Craig, so sorry to hear of Desmo, they really are a family member. That carb line really looks the cats meow. JW
I, too, am sorry to hear about Desmo. I have an older dog as well and know that day will come. On a brighter note, really like the carb fittings. Looking forward to nickel/copper version.
In my frenzy of parts buying I forgot to mention a couple things. For instance, I got a grille shell. It'll need to be chopped though. And I ordered some heads! Earlier style Navarros. I was going to go with later Offy's but plans change, whataya gonna do? Oh yeah, I picked up a turtledeck too!
I was just having a bit of fun last night with the turtledeck teaser, but that was the big news of the day. I got a turtledeck! It needs a lot of work, there's a fair mix of bondo, fiberglass, and rust on it underneath the primer so I'll be busy for a while with it. No deck lid either. But it's a huge step from having NOTHING in my humble opinion. Now I need to find out who has the best patch panels for these. And the body too I suppose. As for deck lids, aside from Howells steel version and the fiberglass one Snyder's sells, I don't know of any other choices. I bent up the pump to carb leg of the fuel line. Looks ok here but when I went to silver solder everything to the "T" fitting I lost it. Two of the joints were fine, just as expected, the third was a cluster. I don't know what happened but it just wasn't working. No pics of that yet, I'm still trying to recover. I bought a 1/4" T fitting to make the copper line and discovered the fitting I got was nowhere near the right size. Oops. You'll have to wait on that one too. Not that it's all put together, I may cut it and use a rubber hose between the pump and the carb anyway. It's a pain to assemble like this, and I'm wondering about vibration between there. Maybe a rubber hose would be a good buffer between the carbs and pump? I've also been working on rebuilding the carbs because it's very important to further progress to have rebuilt carbs now... not. I just felt like rebuilding them. I discovered one of them has pulled threads in the body where the base is held on. I thought about trying a helicoil, but then realized half the threads are still there, so maybe a stud Loctited in instead? The front carb here is differnt than the two others I have, so it's being relegated to parts carb status for now. I bought extended throttle shafts so I could use a driver's side linkage. I think they're extended a bit too much though! I'll cut them down once I have the linkage in hand. And that brings things pretty much up to date. I'm pretty happy to have a turtledeck to start working with, even if it will be a lot of work.
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me... these were waiting for me when I got home from work today. AND, I also booked flights to Colorado for the Hotrod Hillclimb so I guess the trip is official.
Ok, last carb shot for a while The first one went together pretty well, the second made me wonder if I should look for another to rebuild but in the end went together ok. The third one I had to choose from was basically worthless for anything other than parts, and even then many of the parts are different than the other two. I think it's a later one, with riveted throttle plates and other internal and external differences. I'm not sure about the air cleaners, I wanted to use scoops but thought these would filter better. I've done an open velocity stack on a bike before but thought I'd be more responsible on this! I probably won't use the fuel line, I didn't even bother cleaning the flux off when I was done. One of the joints just wouldn't cooperate and I don't like how the three fittings have to play well together. When I rebuild it I think I'm going to put a short rubber hose between the pump and carbs. Turtledeck question. There is a "T" shaped bit of trim tat goes between the quarters and the horizontal parts. What the heck is this called, and where can I get new ones? I saw them for a coupe but not the roadster. I'd even buy the coupe parts if I had to but I can't find them again now! In other turtle deck news, I rolled the dice and ordered a decklid and a couple other things from Howell's. I know, I've heard the complaints, but what choice does a guy have? I don't know of anyone else making steel deck lids for these. Most of the complaints seem to be about how long things take to get delivered and I figured if it was going to take months I'd like to get started waiting now. Even if the fit isn't great (and I hear conflicting reports on how well they fit) it's a start. The website said they were in stock again so I thought that helped my chances some. Right or wrong, I paid my money and crossed my fingers. Then at work today I recalled where they are located. Texas. I checked the map and yep, they're probably underwater. I'm guessing they have more pressing issues right now than building car parts. Time to get back to working on the chassis and hope everything works out on the deck lid. I also hope everyone in Texas gets through this ok, we got hit by a tornado a few years back but I still can't imagine how messed up things are after a flood.
Yeah Howells are based out of Beaumont. Its not too pretty down there right now. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
I dragged this thing home a year ago today so I thought I'd post an update. I took out my brake parts and realized I have two right rears and no left rear. I think the guy I bought it from told me that, but my brain wasn't working too well and it didn't sink in. I have everything else for a '46 - '48 set of brakes - here's the right front for an example. So... I need a left rear backing plate to match this. Needs to have the hardware for the parking brake with it too. I found another right rear on ebay but not a left rear. So close! Right now I have the wheels back on it. I put the model A drums/hubs on with no backing plates and after I get back from the Hotrod Hillclimb I'll pick up some of those wheel dollies for it so I can roll it around in the shop. That should make it easier to get to things. My workspace is so small I can't even get a good side view of the car. Sharp eyes will notice the wheels are just sitting up next to the car in this shot. Obviously the tires are wrong, 7.50" all around isn't going to cut it. Doing this is making me think I want later wheels. I've blown pretty much all the money from the bike I sold to fund this latest flurry of parts so I'm not sure I can buy tires and wheels right now. I also can't decide on a style. All painted or chrome rims with painted centers? It's those big important decisions that delay things... I also considered buying just the tires and putting them on these wheels for mock up, but I'd rather not switch the tires from one set of wheels to another. Maybe I'm just being lazy there. Since that pic I've pulled the body off and the engine out. I'm going to backdate the engine and put it back in the car to figure out the fan. I ordered a radiator too, a chopped aluminum number to fit the '32 grille shell. I was going to chop the shell to match the body, now I'm thinking I should find a chopped insert and mod the shell to match that, then fit that to body. I've seen unmodified '32 shells lowered enough to get a decent hood line, but the bottom just looks wrong to me then. I'm thinking about 4" needs to come out of it. I grabbed the tie rod with the intent of shortening it, and realized there is too much corrosion to get solid threads. Then I found out a new tie rod costs under $20. It'll be here tomorrow, another thing to take care of after the hillclimb. Oh, did I mention that the cheap shipping from Snyder's gets things to my door over night? Gotta love it. I bolted the new crossmemeber to the frame and removed the rivets to the stock one. I'm going to move it back a few inches to gain room for the master cylinder. Which reminds me. The master cylinder - when it's in position, the top of the crossmember blocks access to the fill hole. I'm thinking I'll probably put a spacer in there and relieve the top the crossmember a little. Or, make an adapter for a Mustang dual circuit master cylinder. Haven't decided yet. And that's pretty much where it sits on year in. I need a left rear backing plate/hardware, I may or may not have a deck lid coming, and I've managed to catch a cold three days before heading out to the hillclimb. D'oh!
Go with the 67 Mustang drum- drum master as you need a bit of safety now days with the dual circuit. I wanted to retain my 39-48 master but my certification guy talked me into it. JW
Progress has been slow. The Hot Rod Hill Climb was fun, managed to get over my cold more or less before I left so that was good but of course no work done on the car. My wife was out of town the weekend after the Hot Rod Hill Climb, and I had big plans to make some major steps, but... she threw me a curve. The day before she left I got a phone call, seems something had caught her eye. Long story short, meet Ollie! Here he is supervising my work on the master cylinder. He agrees I should go with a dual circuit system so time to get/make an adapter. The bonus there is the adpater should push the master cylinder out from under the crossmember a little and help with access to fill it. He's an 8 year old border collie/Australian shepherd mix that we got from the local humane society. He supposedly has a few issues so I spent almost the entire weekend with him, NOT working on the car. So far he's been a great dog with a couple quirks but we should be able to deal with it. Amazingly well behaved in cars, a huge change from Sophia (one of the retrievers I mentioned earlier). I also had to make a trip back to Minneapolis during which my cold came back with a vengence, so it's one excuse after another for me lately. I did manage to shorten/thread the tie rod. I'm not sure it's short enough though, I think I need to take another half inch off of it maybe? I'm also considering welding a nut on it so I have faces to put a wrench on for adjustments? And that is pretty much the entire sum of my progress over the past month or so. I bought a lower windshield frame for it but that hasn't shown up yet. No reply from Howell's on the turtle deck patch panels (no surprise there). I've chosen the wheels I want but haven't ordered them yet. This weekend will likely be spent cleaning the basement so I have somewhere to stash my bikes over the winter. THEN I can maybe get back to work on this.
Really like this build! One of my biggest regrets is selling a 27 roadster on A running gear. What a case of dumbassery.
@DesmoDog , glad to see you with proper garage supervision again. We'll still be here when you have progress to report. First help Ollie work through his issues.
I ordered a new compressor yesterday. I've been thinking about it for years, and with Ollie's anxiety I used it as an excuse to finally buy something quieter. So today I went downstairs to re-measure where I was going to put it. Ollie came along. A) Somehow I messed up the measurements and this thing is not going to fit where I thought it would. Plan B will work but involves reconfiguring some things. Oh well. B) I fired up the current compressor when Ollie was down there. He didn't even look my direction when it started running. Ok, maybe I need a new excuse. To be fair it does have twice the flow too so that'll be nice. I also finally bought an electric impact wrench. I saw it sitting there in the box tonight and decided it was time. Off with the crankshaft pulley nut! Ok, that came off easy. But what about the pulley? How to pull that... I've heard they can be a pain but what the heck. First shot was to take a simple three armed puller, kinda hook it to the back of the pulley, and give it a shot. I thought the bolt was slipping but no, the pulley came off that easily. Feeling lucky, I decided to pull one of the heads. Holy crap, that's a lot of junk out of the coolant passages! The floor was clean before I pulled it. Gasket is still on, but I'm guessing not much cooling going on. I forgot to take pics of the head, it didn't look too bad though. Gasket off, cylinders look pretty good but there is a very noticable ridge at the top. The next two cylinders aren't as clean. I need to measure the bore below the ridge but I haven't got the tools. I measured the bore at the top and wrote it down but I can't find the paper now. I want to say it was 3.165 but stock bore is 3.1875 so probably not. Or, I didn't clean it up good enough before I measured. Whatever, I'm guessing it's a stock bore. I thought I saw a crack but now that I look at the picture, it seems too straight and consistent to be a crack? I know, it needs to be magnafluxed. But nothing jumps out at me so... so far so good! I also did a quick stroke measurement. Looks like it's only the waterpumps that are from a Mercury. No surprise there, but a guy can dream!
I pulled the other head today, no surprises it's about the same as the other side. So then I pulled the waterpumps and the timing cover. I can't put the early distributer on until I pull the cam, so that won't happen for a while. The internals don't look so bad on this but the old oil looks pretty horrible. The front seal must have been leaking too, there was a lot of grime to clean up. Nice! After that I put on the new waterpumps and earlier front pulley. Oh oh... The earlier pulley is a lot longer than the 8BA pulley. I don't think there's even enough room to change the belt. Here's a shot of the 8BA set up as a comparison. It's hard to see, but the edge of front pulley is about even with the back flange of the crossmember. Easily an inch shorter. I am not at all convinced that an 8BA engine is longer than a 59A if you include the stock fan. I might have screwed up buying the parts to convert this to an earlier style... Anyone want to buy some brand new waterpumps??? Not really, I've got more work to do before I bail on this. And there are always those newfangled electric fans if push comes to shove. Kidding! Maybe. In other news, to get the crank in the same position as I had it with the old Mercury pumps, the engine mounts on the A frame will have to be lower than I expected, below the top flange of the frame rail. I am considering mounting the engine higher than I had it before. It would give more room for the exhaust and steering, and make the engine mounts more straight forward. Keeping the pulley nut in line with the crank doohickey on the spring mount isn't an issue anymore since the new grill shell doesn't have a cut out for the crank anyway. I ran out of time to take pictures and want to spend more time working with stuff before I get too excited about any of this. The plan for this weekend was to finish modding the tie rod and steering arms, but the engine distracted me! EDIT: Forgot to mention, I also measured a couple cylinders below the ridge. I'm getting around 3.21, give or take a little here and there.
I played around with the engine mounts/positioning more today. Here's the direction I'm going now, with the rubber mounts in positon the crank pulley is about an inch higher than I had it before. I checked the clearances between the torque tube and the cross member again too. That's about .5" at the front and .75" at the back. Somewhere I mentioned I had slid the crossmember back from it's stock location. Right now the rivet holes from the front are lined up with the old rivet holes from the back. I think this is about where it will end up but I can still move it around if I have to. Anyway I got to wondering just how much suspension travel I'd have with this set up, and what would bottom out first. I took some measurements and laid it out, maybe this spreadsheet will make sense. Granted I listed things from front to back on the left and then back to front going across but that's life, deal with it. The red cells show where intereference would be, based on the listed part being the limiting factor. So this tells me with the crossmember in the current position, the torque tube will hit the back flange of the crossmember first. No biggie, I can mod that. What I can't mod (easily anyway) are the radius rods hitting the frame. So those will be the limit. That gives me a whopping 3 inches of suspension travel, not counting how much it will drop when the body is back on. On the other hand, when I had the body on and jumped on the back end, it didn't move much so maybe that's not an issue. As for the crossmember hitting the torque tube before the radius rods bottom out, I'm wondering if I can't just reverse the crossmember, flip it around so the back is in the front. The numbers say it should work so I'll try that before modding anything. I'll also finalize the location (based on mounting the body to it) before I mod anything. Also... with the engine in place I was able to slip a belt on the pulley. AND... I think there is some room to be gained if I work with the U-bolts hoding the spring on, so I'm still good to go with this. Next step is to mock up the fan/radiator placement. The nuclear option is to move the engine back and shorten the driveshaft. That would mean a later rear axle (why not if I'm already shortening a driveshaft?) and confirming the body would still fit without major firewall mods.
Not since I reinstalled the engine, it's on the list. Truth is, when I thought about doing it yesterday I couldn't find it before I got distracted by something else. I tried it again before pulling the engine though and I think it will work mounted on the bottom of the frame. I may have to add a u-joint or two to the steering column, that part I haven't figured out yet. I haven't ruled out cowl steering yet either. In fact it's my preferred method but I'm not sure what all is involved. More bracing behind the cowl, different steering box, etc. It's my first go at this stuff, cowl steering may have to wait for a different car. FWIW I'm pretty sure if I build another early car it'll likely be a four cylinder... I've got a nice Model A engine, and a front axle/wishbone. Heck, I'm almost there already.
If you mount it the same as mine (or similar) it will work well, I have a small block Chev and before that was a baby Hemi. Phil Coopy did it the same way on his T with a Flatty Ford. JW
The frame rails taper where the center crossmember sits so it can't be removed and reversed without cutting the ends off. Would be much simpler to raise the openings on the front and rear of the crossmember without removing it.
Hmm... I thought the taper started right behind the crossmember. It's moving in any case, the new crossmember won't fit with the stock one in place, neither would the master cylinder. The rear of it is into the taper but there's still enough overlap to weld it in place.
Mocking more stuff up before I commit to the engine mount location. After tonight I've decided to go with where it sits, worst case the grill sits forward as shown in these photos. Best case, I can shorten up the fan and pull the grill back again. The radiator is about 1.5" further ahead than the stock position. I measured the hood length on the top of the cowl and it's about 31.25" when the shell is at 90 degrees to the ground. I measured a stock Model A hood I have and it was 30.5", so I'm looking at a hood that's under an inch longer than a stock hood worst case. Obviously I still have to chop the shell. I laid out the top of the hood line, and if I go from the cowl to the radiator it looks too steep. If I go from the cowl to a 1" spacer on top of the rad, it looks like it's maybe too much? I think I'll be good once the shell is chopped, I can play with the details when the time comes, after the body is actually bolted down on whatever sort of mounts I end up with. Near as I can tell right now, the shell needs to be chopped about 5". I found an insert that's chopped 4.5". I may buy that and chop the shell to fit rather than trying to come up with a custom insert. That's an 18" fan and it's too big. 16" would be better. 15" would work. Do I cut the existing fan down or try to find a smaller one? I still want to try an 8BA style set up to see how far it sticks out, maybe I can find one with a smaller fan. So here's something I've been mulling over. I've seen truck generators with a dual pulley on the generator. If I can find one of those pulleys for this generator (or buy a truck generator) could I use the second slot to turn a fan??? Custom hub of course. The pulley would have to clear the distributor... which leads me to my next step. I need to pull the cam so I can put the distributor in place and get an idea of how everything fits together. In other news, I think the stock crossmember will work fine moved back into the position I have it in. It lines up with the crossmember on the body now so I can use it for a body mount, plus there's room for a master cylinder now. Speaking of cross members, there isn't enough room on the new one to install a dual circuit master cylinder, the MCs's mounting flange is too wide. I thought about moving the pedals inboard anyway, that's something I'll be looking at in the future, once I have the steering figured out so I know where the shaft will be.
The significance of this photo is the lack of clamps/spacers/mock up "I think it should be about here" items. The engine is sitting on it's own mounts in the position it's going to end up in. Granted I still have to add a few more bolts on the mounts but that can happen later. Yes, the mounts are bolted in, for now anyway. Before I pulled off the intake I noticed a little detail that is going to limit how far I can move the generator up. I have no idea if that will be an issue or not since I haven't got a belt yet to try it out with. Solution here. Shorter belt... or Strombergs!
I would think having the fan lower would help keep it in the right place for the radiator. Looking good by the way and hows Ollie doing? JW
Ollie is doing really well, thanks for asking. Of the multiple issues that were listed on his forms at the shelter, only one has shown itself with us - storm anxiety. No need for thunder or lighting to bother him, it's (I'm guessing) the pressure change when rain is coming. He'll start pacing before it hits and stay wound up until it clears again. Being downstairs seems to help, he's spent alot of time hanging out with me as I work. In fact you can see him in the first photo of post #200, I think that was taken while it was raining. He's also ok if he's outside in the rain. Doesn't bother him at all to go for a walk when it's raining, it's just being inside? I dunno... But getting back to the car, the fan will have to be low with the chopped radiator. I found a 16" fan, it's on it's way. I also ordered some belts, I'm hoping the right combination of belts and the smaller fan will make everything fall into place. I decided against trying an 8BA set up, looking at pictures it seems the hub pushes the fan so far forward I wouldn't gain anything. I'd be interested to see the length of each engine WITH FAN, my bet is they're roughly the same so it doesn't matter which you try shoving in there if you want a stock fan. Aside from leaving room for refitting the belt on the earlier style. I've got things so close I'm a little concerned about how thick the paint will be on the pulley and spring U-bolts. Not kidding... if I were doing this over I'd probably stick with the 8BA front end set up simply because of the crank pulley set up. (and/or maybe extend the wheelbase about an inch when I stepped the frame). I put the tie rod together and tried it out. Looks like with the ends screwed on all the way I get a bit of toe OUT so I should be good with the new length after all. I'm still looking at welding a nut on it to have something to turn it with. Maybe it would be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, but I am not a fan of trying to turn round bars between threaded ends? It's a common detail on linkages I'm familiar with and would be a pretty simple addition. Pictures if/when it happens. It just barely clears the wishbones so I'll be bending the steering arms a little more at some point. I'll wait to see how the drag link works out since I'll probably have to tweak that arm on the spindle too. I'm still looking for a rear backing plate. The stuff I've found is either incomplete or earlier than I'd like. Also shipping is a pain, I'm hoping to find something local. I'll get more serious about the search next season at the various shows/swaps.
The Jalopy Journal
