decided to "sweep" the front of the frame up. I put some relief cuts in the frame and swept it up and then brought the cross member back down. Took a little while, but I think the look is worth it over a stacked frame.
With the front of the frame swept up I ordered up a set of super slide springs from the guys over at Posies. Stuff showed up in a day and I mounted it up to my old front axle and bolted it to the front portion of the chassis and took it off of the table to mock up ride height and all. I then put the chassis back on the table and set up the rear Z and built a little fixture to hold the rear cross member straight and exactly at the height I wanted. we made up a little plumb bob setup so we could really dial it in close. Once the rear cross member was setup I cut some pieces for the z and connected the dots. I could then pull the chassis off of the table and bolt all of the rear suspension up. I realized that the rear mount spring on the '41 banjo rear I had wasn't going to jive with how much I was channeling the car so I cut off the ends of some old model A bells and welded them to my later rear and mounted the Super Slide spring over the rear. Then of course set the body back on with the engine and stood back and admired how it looked! I then built some motor and trans mounts and a cross member for the chassis. I'll be adding some wedges in the corners of the Z just for extra strength when I go to do the final welding on the chassis. That gets me just about up to date with the car. I'm working on setting up the new subrails and floor for the car. I have some 1/8" steel bent to 90's that will span the edge of the cabin of the car and I'll connect them on with channel pictured. Should get going on that next week .
Really nice start, everything is sooo - whats the word? Clean? If you were closer I could help you fill up that place with junk...
Haha don't worry I have loads of old junk around my home shop, but we have to keep it clean at work. I only bring in what I need for the current part of the project.
DAM! How do you get anything done with all that clutter laying around this shop????? Looks like you could eat pizza off the floor. Nice build by the way.
Nice job. Man the shop is amazing, I used to work for Eastwood when it was in Malvern, I was PT in the call center. Sure looks like the move was a big improvement!
We put out the little video on the process of building the chassis.. and proof we do make a mess here from time to time! Some small updates. I scored a 36 Hudson steering box a couple weeks back for the car.. just had to pull the remains of the Hudson out of the side of a hill at a farm auction. It actually has a pretty cool X-member I think I'll set aside for another project. The steering box was stuck, but I got it all blown apart and was able to salvage the bearings inside enough to get some replacements from the local bearing supplier. Hoping I can get that thing back together enough to use for mock-up here soon. Should be a cool little touch on the car. Been working on the new subrails and supports so I can get the body bolted to the frame right now. I had some pieces of 1/8" bent up and I put relief cuts in it to get it to bend to match the original rails and door sill. I will make some small filler pieces up front where there's the gaps. I had the pieces bent up so that the portion where it straddles over the frame was too wide since I would need the extra with how I angled it. I then marked the excess and cut it with the Versa-Cut 60 so that it sat flush with the frame rails. I'm going to cut new channel to go between the rails so they're flush with the outside edges. Then I can drill holes through the channel and the rails and sink some nuts into the top of the frame legs so I can bolt the body down. I'm also going to either shorten the original firewall support feet or make new ones that will connect the firewall back to these pieces I'm making. That trans mount is something I started building until I decided I didn't like it. I think I'll either order one of those fancy F1 replica ones and cut up to fit or I'll just make my own! More to come soon, thanks for reading.
I honestly forget, I just set everything up until it looked "right" and I measured. I'll measure the kickup the next time I'm crawling around the inside of the car again. I got a bunch more work done on the car. As mentioned I had metal bent up for the new subrails and connected them with C channel. I measured everything and welded the subrails in place along with the cross braces. I then made a set of braces to go from the firewall to the subrails. I reused 2 of the original rivet holes in the firewall for each brace from the original braces and welded the base to the subrails. Finally I welded the subrails to the original inner rocker/remainder of the original subrails. Then I was able to remove the bracing in the b-pillar I had set up. I then drilled pilot holes down through the crossbars, subrails, and into the top of the frame to bolt the body down with. Once the body was removed I need some threaded inserts for the frame. I took a set of grade 8 3/8" nuts and threaded them all on to a carriage bolt that I chucked up in the lathe and turned them down to just slightly over 1/2" in diameter. I then took a 1/2" drill bit and drilled out the pilot holes I made in the frame. Since most 1/2" bits almost always drill a slightly larger hole than 1/2", it made it so the threaded inserts I made could be a tapped in with a rubber mallet into the holes. Before putting the inserts in one final time I countersunk the holes so I had a small valley to fill with TIG rod as I welded the bungs into the frame with the Eastwood TIG 200. The result was a flush mount threaded insert in the frame that's a lot stronger than a nutsert or just tapping the frame. There may be a better way, but at 3PM on a Friday this solution seemed to be the best bet! Finally we threw the body back on and ran some grade 8 3/8" bolts through the subrails and into the frame. Doing the subrails and all this way I've been left with a "pinch weld" area underneath the car that I'll be welding together as well as welding from the top. This well be plenty strong! I need to set up the seat, pedals and steering column before I go much further with the floor. I also decided on using the deuce dash with the SW panel I've had set aside on the car. With this clamped in place I took out the torch and heated and bent the shifter so it cleared the dash and I could shift into all of the gears. I need to rebuild this Hudson steering box here shortly so I can get the column mounted. Also working on getting a new F1 style crossmember so I can set up the pedals and finalize the trans mounting. More to come...
I got a set of headlight mounts and started playing with headlight placement. I think I want to mount them a bit lower so they don't mess up the side profile of the car. A little meat taken of out the stand at the bottom should do the trick. I also decided to get one of the F1 style crossmembers/trans mounts from Dave at Havlir House of Fab and cut it up to make it fit my chassis. Saved me a ton of time, even with the mods needed. Almost ready to start mounting up the steering column and pedals. Need to pull the body and finally weld in the split bones mounts and set the final caster.
Been a while since I've posted but I've been busy on the coupe. Got my Hudson box/column mounted. Ended up welding a new flange on the box to fit in the chassis and made up a new column tube since the old one was rotted out. I then worked on the drag link. I wanted to use a combination of parts including the Hudson end of the link at the pitman arm. I cut off the end socket and got some DOM tubing to match the original diameter of the drag links and hogged out the center of the socket so the tube could press inside of it and welded it up. I also welded the tie rod style socket to the other end so I can still adjust for alignment. Hopefully the pics explain what was going on. Been working on floors lately. Pre-stretched the beads in the English wheel and then rolled them in the bead roller so they stayed flat. Then bent the ends in the brake and mounted with clecos. Going to leave everything cleco'd in until I'm done the tunnel and trans hump. And finally my intake showed up. Luckily I mentioned to Gene at GNRS that I was looking for a vintage high rise and he told me he had one sitting in the museum he would let me have if I was going to actually run it. He seemed to remember running it on a car in the 60's but not a race car. Regardless it's pretty cool to have one with a little history. Still had some desert dust on it even! Couldn't resist a quick mockup today.
Some updates. Got a set of the new barn find Stromgberg 97's to try out. Going to be going through the engine and doing a rebuild and tossing these on. Excited to have such nice clean carbs on! Got the pans pretty much done. Now onto building a wire buck to make my paper pattern from for the front trans tunnel.
Used a wire form to make a pattern for my trans tunnel from and rolled out the tunnel using the rubber band on the upper wheel of the English wheel. Then welded the flanges to the bottom and partially metal finished the tunnel. Not perfect but good enough for a driver like I'm building. Finally started rolling the driveshaft tunnel in the English wheel with the rubber band on the upper wheel. I rolled the tunnel until I got the peak established and was as tight as I could get with the lower wheels we have. I then used some good old fashioned techniques and further formed it around a welding bottle and some body English on the bench to get the bend to come around as tight as I needed it. I now need to trim the sides down and relief cut for the cross bars and bend the flanges on it. Then onto the trunk!
Rad, I've been following along on the 'tube bit didn't realize you had a thread going here on the HAMB. Keep up the good work.
The Jalopy Journal
