Hot Rods Post war 31 A coupe traditional build?????

Pinching is not absolutely mandatory, but it sure makes the body fit alot better. My 32 frame is pinched front and rear.

 

I just saw this thread.
Here is what I did.
The stance on my car (pictured in the first post) was achieved by using a model A rear crossmember. I also used model A rear leaf springs, on a 36 axle, with a few leafs taken out (trial and error) until it looked right, to me.

The frame is pinched slightly, at the cowl and the body is channeled 1/2" over the frame to get rid of the gap, between body and frame. Of course the subfloor in the back, had to be modified to accept the 32 frame.

My 32 radiator was also shortened, about 2", but the grill shell is stock height, the sides where notched to bring it down lower and clear the frame.

The front model A axle, has a 3" drop, I think.

All of that and the tires (5.00 front and 7.50 rear combo) creates a pretty aggressive stance, which I like.

 

Engineer,

You said you have a 37 and 39 front axle/ bones setup. I was going to use the same setup, but ran into clearance issues as stated, so I ended up using the 37-41 front bones with an aftermarket 32 heavy axle dropped 4". I split the bones as in Chris's build(which by the way is awsome, and exactly as I would like mine to look, but with a flathead).
After I put it together I had issues with the front tires, 550x16, hitting the bones on a turn. So I ordered the extended steering stop bolt/kingpin retainer from So-Cal and problem solved. I believe they measure 1.6" long. Of course now I'll probably need a four lane highway to make a U turn.

 

I was thinking I could widen the wishbone at the K-member end to solve my clearance issues? would this work or will it cause me problems?

 

I definetly prefer the pinched look with the body channeled a bit at the front, It makes it look factory made to fit, I want to pinch my frame but as its a mint original frame I feel like im destoying it and am having second thoughts about it, what do you think should I just do it or is it the wrong thing to do?
but I feel if I dont I will never be happy with the finished look??????

 

It's only Metal.

Widening it may work, but remember the 37-40 front axle has wider spring perch mounts, plus you may want to drop the axle as well.

 

It looks good now its pinched

 

Been following your build. Glad to hear you went for it and pinched it. Good move! But now you need to show us what you did and how you did it!

 

Sure does mate, we did a good job on that front

 

I have been taking photos as I go so I will put some up this weekend when I work out how to do it, glad you like the decission

 

Dump the Buick brakes, It will cause too much offset when trying to adapt to the 35 wires, Use the 40 brakes with spacers for the wire wheels.

I suggest going with the A or T rear cross member and spring, they will give you a lower stance and also give you the room later if you decide to add a QC at a later date.

Andy Thunderbirdesq went with the T cross and spring, worked great on a roadster, but may be to soft for a coupe.

 

Where is the current state of this project? It looks to be be real nice.

 

This is great info! I just got a complete original '32 chassis for my '30 Model A Tudor. I will be doing a similar build.

 

Speedway driveshaft? Do they custom build them?

 

So back to the build, since as long back as I can remember I have wanted a Model A, I had a few cars since I was 16 my first was a model Y which I rodded in a streetrod style back in the days when Boyd coddington was my hero, since then my tastes have changed some what totally into the traditional style cars buts its only been since I moved out to Canada to live back in August 2008 that I have been able to buy my dream car the model A
when we moved back to the UK in October 2010 I started the coupe build
I started with an original 32 frame which was very solid but a bit bent out of shape in places which wasn't a lot of trouble to straighten out with and without heat.

The rear kickup had collapsed in the past and been badly repaired so I cut it out and started again, before I started all this work I fixed it onto a Chassis table to keep everything nice and straight





Then I tackled the front horns buy cutting the badly beat up ones off and welding on some new repro ones which came with the chassis.




After the fixing was done I got into fitting the rear X-member which was an original Model A one, I went this route because I planned to run a quick change in the future and wanted the diff clearance.
I read a thread on the here by a guy in Germany who builds 32 frames using model A X-members and riveting them all in just like Henry would of done it (I'm sure some of you have seen it) and I decided that I was going to rivet mine in the same way, so I bought the rivet snaps from Big flat rivets in the US and got my self a good quality air hammer and started to practice and it turned out to be a lot easier than I thought, just heat the rivet cherry red and give it a good square blast with the hammer, I made some bucking bars which support the rivet head from the other side which were held in place with a couple of G-clamps I found out that this was the most important part because if it moved half way through the riveting process you have to drill it out and start all over again.
I decided to modify the rear X-member to fit the depth between the rear chassis rails as 32 rails are a lot deeper than model A and I thought it would look better than using packers above.(as done on here before)






More on the riveting later....

 

So anyway back to the riveting, here's a pic of the rear X-member riveted in, I didn't take any photos of a rivet set up sorry, I was just keen to get the job done.
as you will see from the photos I had already cut the rear frame horns off by this point to clear the coupe body.



Once the rear end was all square and strong I went about pinching the front half of the rails.
I know there is a lot of difference of opinion on whether this is period correct or not but its the look I like so I don't really care.
A mate came round to help me with this and I used a cardboard template of the floor of the coupe as the gauge for pinching as getting the body in my garage at this point wasn't really an option, we had to pinch it by 3/4" per side right under the cowl supports so the body could then channel down over at the cowl.
I had to remove the K-member wings before pinching and also the two front rivets on each side to allow the frame to move in also trim a little off each side
To do the pulling in of the rails I just welded two pieces of angle to the inside and used a chain hoist to pull a side at a time in with plenty of heat put into the rail before, you can see in the pic that there is a piece of box welded to the table on the inside of one side to hold it in place while we pull the other side in.





Once the front was pinched I then did the rear but didn't take any photos of this sorry, then I had to shorten the K-member wings but about 1/4" each to fit back in place I did this in the middle of each of the wings to avoid cutting through any holes, once that was done I riveted them back in



You can see in the pic below where it was heated and pinched and also the shortened wings

More later.....

 

So anyway I then riveted the front X-member in and that pretty much wrapped the frame up ready to start fitting the axles.
the first four pics are of the rivets just sat in the holes as I had drilled each one.




This pic is after the rivets were fitted properly


I decided to box just the kick ups as it had broken in the past, even though I was happy with the repairs, I figured it would just give me piece of mind.

next is to mount the axles.......

 

Right...... time for the next chapter
fitting my rear end, when I was living in Canada I made a point of collecting as much old ford tin as possible, so I put an ad on the local craigslist wanting the running gear from a 39/40 car and within a week a guy from 7 miles away called me and said he was taking the entire running gear from under his 39 ford sedan, at this time I really new nothing about wide five or 5 on 5 1/2 bolt pattern, basically the guy had been building the car as a hot rod and had just fitted a tuned 283 smallblock into the car with an adapter plate onto the 39 top loader, anyway to cut a long story short before he had even driven the car all his mates had told him that the 283 would destroy his gearbox and rear end in a short space of time (luckily for me) so he was going the mustang 2 front and 8" rear route, after I might add he had put new brakes all round.
So a deal was done and I loaded it all into my little Mazda B2200 and didn't look at it all again till I got back to the UK
as someone had pointed out to me on here the hubs must have been changed to 1940 ones because of the stud pattern which is all good,
so I got to work mounting the axle using a Model A rear spring which was a simple enough job.



One of the issues I will have to tackle is shortening the Drive shaft/Torque tube and radius arms as the drive shaft is 17 1/2" too long as you can see in this picture.....

This pic also shows a good shot of the riveting on the wings
next I had to fit the front axle.....

 

I stripped the 39 front axle and decide to ditch the beam, reason being I wanted to use a 32 wishbone to give me the clearance I needed around the engine sump and a 32 wishbone is 2" high where it goes onto the perch holes in the axle and the 39 axle is 2 1/4" so instead of having to alter anything I just used a mint 36 half ton truck axle I was given which also had a perfect wishbone attached to it shown in the pic below.....

so as I had no luck finding a 32 wishbone that anyone wanted to sell me I borrowed one of my friend Joe who also gave me the all important rear yoke section which enabled me to make my own 32 wishbone, the shit thing is I lost all the photos of doing this so I cant show you the process, but it basically consists of chopping the 36 yoke off as close to the forging as possible and then making some 2" long extension's on the lathe which slid inside the tube part and the yoke then slid into the other side then weld it all up and Bobs your uncle (well he is actually mine)
all that was left to do the was cut the spring perches off the front of the 36 bone and round it all off nicely, then assemble
Please let me know if I'm teaching people to suck eggs here but I'm doing it for the people who want to learn to suck them.....lol
here is a couple pics of when it was assembled, please note the shackles are flat in the pics because there is no weight on them, the engine shown is hanging on my hoist.....
I rounded all the ends of the Model A front spring and also radiused the underneath of the ends of each leaf so they moved freely over each other.

 

Moving onto mounting the engine and gearbox now, which as you all know is very simple on a 32 frame with the aftermarket gearbox mounts available, as luck would have it I went to my stock of old shit and found most of the mount parts I needed on a 32 gearbox I had, so I only had to buy the vulcanized rubber in steel plate part from Macs and the rest fitted itself, then I just had to fabricate the front mounts.
Please note I am no fabricator I am a machinist by trade but I just have a go like most others.
The engine I'm using came out of a 37 half ton pickup which was being used daily in Canada until the owner decide to swap it for a 5 litre mustang (again, lucky for me)
It is 24 stud, I'm not sure if it was the original 37 as I'm not to up on what changed in what year, decide for yourself......





These will be riveted in eventually, but they are bolted in for now for mock up purposes



I went for the 35 wires with new Blackwall Firestone's all round 7.50 x 16 on the rear and 5.50 x 16 on the front, I want to get a nose down rake on the car when finished.

I need to add that this will be my wife Donna's car when its finished so I make sure she gets out in the garage to give me a hand, this is her before I mount the engine and box....


So now its rolling with the engine and box in, I will now will get into shortening the torque tube.....

 

So onto the next part, The torque tube shortening.........
I have looked at few ways this has been done and decided the neatest way was cutting the flange off the rear of the tube as close to the flange as possible,


Then I machined the face of the flange flat and bored it out so that the torque tube fitted inside the new bore of the flange,


so when that part was finished I had to shorten the tube, I had to cut of 17 1/4" in total as shown in this pic below......

then I cut it to length....




I then tack welded it into the flange, everything is still just tack welded on the rear axle at the moment just encase I discover I made a cock up for some reason and have to cut it back off.

 

Once the torque tube was shortened I then had to do the same with the radius arms, so firstly I carefully cut the forged parts off nearest the gearbox end cutting the arms roughly to the correct length,

then I bolted the radius arms onto the rear hubs and heated the forged part nearest the axle until it was cherry red,



then bent them in until they were at the correct angle ready to be cut to the finished length.





They are welded on now but I don't know why I don't have a picture, I don't think I always remember to take one :
so thats the back axle wrapped up apart form doing the drive shaft, which I haven't done yet, so I will post that up when its done,
Jeremy

 

Ok, so now the chassis is rolling I am able to mount the body, I know I havent finished of the axles complete but I need to keep the project moving on and they are things I can go back and finish in an afternoon at a later date, so as you all now I bought the car back from Canada with me, well I actually found the body down on an Island just off the coast of washington state, I saw it on craigslist for quite a while and decided to call the guy and low bid him on it over the phone and he said come and get it, I was about a 3 hour drive, when we got there and saw the body for the first time I couldnt believe my eyes, it was the cleanest I had ever seen, the guy who I bought it off had owned it for 20 years with the intention of street rodding it, so he had previously sent it for acid dipping and phosphate coating and priming, but he couldnt bring himself to chop it as it was so straight and clean.
so I payed the man quickly, loaded it up and got the hell out of there fast before he changed mind, here are the pics of us loading it on the back of my Chevy truck, it fitted a treat......


Then when my container came it was all hands on deck to load the body.
Minutes before a stressfull weekend.......




What a snug fit, and after a canadian conversation about something......

 

So then I got the boys round and we tried it on the chassis for the first time and it fit real nice apart from the rear floor pan needing cutting out which I already new about......



I got into cutting the floor out straight away.


I was really pleased with the pinching to a cardboard template as you can see here at the fire wall the position turned out perfect.

Once I had cut the floor out I then shortened the fire wall feet by about 3/4" so the body channeled down over the frame just at the firewall to accommodate the kick up on the front of a 32 frame, I prefer this look to putting blocks under the body to take up the gap underneath, so now it was down flat onto the chassis from front to back I wheeled it out the garage to get the wheel well center before I made the new floor in the back......





when I was happy with that I got on with re-making the rear floor, I just used 50mm x 25mm box to replicate the original floor sub frame.



I used 25mm x 25mm light wall angle to replicate the ledge the floor sit on to try and keep it as close to the original as possible


then after I bolted it down to the chassis with six 3/8" UNF nuts and bolts and that pretty much wrapped up the fitting of the body.
Next I'm going to fit a 46 ford dashboard which is 8 1/2" wider than the car so I can get on with the steering column drop...... ;D

 

Its time for the next stage, I wanted to tackle the steering next but but to do this you need your body firmly bolted in its final position (done) and you need a dashboard to bolt your column drop to, (not done) I decided I wasn't going to use the original 31 dash as that was the easy option, I wanted something from a late 40's to early 50's ford as I want to keep every part ford on the car if possible.
I had seen a lot of different dashboards and decided on a 46/47 ford car one as its just dripping with style, so I bought on at a swap meet down in Monroe, Washington which was in mint original condition.
I didn't really consider the width to be a problem until I actually measured it compared to the width of the car a found out it was eight inches wider, Oh well everything can be made to fit right....
Here is a pic of the first mock up.


So all I had to do now was cut it up, but first I had to decide where would be best to take out that 8", well I had to basically cut it all out of the middle because of the chrome trim parts run quite close to the edge, and as the trim is basically in three sections that worked out quite well with the center section being nearly 10" wide.
so I removed the shiney bits and got the cutting disc out.....



That went quite well, but then my only concern was how would the trim look bolted back on with the center section missing, so I tried that....

and I was happy with that, it had the look of plane wings about which I quite liked.
my next problem was that the original dash molded up into the A pillars in the 46 ford so they basically had to be cut off and also the radius on the top was a bigger radius that the model A one so I had to basically cut the top right off back to the chrome trim, which didn't leave me with a lot of the original dash left, by this time I was getting quite nervous as I'm no expert with sheet metal.
I decided on keeping the original model A dash behind and use it basically as a mounting bracket for the new dash, so I made a new top and spot welded it to the dash and also to the Model A dash top, here how it started......


I had better load this up before I loose everything.

 

Anyway, once I was happy with that I had to deal with the end caps, so to do this I just made cardboard templates to the shape and cut the out of 1.2mm sheet steel, I welded them and manipulated them as I went along and they seem to turn out pretty good.
One this I needed to be sure of was that the window winder door handles will miss the dash and not trap my fingers as this new dash sticks out quite a long way compared with the original, so once I was happy with that I finished the ends off....






with a bit of red oxide primer you would never know, lol


I then wanted needed to get rid of the hump on the bottom which was now right where the column drop was going to be mounted, so I got stuck in and sorted that....




after a bit of rough filler work to get it some where near it looked quite good.
This was one of those jobs that I ended up really proud off and it was a very well spent afternoons I think. ;D ;D ;D ;D





To fill the gap left between the trim I used the center trim piece of a 1941 ford dash I had as the radius was the same and seem to fit the bill pretty good, I just need to make a trim piece for it to sit against out of ally or something.

 

The next part that I approached was actually modifying the F1 steering box but I will cover the making the column drop first.
The column I'm using is one I took off a 1947 mercury 1 ton truck, I will also be using the steering wheel as its identical to the 40 ford one, I couldn't use the steering box as the Pittman arm was at the wrong angle, hence choosing the F1 box, all this is still keeping the all ford theme.
So I wanted an art deco style drop and being a machinist that was the best way I thought I could make one, by machining it from a billet.
I KNOW....... I KNOW........ this isn't American hotrod and I'm not Boyd Coddington, but I will make it look cast, anyway the plan was if it turned out what I wanted I will be casting from from ally.
So the basic design was drawn up....

then transferred that design onto some cold ally bar which fell into my lunchbox at work one day. ;D
and stated machining it out at home using my pillar drill as it was too much hassle to do it at work and too time consuming



I originally wanted to make it so that it just slid over the column but decided that would make life difficult if I wanted to remove it at any time as it wouldn't slide over the bell at the top of the column, so would have to come of the bottom which meant totally dismantling the steering


So I bolted it up to the dash to see what it looked like...



To be honest, I'm not convinced that this drop looks right, I cant quite put my finger on why I'm not happy with it because I'm happy with the shape, I'm just not sure it looks at home here.
I think it will look better heavily bead/sand blasted and stressed a bit to give it more of a cast vintage look or even better if it was cast, but its here to stay for now to be reviewed again another day.
I would like to know what you lot think on this matter please ;D ;D

 

Ma-va-lus dash. Just love it. Gary

 

Awesome work! Love the column drop, would rounding the edges off the sharp points give it more of a deco look?

 

Love the build.

The column drop needs something, but not sure what it is. Maybe slide it under the dash a little farther?