Projects A Fordor Project

Here is a post showing my new roof bows. I may add to this later depending what I decide to do with the roof .

I welded in 3 roof bows made from 1" square tube x .06" wall. They are spaced 18.5 " apart, which makes them evenly spaced from front to back of the car. I chamfered the ends of the tubes to clear the roof sheetmetal. I then capped the ends with some .06" plate. Here are a couple pics showing the overall layout:





Here is a closeup of the tube end showing how it was welded to the uppersubframe tube:

 

WOW! That is going to be SUPER strong!!!

 

So what do you do after you get your roof bows in???? Re-attach the roof you cut off to put the bows in . Here is post highlighting what I did to get the roof back on the car.

First I sanded and primed the underside of the roof panels. This was a simple task with the roof laying flat on the bench. Here is a pic of the roof panel primed and ready for install:



Then it was time to weld them into the car. The passenger side was the biggest problem. It was a hair short so I trimmed it back and created a filler piece. The filler piece is bigger than the original gap so I could have a piece of metal large enough to form and handle. Here is a pic of the gap where the filler metal will be added:



Here is pic with the formed metal fitted in the gap:



I just recycled sheetmetal from the chop. I'm trying to keep this build eco-friendly

I then tacked the sheetmetal filler in place a shown in the pic below:



With the metal tacked in place it was time to finish weld it in. I welded and beat on it with a hammer and dolly alternating back and forth.



The drivers side was much simpler. Just trimmed and welded in place. Here is pic of how it ended up:



I'll get some pics of the overall car with the roof re-installed. I notice I forgot to take any while I was re-attaching the roof.

 

Why was the gap bigger on one side than the other, is it not square?

 

I measured and re-measured. I guess QA @ Henry's wasn't as good as Simpson's garage

 

looking great man! now back up a lil and take a side shot of the thing! and where did ya get the cardboard tire/wheel???thats kool as heck!

 

Awesome man, your car is back from being a pile of wood & sheetmetal to an actual car again! Looks great, and will be really strong too. LOTS of work replacing all the wood in the fordor, you are on the downhill side now.

Don't feel bad about the roof being different on one side. On my (once)fordor, as I was squaring it up building the subframe, I couldn't make the rear doors fit the same...

I measured them I found that one was quite a bit shorter front to back (about 3/4") than the other. And they were unaltered, as they came from ford doors. Weird.

Keep up the great work, I am really excited to see your progress

Dan

 

WOW! great post! I have had a 28 chevy four-door for a while now, waiting to get built. This thread gives me a lot of ideas. Thanks for sharing!

 

I'm onto chassis building with the wood replacement all but done. There are still a couple of pieces that are only tacked in and need finish welding. I'll catch that as fill in work here and there. I am building the frame from scratch using Dodgerodders post as the blueprint . As that work is happening I am prepping many of the other components for the chassis. For example to make the front axle look like something I added a bunch of holes:

 

I needed to make a bunch of brackets for hanging the rearend. I started by making drawings of the brackets I would be building. I printed copies of the individual pieces full scale to make patterns from. I also offfset the outside profile half the plasma cutter nozzle diameter. I cut the patterns out on this line so when I drug the plasma cutter around the pattern I would trace out the actual size I wanted.

Here is a pic that sums all this up:



I used the negative pattern to layout all the pieces I would be cutting on my steel plate. This was mainly to make the plasma cutting go as fast as possible and to minimize waste. Here is a pic of the steel with all the pieces laid out:



I made wood patterns to have something to trace the plasma cutter nozzle against. This allowed me to make clean repeatable cuts, resulting in an accurate set of parts to fabricate the brackets from. Here is a pic showing some of the patterns laying on the steel:



Here is a pic of some of the pieces after plasma cutting and bead blasting:



And finally here is a pic of the 3/16" steel plate after all the plasma cutting was complete:

 

I am still busy building the chassis for the car. Along with that work I get to do fun mockups to try and visualize the final product. I spent some time mocking up the wheelbase of the car in attempt to visualize mainly the suicide front end location. I am trying to eliminate any large voids and open space when viewing the car from the side. Thought I would share the pic's for everyone to enjoy:

 

Build is looking real good.I have a coupe that is going to require all that inner structure as well.Are the rear doors going to be funtional?It looks like the tire is going to be in the way of the door openening.

 

I would imagine he is going to have air suspension on the rear of the car at minimum, and the doors wont open unless it is at least partially if not fully aired up...........

James

 

The door will be removable but not functional. Behind the door is all kickup and it's a big one. The door will be removable by pulling the hinge pins, actuating the latch and lifting the door out of place. This is just to provide access to the rear of the car and the mechanical components that will be housed at the rear. Basically it's a 2 door with extra hinges

 

There's your side shots and a few other angles! Best I can do with the project stuck in the garage until I get it up on the chassis. My brother made e-size plots of the rim and tire at work. We then glued them to OSB board and cut them out with the jig saw. I added front one's for your viewing pleasure!! Enjoy and thanks for your interest

 

When I get a chance I would like to come by and see the car.You arent that far from me.

 

damn, thats goin to be great! nice job!

 

Real nice job. Gives me a little insight as to what to do with my 33 Durant fordoor. Keep posting those photos!

 

Any new updates on the build.

 

Had some computer problems recently , but I think I've fully recovered now . Thought I would make a quick post about some chassis work I did a while back. Again I stole the idea from Dodgerodder. I needed to taper the front frame rails. The method I used involved taking a piece of 2x3x.187 rectangular tube and cutting two tapered pieces from the length. At the very front the piece tapered to the thickness of the tubing, .187". At the other end I the leg of the triangle was 1.5". I cut the tube on a bandsaw to get a nice edge to fit against the frame rail. Here are some pic's that describe what was done:

Here is the taper clamped to the frame rail. The taper end at the front "z".


A little grinding and the fitup is looking good


After getting the fitup good on both sides, the frame comes out from under the car. I clamped everything real well as I got ready to do some welding.


Tack, tack, tack,,,,,,,,weld a stich, skip ahead, weld a stitch,,,,,,


I welded it all up ground the area and made second passes where required to make everything smooth and seamless. I don't have a pic of the finished product on the computer, so you'll just have to believe me when I tell you it turned out nice

 

Awesome progress Mike, it is coming along really nice! That will really help stiffen up the front rails too. Once you get that done, you can get your front-end hung, and you'll be up on front wheels!

I miss my fordor now, I am glad I can look at yours for inspiration-keep up the good work

Dan

 

Here is an update on hanging the front end.

One of the first tasks was to get the radiator shell placed. This was critical for me because I wanted to minimize any empty space between the radiator shell and the axle. Here is a picture of the shell/radiator brackets I fabbed up. I used a couple pieces of .25" plate 3.5" wide x 9" long.



The next step was to fab some frame mounts for the wishbones. I used some .50" plate here and cut some angles on the ends to match the front "z". I bought some bungs and bored a hole in the plate to weld the bung into. Here are two pics one from the outside and one from the inside of the car:





I took about 2.5" off the stock wishbones to move the axle up close to the radiator. My stupid mistake here was I had already welded bungs into the ends of the wishbones . So I had to buy another pair for the shortened version of the wishbones. Here is picture of my wishbone scraps:



Here are a couple pics showing the radiator and axle positioning. The gap between the axle and shell is .75". No wasted space here





Now with the axle where it needs to be it was time to connect the CenPen pivot arms to the wishbones. I will show those details in the next post.

 

So the secret is out now! JESUS really is the one building this thing! You should have opted for the steel tow sandles! Much safer in the garage!

All kidding aside though... is that enough room for the axle taking into account any radiator movement as well as the overall travel of the axle?? I'm planting my grille shell in the same fashion.

Great progress! Keep the updates comin'!

 

Ok so now that the front axle is in the correct position, it is time to connect the CenPen control arms to the wishbones. I started by buying a perch kit from Posie's, part no. 1064. I called and it turns out they make a model with a 3" long threaded protion, more than enough to get through the wishbone . Here is a pic of the parts:



I scribed the center of the CenPen control arms and transferred the location to the wishbone. After that it was time to bore a 1" hole through the wishbones. The wishbones run at a slight angle to the frame so I needed to bore the hole at an angle. The theoretical angle was 5.5 degrees. The shop had a 5 degree block so that is what I used. I used an endmill in the Bridgeport to punch a 1" dia. hole through the wishbone. I walked the endmill slightly in the x&y directions until the 1" DOM tube piece would slide into the hole. Then I shortened all the Posies parts to the needed lengths. I then tacked the tubes into the wishbones and re-assembled the front end. Here are some pic's showing the progress:

 

very cool!!!!

 

So I've been scratching my head over the mounting of my rear shocks. The 9" Ford rear end is bagged and will allow the frame to move 5" down when aired out. The lower link bars are 16" pivot center to pivot center. If I've done my geometry correctly this results in .80" the rearend will move towards the front of the car when the frame is aired out. So I believe my shocks will need to pivot to allow this motion along the length of the car. With that in mind here is what I am thinking of for the shock mounting:





The other way I have seen it done is with the shocks rotated 90 degrees. I know it worked because it was on a completed car. However I can't see how it accounts for the linear travel of the rearend as it moves up and down. Here is a picture of the other orientation:



I would like to here some feedback from others on these two shock mounting configurations.

 

Looks like your drawing is the "designed to not bind" solution. My roadster has the shocks mounted something like the photo, and works well enough, but has substantially less travel than your setup.

By the way, this continues to be an excellent post and a very interesting project. Thanks for taking the time to keep us informed.

 

Hey! Alright! Looks good! Finally, someone else doing they're homework! Looks like things match too!

 

I spent all day today working on my rearend. The object is to get the rearend suspended in the frame. I don't have the pic's from today's work downloaded yet, so this post will highlight all the pieces that were built in preparation of the rearend hanging.

The rearend will be situated with a 3 link system. The lower bars attach to the rearend with these custom brackets:



These brackets also serve as the lower bag mount for the rearend airbags. To stiffen the plate that the bag mounts to I added two triangular gussets to bracket:



Here is a head on view of the bracket with the gussets taked in place:



Here are a few shots of the brackets mocked into position with the rearend:







I decided to bend up a piece of 1.25" dia. tube for the lower shock mount. The bar will span between both brackets to allow a feature to mount the lower end of the shocks to. I bored holes through both gussets to stuff the bar through. To clear the rearend housing we bent a "v" in the bar. Here are some pic's that show the arrangement:







Here is one with the shock in place to give you the idea of how it will be mounted:



To mount the upper end of the rear shocks we bent another piece of 1.25" dia. tube. Welded some pads on the ends that will allow this piece to be bolted/unbolted to the top of the frame. The tube has two sets of tabs where the shocks will be bolted. Here is a pic:



I will get the pics of the finished rearend up as soon as I get them downloaded. Now its bedtime

 

After tacking a lot of "bracketry" in place it was time to tear things out and get them to the welding table. I had the rear bag brackets, the lower bar brackets, upper wishbone brackets and the upper and lower rear shock mounts to weld.

Here is an overall shot of the frame showing the brackets in place:



And a closeup of the rear portion of the frame:



Another shot of the frame from another angle:



Here is a shot of the 9" Ford rear housing with the bag/lower bar brackets and lower shock tube welded in:



Here is a shot of the rearend on the welding bench with the upper wishbone brackets tacked to the housing:



Finally here are a couple shots of everything stuffed back into the car. I even bolted the rear shocks in place with the upper shock hoop:





I've fallen off my timeline to be a roller , but I'm getting closer and closer every week .