Ive had more than a few people ask me how my dad and I put the swing out windshield frame in my 32 so heres a half ass tech post. Stuff you might wanna know: 1932 Ford Fiberglass Body Made by a small company. Comparative to a Heritage body. Original 1932 Ford closed car windshield frame Most of the hardware (Swing Arms, Knobs, washers, windshield corners) can be bought from Bob Drake, Ozark Ford, or any early ford reproduction parts dealer. Alright, before we started putting the windshield in, we made a structure for the inside of the car out of 1x1 square tubing. There is a bar that runs from a body mount on the floor, up the A-pillar which is welded to another bar that runs across the top corner of the car. This picture is viewing the passenger side a pillar bar (arrows are pointing to it) This bar and alot of the other bars are not only welded together and welded to the body mounts but are glued to the body with some really good metal to fiberglass glue. Next we mounted a bar across the car above the windshield opening. This bar (aprox. 1-1/4" wide x 1/4" thick) goes from the top of the a-pillar post on the driver side to the the top of the a-pillar post on the passenger side. This is the bar that the windshield hinges are gonna be mounted to. At about this time we chopped the original frame to the height we needed it to fit the chop of the car. (To chop the windshield frame you cut the bottom corners down.) It was mostly some measuring and some guessing because we dont know exactly how much the body is chopped. So we just chopped it till it looked about the right size. While I was working on the structure inside, my dad reworked the windshield opening on the body. The opening wasnt even close to the shape of the windshield frame. He spent an entire night grinding, glassing, and redoing the entire opening just so the frame would fit and look right. Now, the windshield fits the opening and we have a structure to mount the hinges to. We taped the windshield frame in the opening and started on the hinges. The hinges are just some piano hinges we had laying around. This was the hard part. The windshield not only has to swing open but it has to swing out so the top of it doesnt hit the 'brow' or the body right above the opening. To swing the frame open AND out at the same time the hinge has to be made correctly. I welded a peice of metal onto the hinge at an angle so that it would open the windshield correctly. Its kinda hard to explain so here is a couple pictures showing a hinge. The first pic is a crude drawing showing the hinge from the side. As you can see we had to notch out a little bit of the fiberglass so the hinge and bracket on the frame would clear. Making the hinge work right is alot of trial and error. I think i had about 8 different hinges by the time I made the perfect one. The geometry was real tricky. Now that the frame swung out properly we needed a way for the frame to stay shut. I guess its pretty much like it would be in an original car 32 ford. We utilized that A-pillar post again and welded a bolt to it on each side so the swing arm has something to 'swing' on. I think the pictures for this are pretty self explanitory. Like I said in the begining, we got all the brackets and stuff like that for the frame from Bob Drake, Ozark Ford, or Speedway. I cant remember which one. Thats pretty much it. Its ALOT more work than I make it seem like. Im terrible at explaining stuff like this but I hope you get what im saying. If you have any questions please ask and Ill do my best to clarify. Im pretty dissapointed all my pictures kinda suck. Please ask any questions if you have them. Hope someone is able to use this. Here are a couple finished pics. One with it open, one with it closed. P.S. I like chocolate milk.
Wow, thanks Nic, i was just looking at that the other day. You may have saved me a few hours of thinking and smoking. Great stuff, really. Now that you have done that, im going to see if i can do a tech on re-shaping a windscreen frame to fit my 3 window, rather than buying some crazy priced pre-fabbed thing that prob wont fit the way i want it. Thanks again.
AWESOME NICKI!!! thanks a ton for posting this. i hope Dan does this on his 3 window. i think it'd be rad and it realy helps "fool" the general public into thinking it's a steel car. LOL now how about showing us how you put that cowl vent in yer plastic car???
LOL!!! i realized after i posted the comment that i was logged in to Mongo's account. makes sense since i'm on his computer . anyways. the comment above was MY comment. not Mongo's.
Hey no problem. If I were you I would buy a new reproduction frame from Speedway or maybe bob drake? They look really nice. I cant really afford one. The originals are usually hard to find and/or rusting out. They tend to bubble through real bad. I guess water gets in the channels and just sits. Also, make sure you get the 3 window windshield frame. Its different than the ones for the closed cars (5 window coupes and sedans). Mike, no problem. Sorry I couldnt get this to you sooner. Ive been real busy lately. Rat, thanks! that means alot. I really like your car too. Its very nice and has all the right stuff.
Great job, I'm trying to do that to a 32 five window coupe now and am just now ordering parts. Now how about a story on the cowl vent?
Hi. I am trying to get a crank out windshield to work in a 1934 ford fiberglass coupe. I would very much like to see the pictures in your posting regarding your install on a 32. However those pics are currently disabled. Is there any way I can get access to them? Thanks in advance for your help. Jim
threads 11 years old and photo bucket's now useless. ironic the high tech we use to talk about old cars is what's broke...
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