I got a set of 5.50x18 Blockleys just before Christmas. These went perfect with my 18" wide-5's to create myself a set of wheels and tyres for hillclimbing. The 5.50x18 tyres have the same overall diameter as the 6.50x16 which keeps my final gearing the same as I wanted, but is achived with a shorter profile tyre which shoud give me a tyre with a more stable sidewall. The Blockley is roughly 1/2" narrower across the tread compared to the Firestone but is far superior so this shouldn't be too much of a negative. A surprising find when swapping wheels was what I thought was mud in the pie crust of both front wheels was actually the sideway scrubed away to reveal white rubber! :-/ What they look like on the car. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "new look" or permanent addition its purely a different combo to try when racing. Initial tests are good but limited so far. There are only so many roundabouts in London. I also got lucky when I came across someone who had bought a rear anti-roll kit for their '46 Ford but it didn't fit because as I spotted it was a '35-'36 Ford Chassis Engineering kit.
Enbloc, Do you know what happened to the baby blue car that came over with yours? I looked at it about a year before it left here I think. Really rough under that paint. Paul
I just found this build thread tonight and read through the entire thing. WOW !!! Great build,great documentation,great vision. KILLER finished product. And the fact you drive the wheels off it,puts it in a whole nother catagory. Hats off to you man. I'm blown away !!!
Got the rear anti-roll bar fitted. Fairly straight forward. It was a CE bolt on '35-'36 Ford kit but because of the location of my exhausts I had to drop the bar on 2" spacers. The differcult part was trying to work out a way of linking the roll bar to the axle. What I ended up with was the tapered balls from an old V8 dogbone... ... These were bolted into their original tapered holes in the radius rods. I then used a Model A split dog bone cut in half welded to a 1/2" thick tab with a 7/8" hole that slids onto the 7/8" ARB. Forgive the crudeness (Bolt too long, welds not dressed, un-painted etc), but I didn't want to go to mad on them as I didn't know if they would work and to be honest I'm not that thrilled with them. I think I'm going to try again with something neater. I'm also not thrilled about the metal on metal contact of the link and I'd also like to get the bar sitting alittle more parrallel to the axle. Anyone know if I roll bar should to horizontal to the axle or doesn't it matter? I can say that it does work and its work well! Total ARB convert. Fitting the front ARB made a big difference for the better and fitting a rear has improved things yet again. The car corners flatter than ever and the rear bar has cancelled out some of the understeer that the front bar introduced.
Jesus, very cool. Loved watching the tube clip x 10. Drive it like ya stole it. Excellent. Beautiful interior also.
Love what you've done with your car! If you haven't done this already, for hillclimbs and other shens that involve high-speed turns, you might consider increasing the tire pressure to the max allowed on the sidewall, maybe even a few psi over. Helps prevent the sidewall rolling over. Be sure to air back down as soon as event is over.
Yes, I'm beginning to learn this. It had 26 lbs front and back in that picture which is what I ran on the road. I've tried up to 35 lbs recently and it handles well and have also bumped my road pressures up to 28 lbs for the better. I read a piece on racing on cross-plys on the net, which I can't find again, and that talks about pumping the tyres up to high psi which allows them to keep their shape and gives a more stable tyre under these conditions. Also, the quickest way round a corner on cross-plys was to slide them, four wheel drift, aided by the high tyre pressures rather than relying on the tyres to grip.
You're on the right track. Sidewall flex will definitely be felt in the handling as sloppiness and imprecision. If you're going to make a habit of this turning corners at speed, you will also want to investigate how to get a little negative camber in the front tires. (Don't know enough about your front suspension to know if it has any adjustability.) Even 1 degree will be helpful. (Even more (like 2 or 3 degrees) might be even more helpful but will eventually result in a little uneven tire wear during the periods when you're not cornering.)
Who would have thought you'd be so focused on hill climbs with this car?! Most guys would hardly drive a car that nice let alone drift it around the corner of a serious hill. Killer.
Camber adjustments are tricky because of the beam axle. I've seen heavy duty fixtures from KR Wilson in the service bullitons that bend the beam to the specs you want but never seen one in real life or a modern equivilant.
Its just a car at the end of the day. Just steel and rubber. Its been brought back from the dead once so theres no reason it can't be done again! I know it seems crazy but I've always wanted a true dual purpose vehicle and this car works really well for it.
Well... My bodge-tastic anti-roll bar "drop links" were exactly that! I thought I could hear a knocking coming from the rear. The repop monkey metal dog bones proving the weak link. Time to have a rethink.. I picked up a pair of universal ARB "D" bushes with brackets. I then made some bases for them. I removed the old, now redundent dog bone links from the radius rods so I had a lower, flat surface to mount the new bushes. We'll see how these go.
The brake battle has an end.... I ditched 'em. I've finally got rid of them hatefull mechanical brakes replacing them with a spanking new set of Lincolns all round. I had nowhere else to go with the mechcanicals and they were still lifeless, constantly going out of adjustment and suffering from cronic bake fade. The final nail in the coffin was them suddenly developing a habit of locking on when applying more than light pedal pressure. I knew their time was limited and I had been gearing up for a change over with '37 spindles, '39 drums to keep the wide 5 and master cylinder and hydraulic conversion kit from Early v8 Garage which allowed me to keep the original '36 pedal assembly. I also had a box of brake parts that had come with the car when I originally bought it. This included a pair repro Lincoln backing plates, another matching pair of orignal Lincoln backing plates and a mass of hardware that netted me two complete handbrake assemblies among other things. I chose to go with new 2" shoes, more on this later, cylinders and sundry parts "off the shelf" from RockAuto. All choosen from various suggestions and part no's picked up from various forums. Front. Lincolns bolt straight onto the '37 spindles but you have to remove the corner from the the front top edge of the spindle for clearance of the backing plate. Sounds severe but is minimal and the spindle isn't affected. Front wheel cylinders are late 50's Buick and connect to the standard Early Ford hose. Back. Again, rear go straight on. Cylinders are mid 70's Caddy and the Early Ford handbrake cable connects to the Lincoln mech. in the drum. The Early V8 garage builds and supplies hydraulic conversion kits for Early Fords that allows you to use as much of the original car as possible and also original holes so no extra holes need to be drilled in virgin parts. The conversion puts the master cylinder at a right angle to the pedal. Weird but works well. I choose to try the two inch shoes in the stock drum which are ment for a 1 3/4" shoe. First off the 2" shoes are thicker metal so you'l need the correct hardware like adjusters and push pins to go with them. The friction surface is 2" but the shoe has up to an 1/8" of overlap which when trying to squeeze the bigger shoe into the smaller drum makes a difference. I can't say for '40-'48 drums but on wide 5's drums the hub and wheel studs sit right where the brake shoes do causing more clearance issues! Basically I found they pysically fitted but were just catching in places both for front and back. As I had bought 8 new ones with no way of sending back or exchanging I had to work with what I had and ended up facing them down to 1 7/8", 1/16" off each side. Everything fitted good after that. Not quite 2" but still more than the original 1 3/4".
Im in love with this car. What a cruise that must have been, 7 countries in 7 days, the Alps. I think that needs to be added to the bucket list.
Are those brake lines copper? I had a few old hot rods that they ran copper brake lines on in the 50's...looks cool, but not sure about how much line pressure copper lines are capable of....might want to check that out if those are copper lines....hate to see one burst under a panic stop. Oh...and Very nice car, I love the black steelies and blackwalls the best.
A fews things I've been doing to wile the hours. I'd been having some eratic running issues for over a year now and had gone through everything both carb and ignition related at least twice, well everything it seems apart from the dizzy cap! I'd been becoming more frustrated with the steering being too slow lock to lock. Not just on the race track but on the road as well. The worst stuations being on tight hairpin turns where I couldn't spin the wheel fast enough to get round the bend ending up having to do a three point turn mid-corner! An old Hot Rod feature car from the 50's made mention of using a Lincoln Zephyr pitman arm to gain quicker steering. Great, unfortunatly every LZ pitman arm dimension I managed to obtain was shorter than a Ford pitman which would give a slower/lighter steering. The complete opposite of what I wanted. Next idea was obtain another Ford pitman arm and have it lengthened. Down side to this would be how much do you lengthen it by and at the end I'd still have a cut and shut steering arm. A trip to Nervous yielded me with every style pitman from '35 through to '48, all the same length apart from one. The pitman on the far right is a E83W. Even though its a large curve its an inch longer overal but exactly the same as the passenger car pitmans. The steering arm bolted straight on, cleared everything and knocked down my steering from 4 turns to 3 turns lock to lock. Of course you don't get something for nothing and to get quicker steering I've ended up with heavier steering. Its only noticeable maneuvering and I'm happy with the trade off. I'd always had the spare wheel just chucked in the boot with jack and brace thrown on top. The other day I came across the '36 spare wheel cover that I'd had for years. It had been forgotten because it only fits wide 5's. I thought maybe I could do something with it in the boot for that custom, show car, detailed boot vide. This is what I ended up with. The cover is bolted down via the centre to a stud that comes up from the boot floor.The whole thing shabang is hidden by the dummy hubcap which is hinged for access as original. The cover now holds the spare wheel in place. I'm missing the trim if anybody has one? I always thougt the P&J shock mounts were a good candidate for some lightening work. I weighed them before and after and guess what? I can't remember what the difference was! I do remember it was considerable for there size. I think its got to be a good 10th sec on the hills, right.... Right? With racing over for the year it was a good time to try out my next line of thought. Time to de-tune and see what happens. I've gone to a single carb. ;D Why you ask? Several reasons. Firstly was fuel consumption. I was desperate to get over 15mpg. Secondly was to use a manifold that had some form of heat now the weather has turned and thirdly just to see what difference there is between single and duals. I had the bits to do it and the opportunity so why not? The manifold is a freebie aluminium of unknown origin. It has a "C11" part no. so its either French or Canadian. The carb is actually a 97/48 hybrid. True Stromberg 48 but with the bases rebuilt with 97 linkage to gain the S/W adjustable squirter settings. Going back to a single carb I wanted that little bit more airflow that a 48 gives. So far, so good. The hot spot is excellent and has transformed the car when cold as you'd expect. Performance wise normal driving both town and highway is unchanged, but the car has lost a little of its "snap" and top end pull. It seems to go as fast just takes longer to get there compared to the duals. Jurys still out on MPG. At first I thought it was improved but driving it around more seems very litttle difference. Time will tell.
The Jalopy Journal
