Some of you know I found an old Survivor model A roadster from the St Louis area a while back. My wife and I have been driving the wheels off this car. It’s so much fun. The problem was it was needing some love and tlc. The car was built in 56 and ran at the local STL tracks. It was resurrected in the 90’s and got a new lease on life. I picked the car up and the DP primer that was sprayed in the 90’s was flat and showing it’s age. Second gear was missing some teeth but we drove it anyway. We logged about 4K miles this summer going from first to third. The interior was sort of a harvest gold and reminded me of my mom’s barstools from the 70’s. It looked sort of homemade. The old Strombergs were leaking so bad that people would pull up beside me and tell me that they were puking fuel. We didn’t want to stop driving the car, so we waited until the heat of the summer when it wasn’t any fun to drive. When it reached 100 F we started tearing into it.
One of the things that bothered me most about this car was the homemade seat. It had a steel bar that ran right through the middle of our lumbar. I was afraid that if we were ever rear ended, we would be paraplegic. It doesn’t help that I was raised by a crash test engineer. My dad ran the crash sled for the FAA for 25 years. Here is a few pics of the seats. They had some sort of black foam or something that was decomposing. It had seen its useful life. I’m pretty sure that this was a mix of bus seats and boat seats. One of the arms was completely broken as well.
I figured while I had the motor and tranny out I would address some of the leaks. This would help keep mama happy if it wasn’t marking it place. The motor and tranny were pulled. It’s my first experience with a closed driveshaft. A lot of questions on the HAMB.
Great job man,,,,,,,repair it and put it back on the road . Put a 100 thousand miles on it,,,,,,then keep driving it,,,,LoL . That is a nice old hot rod,,,,,,y’all enjoy it ! Tommy
Mama and I had a DA party. The original bodywork was pretty decent. No hidden surprises. Well, except for the fact that the previous owner had possibly used Armor All or Pledge on the body.
Big time. I won’t go into it, but I’ll show you a sample of what happened. This is after 3 rounds of wax and grease remover. It was stripped 3 times to bare metal and sealed. Anyway, it’s staying in primer. It will be good enough for a driver.
I tried out Slick Sand poly for the first time. I really like this stuff. It sprays nice and blocks out even better.
So after a few days of blocking, we put it in sealer. It’s staying in sealer. The car is nice, but not worth an acid dip to fix the fisheye issues. It actually laid down pretty well.
Started reassembling the car today. We have a week off, so we are going to try to get a lot done. Replaced the old jute back insulation with some new Kilmat. This car never had many rattles, but this will take it to the next level.
I started laying out seat designs and quickly decided to farm it out. I usually do all of my own work, but the seats alone could eat up a couple of weeks. I decided to make a few phone calls and ended up ordering a set of custom frames from Nicole at Wise Guys Seats. They weren’t cheap, but I am impressed at the quality. They are a lot heavier duty than I would have built. They have a recline feature as well. I doubt I will use that feature once I get them set, but it does help, since the car is heavily channeled. They also came with foam, but that will have to be trimmed to fit, since these frames have been narrowed and shortened.
Sweet little roadster! Why did they only have one fuel pressure regulator on the main middle carb? seems like there the other two that are getting too much psi and leak all the time.
Just temporarily. We are pushing to get this up and running for the Gathering at the Roc. That’s in October, so we are pretty humped up on it. Sorry, guy I don’t know how to use multi quote. I am technology challenged.
That is awesome. Keep those pictures coming it's inspiring me to get my butt outside and work on mine.