Technical Pie Cutting 29 Coupe into Roadster, will it work ?

The paper imprint next the the Roadster body was taken from the coupe quarter panel.

 

Suggested reading - search in here for the thread "model A sports coupe - the poor man's roadster".

 

Now stuck on, with bottom folded under.

 

I know there are many variables when working with a model, but it’s more accurate trying to draw it up. Here are the advantages with this theory.

By chanelling the quarter panel down to line up with the Roadster beltline, I do not have to do any cutting at all. The lower wheel arch means that what ever rear end goes into it can run at stock height saving time on stepping the frame.

I said at the begging of the thread that I was piecing together something together to sell of. I gave up on the idea of a coupe because the coupe doors and cowl are damaged. I also decided against doing a Roadster Pickup because of the difficulty in a making an accurate looking bed.

In the end, the coupster idea, made the most sense and rather than cut up the quarters to suit the doors it made more sense to make the doors to suit the quarters. In the end this will still be a pile of parts only this time it will more closely resemble a Roadster.

Tomorrow I will finish off the doors a start modifying the quarter panels to sit lower over the subrails.

 

Your reference to the cowl in the above, and your first post, is a little ambiguous as to the geneology of the cowl. The "A" pillar is clearly from an open car, which all have a slender "reveal" down the front and for the short stretch along the bottom. Closed cars, including the sports coupe, do not have this. Also, the top door hinge on an open car is below the wide upper horizontal reveal line. On all closed cars, this hinge (actually middle door hinge) is directly within this reveal.

 

hauntingly familiar !

 

following along with interest as I plan to to something similar ...you never mention them but your calculations don't seem include adding the extra body bead (belting, reveal etc.) to the top of the coupe 1/4s and above trunk (boot) panel (tulip) nor the body bead that runs the length of bottom...you'll have build that combing out of tubing or wide bead roller. On the sport coupe there was a metal strip that was nailed on around that area but they're usually long gone with the wood...one suggestion I was going to make before you nix the rdstr. doors... on a phaeton there is a small panel between the front and rear doors it will be pretty close to the distance you need and have all the right curvature/beads etc. be easy to ship but pretty easy to recreate too

see under the doors? those are separate panels with scuff/step plates roll those beads into the bottom of the coupe parts to get the roadster look you want... and this is the center panel after that your roadster bead splits into two 1 around the cockpit (that you have to make) and 1 down the 1/4...

 

Sorry for any confusion regarding the cowl and quarter panels. The cowl I am using is the open cowl shown in the images, I also have a closed cowl I could use to build it into a coupe but it’s slightly twisted and at the moment there are quite a few coupes on the market over here, but next to no roadsters.

The ones that do come up usually comprise of an original tourer cowl and front doors and a fibreglass roadster back. So they are only half steel.

28/29 Tourers were by far the most common of all the Model A sold in Australia many ended up being cut down into pickups like the one I purchased a year ago. Those are normally the ones that get turned into roadsters or sometimes roadster pickups.

As I need to sell this off ASAP, I am trying to put together something that will resemble a Roadster and feature as much original steel panels as possible, and in my books original sports coupe quarters trump fibreglass roadster ones.

The other reason I no longer want to cut up the coupe quarters is, believe it or not they are rare, at anyone time, there might be four or five complete coupe bodies for sale in the whole country, that’s 28-31. I never ever see coupe quarters on there own.

By piecing this together, I am giving the buyer options. He or she might decide to build it as a coupe, and sell or trade the front panels for coupe ones or build it into a proper roadster and sell or trade the rear for roadster panels, Brookville ones for example.

I have run out of money and time, I have had my other project on hold as a result, so it’s time to move this on pay off the debts and restart my couprielet project.

 

With you on the time/cost thing...
At 62 years old, lump sums of money don't just jump out at me...
.
Sold 6 pieced together model a bodies and 2 parts piles in the past few years …
Used the $ to pay taxes, taxes, and more taxes...
.
unfortunately I have cleaned out almost all of my buddies parts piles...
I have to sell them kinda cheap as customers look at an unassembled brookie's cost and they would rather pay a little more and have new steel...
they not knowing just how much work there is in trying to fit tab A into slot B...
.
A headlights, radiator shells, hoods and cowls are still out there on struggle buggies...
doors and decklids seem to have been easy to store, and they show up...
but rear quarters just don't APPEAR any more...

 

This is some bad ass shit right here. Go man go.

 

I'm a little late on this but instead of making a pie cut just make 2 parallel cuts and drop the top down and make a small patch to make it the right length. I'm not a metal worker but I think it would work.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Hey Guys.
Thanks for all the positive feedback but I have made up my mind. I spent the day sorting out what I needed for this project moved what I didn’t down to the shed and moved what I did outside to go up stairs. As things stand the actual mock-up has turned out a lot better than expected.The coupe doors are roughly 2 1/4 inches taller than the Roadster doors, so that will be about the same degree that I will need to chanel the quarters.

 

On the outside of the panel you will notice a whole pile of bondo that runs parallel to the bottom edge of the Roadster door. There is reason for that. Both sides had patch lanels butt welded in, leading to the distortion, hence the bondo. The patches are 5 1/2 inches tall, so when I remove them, the new ones will only be three inches tall, that will bring the quarter panels down into line with the Roadster doors.

 

Maths is not my strong point, but that will be rectified before the new patch panels are made. To avoid any distortion on the new patch panels I am putting a one inch step in them so they over lap the quarter panels on the inside. Another thing I will do is put a one inch swage along the bottom of them so they look more like roadster ones.

 

In many ways the these changes will be more like a sectioning along the base than chanelling but either way the result will be that they line up with the doors, with out extensive cutting and re joining.

 

With the two or so inches removed, I will be more easily able to repair the wheel arches which are shot.

 

The doors will be neither coupe nor roadster doors. I will take a pattern of the coupe doors and transform them onto these unfinished door skins so that I can extend them to the same dimensions. The doors will feature the same beltline as the Roadster doors but have the same dimensions and shape as the coupe doors so no modifications will be needed in the b pillar area.

 

Roadster quarter panels run a second swage at the top around the where the parcel shelf would sit in a coupe. The sports coupe runs a strip of timber in its place, that allows the fabric top to be tacked into place. I will take a pattern of this timber and make a metal strip that resembles the one on the Roadster, and sit it between the lower swage and the roof timber.

 

The other obsticle has been working out sub rails, so I came up with a simple solution for this as well. The coupe subrails are too shot to use, so last year when I started working on my Couprielet body. I made hammer forms out of double thick one inch ply slabs. They worked a treat but I decided on sourcing genuine ones in the end after giving up on hammer firmed ones and trying to repair the original ones. I put them away and dragged them back out today to be re purposed.

 

The shot subrails will become a jig to peice the ply ones together. I fabricated up a cross rail last year with my folder, that one will go where the front of the seat frame sits.

 

This one will sit at the back of the seat frame.

 

I also have a number of floor pans that will help square everything up.

 

If you don’t believe Model A Fords had wooden sub rails have a look at this.

 

This was how the Briggs Cabriolet bodies were put together. I have studied the build up very closely so my sub rails will closely follow these ones.

 

In short I have enough parts to pull this off, the goal is to get it done in the next week and up for sale. The next task is to get the doors finished.