I did it again, this followed me home today. Amazingly rust free, still has sub rails and all the toe board pieces. Hinges, latches and dovetails, no doors or trunk and missing a few small pieces but been blasted, primed and it's solid, really solid. A new reason to hit the swap meets. It's been a hot rod or race car at some point in it's life from some body mods that were done. I sold off the fiberglass '32 Corbin Street Rod body last weekend and still had the Model A Speedway chassis with spring behind front end and some other odds and ends. Have an old quickchange we kept around when we raced as spare parts. Will eventually find a Franklin or Winters center section for it. Plans are a dirt style modified with wide 5 hubs, engine setback and the bare necessities. I found while working on the '32 that the fab work was really good for my mind set while dealing with the cancer issues. When scheming, planning, cutting, grinding and welding I don't have enough brain left to worry about the cancer. I also don't sleep because on some of the drugs. Lots of time to fidget and fiddle if you don't waste time sleeping. Going to keep it simple and use the time to create a lot of the little parts. The '32 is about ready to blow apart for primer then it goes back together and I will drive it this fall to work out bugs. Then it comes apart again and goes to paint this winter. This project will take up any down time and keep my mind off my health issues. Perfect timing! Later, SPark
All the players in the same room for the first time. Measuring for a very mild channel. Probably 2.5" in front and 1" in back. nothing radical. Keeping the tall top, too. Playing with location and wheelbase for a bit before deciding. Trying to stay loyal to the early/mid 60's dirt modifieds that ran the area before they started narrowing and heavily modifying bodies. Think I've figured out how to put racing style wide 5 snouts (I'm using disc brakes, not drums) on a 37-48 style spindle. Plans are in place, time for the lathe! SPark
Not that I'm a master builder but I have a build thread on here somewhere or just shoot me a PM if you have questions. Glad to help if I can.
Landed a few more pieces and parts this week. Committed to buy Raven's '26 T Coupe Monday. Great guy, met, looked, bought. He's mid project right now and it will be a couple weeks before we can get it out. Trapped behind his HAMB drag car. That provides my windshield frame, doors, trunk, dash, etc. That buy leaves me needing the right upper door hinge and the panel below the trunk lid. Think I have everything else for a basically rust free body. Picked up 6 vintage HRE wide 5 hubs and rotors this afternoon. By mixing and matching parts and pieces I will have 4 nice hubs and 2 really good rotors. Plan to use .380 front rotors instead of the 1" wide pieces. Little weight off the front end. Been looking at steering options. Front end is on hairpins, spring behind, Ford spindles, 4" dropped axle. Been seriouslt considering a reversed Corvair (Flaming River) box setup as traditional steering. From what I've been able to find it's the recommended style for hairpins on a light car. Looking for feedback, hit me! Found a nailhead less than 10 miles from me. He's trying to decide if he wants to sell it or not. Supposed to be decent, waiting on info. Stay tuned, think I've found a stash of nice original Ford wide 5 wheels. Planning to transplant a couple centers to 16x10 hoops I found. 11.00-16 diamond tread rear tires. 5.00-16 ribbed fronts. The plot thickens! Doc cut my drugs down even more yesterday, will be completely off the steroids they put me on after the first round of infusion treatments by Monday. Basically crashed my thyroid and now we can deal with that. Scheduled to start treatments again Tuesday the 14th. This hunting parts, designing, chasing, scheming.....it keeps my mind off the cancer crap. Home made therapy that is actually fun! SPark
Love your T and to chime in, do not chop it. If anything channel it without a chop. BTW, I think you need a larger shop! - EM
Picked up a few wide 5 wheels and a set of spindles today to add the racing W-5 snouts to. Keep my original set of spindles safe in case I screw this deal up! Got all the old HRE mag hubs and old rotors apart. Couple heli coils and we’re golden. Also stripped down the other 2 mag hubs and they are good too. Now I need another project for them! SPark
Top is staying tall, period. Will get a slight channel at 2 to 2.5" front and 1 to 1.5" rear. Very slight. I'm building a "1963-65 era dirt modified". Around here they didn't allow much for body mods at that time. Stock body is the plan. Stock grille shell and a 1 piece hood top. Have a set of wide 5 snouts coming that were made to convert mid '70's Impala spindles to W-5. Should have them in the next 2 days. Pavement racers do this all the time. Hoping to re-cut the snout thread inside the end of the snout (they screw into the stock snout of an Impala and you then weld them in place, I'll convert the thread to be 37-41 spindle) and use them on the round back spindles.....hopefully. Measurements are really close, will see when they get here Tuesday. If that doesn't work out, I have a set of bare snouts and a method to make them work (more machine work for the lathe operator), the Impala would just be a lot easier if all my measurements are right. The round back spindles I have were removed from an old trailer build and have a few grinder marks and need some prettying up to be used. Should look right at home on the "modified". The OD on the 16" Ford W-5 inners are just slightly bigger than the ID on the 16x10 wheel shells I have my eye on. I need to check with my friend (his lathe and expertise there) and the possibility to make the cut to remove the center from the rim with a cut just barely onto the center section area. I would loose a very small amount of the arc hole at each attachment point but gain some weld surface area. One of the W-5 wheels is almost junk from rust thru on the rim but the center is nice. That's the test piece, it's worthless as a wheel. Bought 2 really nice, 2 rusty and a spare decent one "just in case". Plan in place, just need to execute. Speaking of execute, start my infusions back up on Tuesday. Switching the drugs up a bit since I went over the toxic levels on the first one. Was a sick pup for a couple weeks. Hopefully this one is easier on my system, less side effects and still get the immune system working to kill off the cancer cells. Stay tuned! SPark
I have done the W5 spindle conversion. For some reason right now I can't upload pics. Coleman Racing sells a snout that will adapt a late chevy spindle to W5 by screwing onto the chevy threads. I used a '54 Chevy spindle. I turned the ID of the adaptor snout down to fit over the seal land of the chevy. Then I turned down a "washer" to the ID of the adaptor and the OD of the spindle. Slid the washer over the spindle, tacked it in place. Then slid the adaptor over the spindle and washer and welded it to the '54 spindle at the seal land. 15K miles and no problems. The bad thing about this conversion is that it has increased the scrub radius a touch. Hasn't seemed to bother it. I also had to modify the brake bracket a little to hit the rotor right. I'm using Coleman Racing hubs, but your Howe Racing Enterprises hubs will be cool. I actually had HRE hubs on my first late model dirt car. I have the QC out of my last race car in it, which had the W5 hubs on it. I was bound and determined to run the W5 all the way around, so I had to come up with a way to convert the front to W5. Worked for me. Maybe you have a better idea. I am interested in your solution. While I was typing, you were posting. You seem to have it covered. Great minds think alike! LOL
While reading you post, I remembered that I didn't use Colemans snout. I cut the snout off the late model spindles from the race car. The were empty inside, making the conversion easier.
I will have both lying here. Have a friend that has a complete machine shop and a lot of patience with me. Think the Impala spindle snout uses an 11/16 thread and my round backs are 3/4 thread. Plan on simply re-cutting the thread in the Coleman snout to match the round back and screwing it in place then weld. Snouts are slightly different lengths but it's minimal and should work....hopefully. We WILL make this deal work. I still have my old QC we saved for parts but it's a sprint center with the shallow cover and the center is pretty rough. Not cracked but well used. Will find an old Franklin or Winters with the deep cover, need to run a super cover to look right! SPark
Sounds like a plan. It's fun having the old racing stuff on your hot rod. People look at the front hubs and kinda scratch their heads. Can't figure out what it is.
That’s the plan. Jumping thru all the hoops on my ‘32 build and learning. Only glass will be windshield. Bus fan defroster and hand crank window wiper. SPark
Update on the Coleman Impala conversion snouts on the original Ford spindles. I cleaned up the threads on my 37-41 spindles and the Impala snouts threads and they screws right on. They are going to work great. I'm 1" short of the snout hitting the spindle body though. I'll just thread the spindle the rest of the way down to the back side of where the outer bearing sits and that solves that problem. Nothing fancy needed. The ID of the base of the Impala conversion snout is slightly smaller than the surface where the 37-41 inner bearing sits. Looks like a .042 removal inside the snout base will take care of things. A quick pass on the lathe will make that snout ID fit over the inner bearing surface. Simple. That leaves one small 1/4" long section in the tapered middle transition area of the spindle pin from inner to outer bearing. It may or may not interfere, it's close. I think I will simply do a little grinding in that area with a flap sander to remove material as necessary. If it touches, it will be very, very minimal and for a very short distance. This should work great! Some side effects from my latest infusion therapy are keeping me out of the shop for a few days. Will take this up after the headaches pass. Insane headaches that about cross my eyes. Probably best not to work on spindles with lathes and grinders with crossed eyes! Stay tunes for pics and updates. SPark
I can wear a Cat in the Hat, hat! Not putting a top back in it, maybe just the wood with a nice stain job. SPark
Got a nice, complete Frankland Center with Winters deep rear cover the other day. That works. Also picked up the 2nd parts body today. Got it home so I can start building the body and deciding what to keep and what to re-sell. Set of workable, nice doors, perfect dash, nice cowl and back window panel, possible trunk lid (haven't decided yet) gas door, windshield frame and some giblets. What's good on one body is missing or bad on the other. At least it's all in one place now! Think all I'm missing for the body is a couple door patch panels, the right upper door hinge for a '26 and maybe a truck lid skin plus I need the lower panel below the trunk. That will give me a pretty much rust free body. Immunotherapy went well then turned to crap. About the 3rd day out started getting the headaches from hell. Never felt anything like it. I have a very high threshold of pain, this was over the top. The wife told the doctor Wednesday when she heard me say I was done and couldn't take it any more she got really worried. She had never seen me back away from pain before and when the time came to go to the docs office I didn't try to drive, that never happens. She told them it was bad for either of those to happen. By Wednesday night I was in the hospital until Friday evening. Fluids, hi powered pain meds then back on steroids to stop the infusion reactions. No permanent damage, wanted the treatments to work as long as possible so I gutted it out 10 days. That's about 2/3 of the life if the infusion so that's good. Got some benefit I think. Will start again the week after Labor Day, think the cocktail will be a little different that time. Can't handle the Yervoy, my system is too healthy and it hits me too hard. Few pics of todays booty. Doors and trunk lid are buried, more pics tomorrow. SPark
Appreciate the prayers. I live in the SE Corner, Bloomfield. Originally from Atlantic in SW Iowa, also lived in Council Bluffs a couple years and the Denison area a little while. SPark
Created a panhard bar mount for the quick change pinion today. Wanted to keep it old skool but couldn't find one anywhere so a $9 6"x x9" x 1/2" piece of steel and I have one. Thanks to my Jr and High School shop teacher for teaching us layout, Dykem and proper use of tools. Something I still use every day. Should work great. Also stopped by a local tractor junk yard. I admit I am "tractor stupid". I don't do tractors. I described what I was looking for and he gave me a quick education on what tractors used the tanks I was after and what to look for. Great guy. He lost his brother to cancer a few years ago and never quite got over it. He wanted me to describe what I was going thru, treatment, side effects, etc. We share a lot of mutual friends and he's heard about my cancer thru the grapevine. Found a tank that was already off, has a small rust area and should work perfect for me once repaired. $10 for my "fuel cell". Dropped my spindles and spindle adaptors off at an Amish machine shop yesterday. Should have them back by this coming Wednesday at the latest. Depends on what days I end up getting treatments next week on when I can get back out there to pick the stuff up. Ordered some patch panels, should be here tomorrow. Got the QC cleaned up, did the computations and think I settled on 51.5" hub face to hub face. Cut and sectioned the old steel tubes to get the correct length/width for mockup. Will just buy new tubes when it goes back together the final time. If all the math is correct, I will have 3" between the inside edge of the 11.00/16 diamond tread tires mounted on 2.5" back space wheels and the frame rails. Should be about right for the Curtis radius rods to clear everything. Moving the axle forward and will end up with a 100" wheelbase, 1" shorter than stock Model T. Cutting the rear wheelwells forward and up into the quarter to slightly tuck the rears in. Tuesday we hit the doctor again. Then we'll know about the next infusion, currently scheduled for Wednesday. Little steps. SPark
The Jalopy Journal
