In keeping with my hole patching theme here is another little repair I did to the cowl area. Both the driver and passenger side of the cowl have a round hole, I think they were for marker lights on the stock model A's. I didn't need them so I decided to patch them. Here is a picture of the hole: I used a hole saw to cut a round disk from some scrap sheetmetal. The metal was actually taken out of the car when the top was chopped 6". In a stroke of great fortune the ID of the hole saw was the perfect size for the existing hole!! I used a magnet to hold the disk flush with the outer surface of the cowl: Now the procedure was as follows; tack, hammer and dolly, tack, hammer and dolly, etc. I hammer and dolly each tack, this stretches the weld and insures the edges are in the same plane so you get a perfect match. Here are a few pic's illustrating the progress: Once I get to this point I weld up the gaps between the tacks, hammering out each section as I go. I also skip around to allow hot areas to cool while I work on a different area. After all that is done it and you hit it with the grinder to knock down the weld it looks something like this:
My next major project is to get some cowl steering worked out. I am drawing heavily on the work done by Dreadman and this great how to post: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=297314 I am using a BMW steering box from and old 2002 BMW. I also wanted swinging pedals and thought that this could be all done in a nice subassembly that could then be welded into the car. Here is what I dreamed up on the drawing board: This is just a preview post of what I am working on. I will post pic's and details as I complete this part of the project.
I see you're going to have a top and bottom bearing in your design. Good idea. When doing this though, make sure you have some adjustment so you can align the box with the steering shaft or you will have bind and ultimately ware something out. If you went to just a top bearing and utilized the bearing on the input shaft of the box to support the bottom of the shaft you could get away with not using two bearings and ultimately simplify the installation. An exta bearing at the base is good like you have, but just make sure everything is dead nuts concentric.
Here is the buildup of my cowl steering sub-assembly. The basic structure is 1.25 dia x .090 wall steel tubing. The bends were done with a mechanical tube bender (like JD2). This first pic shows the basic tube structure: I plasma cut a piece of 3/16" plate to make a mount for the BMW steering box. I made some standoffs to weld in the plate the plate wouldn't interfere with the steering box. Here is a pic of the plate mounted to the stucture: With the steering box location fixed it was time to come up with a pedal mounting scheme. I made a pedal mounting bracket for the Wildwood hanging pedals that would mount at the front of the cowl hoop stucture. Again the pedal bracket is 3/16" plate with some .50" x 1.25" flat bar between them with tapped holes for the pedal assembly. Here are some pic's of the pedal bracket: I wanted to use the pedal bracket as a mounting point for the column too. So with the pedal assembly clamped to the hoop stucture I used a straight edge to give me a rough location of where the steering shaft from the steering box was going to intersect the pedal bracket. I then unclamped the pedal bracket and bored 1.9" dia. holes in each of the plates. The holes were bored on the Bridgeport in one setup so they are concentric with each other. I then made an alignment tube from PVC. The tube had a 1.9" O.D. thant fit snuggly into the holes bored in the bracket. I made a plastic bushing that would just slip over the steering box shaft. Since I planned on using 1.75" dia. tube for the column I turned down the outide dia. of the PVC alignment tube just in front of the front pedal bracket plate and just behind the rear pedal bracket plate. This allowed me to use the alignment tube to position the column mount rings to the pedal bracket plate. Here are the pic's of the alignment tube and pedal bracket: I bought a 1.75" dia split collar for the rear of the pedal bracket to hold the tail of the column. I welded half the split collar to the pedal bracket: At the front I made a ring on the lathe with 4 tapped holes that the corresponding ring that is welded to the column will bolt to: This alignment tube allowed me to position the pedal bracket to the tube structure in alignment with the steering box and position the rings that hold the column to the pedal bracket. It was so well thought out I had to use a sawzall to remove the PVC alignment tube when I was done tacking parts in place . There are quite a few man hours making brackets, alignment fixtures, coping tubing and welding this sub-assembly. Here are the pic's of the finished sub-assembly outside the car:
Your head must weigh 20 lbs. Your ability to put a plan together for a piece like that is outstanding; not to mention your finish quality is impressive. Keep up the great work.
Before I move on to putting a floor in the car I need to add the frame bracing behind the transmission. With the car being channeled a driveline loop seems to be the perfect solution to tie everything together. I'm thinking about this for the design: The main tubes will be 1.25" dia. since that is what I have dies to bend. The loop will be 1" dia. tube so I can maximize space around the transmission hump in the floor. I found some 1" dia. 180* u-bends in Jeg's catalog that I can fab the tranny loop out of.
You could also use 1.25" flat .25" thick strap... your really maximize space and it's really strong! Easy to bend too!
Wow! How is it this is the first time I've seen this thread the progress you've made is great. Keep it coming!
Thanks for the suggestion. Flat strap was the leader before I found those 1" dia. tube u-bends. I think having it all tube looks nice so that's the direction I'm headed. I am using 2" wide x .125" thick flat bar to make the tranny hump substructure. I ended up heating it to form it. .25" thick, easy to bend?? You must be strong like the Hulk!! I'm guessing you heat it up to shape it into a U? Thanks to everybody for the kind words. Back to building........
AWESOME PROJECT!!! I am starting a 2door soon..... I hope. I was thinking along the same lines on alot style, and fab as your project. Picked up several VERY trick new ideas, and alot of time saving info. thank you
Hi , i´m new in the HAMB and just noticed your project , i didnt read the hole thing but my friend have 4door essex ´28 and it got this reardoor opening problem (door hits the tire), so if the car is in low position ,it will be cool if the doorswitch automaticly raises the rearend when door is popped open....since you have bag system allready. I dont know if this has been brought up yet , but i like to see that in action. Great job! AVG
Actually I made a tool I copied from metalshapes, and did the same for my tranny hump, I think mine was 1.25" wide though and it may have been 3/16"? Here's my thread on the floor, maybe it'll give you some ideas? Check the second page, I posted a pic of the tool like the one I used to bend the flat stock. Leave it long and you can bend it easy! http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=315010
That looks like a handy tool, thanks for sharing it. AVG - That would be clever to have the air ride automatically raise the car. However my tires are such a large diameter that even at ride height the tire is in the way of the door.
Here is a post showing what I am doing for motor mounts with the 401 Nailhead. I bought the engine mounts from Chassis Engineering Inc, Part No. CS-6519. Here is a link to there web page : http://www.chassisengineeringinc.com/page4.html To make the frame adaptors for the engine mounts I kept it very simple. I took a couple of scrap pieces of the 3x2x.187 rectangular tube that I used to make the frame and carved it up on the Bridgeport. Here is what they ended up looking like:
I had temporarily welded some rectangular tubing across the bottom of the body to attach the body to the frame so I could claim roller status. Now it is time to make something more permanent so I can get on with putting floors in the car. I used some 2X1X.06 rectangular tubing to make some subfloor bracing. To be able to connect these subframe tubes to the frame body mounts I turned some round stock and welded the insert in the tube. Here is a pic of the drilled and counterbored round stock: Here is the 2x1 with the round stock tacked in place: I made some frame tabs out of left over 3x2x.187 tubing from the frame. Drilled a hole and carved the pieces to look like something on the Bridgeport. Here is what they ended up looking like: Is Delrin good enough for body mounts? I don't know, but I had some laying around so I made some temporary??? mounts out of some round stock on the lathe. Here they are: With all those pieces I was set to install some body mounts/subfloor into the car. I have 4 mounts like this on the car, 2 on each side. I located one just behind the front kick and one just in front of the rear kick. Here is the one in front of the rear kick: At the rear of the car behind the kick up I decide I would need two more mounts, one on each side. I have the tubing rotated so I need a sightly different approach on the body side. I decided to make some tabs and gussets. Here is a pic of the tabs: The rest of the mount is just like the previous ones. Here is a shot of the rear most mounts installed in the car: That's it for now. All of this is leading up to floors in the car, but I still need a trans tunnel substructure and some additional subfloor structure.
Back in post #129 I previewed the design for the frame bracing behind the transmission. Here are some shots to actual fab & install: Here is the driveline hoop:
Ok now back to the floor. I did some mockup trying to layout the tranny and driveline hump. I used some .75" plywood to cut some patterns & used them to work out my layout. Here is what that looked like: With the layout worked out I bent up some 2" wide x .125" flat bar into some hoops. I bent the flat bar around an 8" dia. piece of round stock. to really get it to comply I added some heat with the torch. Here is an example of the formed hoop: I mounted the hoops to some 1" x .12" angle iron. Here is a pic of the hoop clamped to th angle iron for welding: I repeated the process a couple more times and ended up with this: At the front I needed the hump to widen out a bit. I formed a 12" dia. hoop out of the 2" flat bar and tacked it to some angle iron. Here is a pic of the extended angle iron: Here is shot of the entire weldment sitting in the car:
With the floor substructure taking shape I figured it was a good time for an interior mock up. So I stuck the steering/pedal sub assembly in the car, dropped in the seat and started cutting up a refrigerator box. Here is what that labor produced: It gets a little more complicated at the front in the firewall, front frame "z" area. I'm still working that out. At the rear I'm contemplating some access panels in the area of the rear "z" to get to rear suspension pieces. While I'm bouncing those ideas around I figure I need to finish my bead roller buildup so I can get some sheetmetal up on the structure. Back to work!
DAMN DUDE, Thats one kickass moredoor, you nailed the look, the engineering & fab work are killer, I'll be watchin this thread.
Man, that's awesome! You have really gotten a ton done. Really glad to see the progress, keep up the great work Dan
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