Projects The bucket of ugly! A de-uglifying thread...

Bondo? Bondo? "I love the smell of polyester in the morning!"

You won't regret this one.

 

Thank you all for your encouragement and advice. I've been scheming all day at work about this haha. Thanks especially to Kiwi for offering help. PM sent!

 

Good score, Tim!

 

Maybe this is a bad question, or a bad idea, but has anyone ever built a snubbed touring body? Like you have the front half of the touring body unmodified, but basically remove the back seat and rear doors to butt the back panel up against the rear door flanges...if that makes sense. My car has a pretty short wheelbase, and I'm wondering if it would be easier for me to come up with some touring panels rather than cut up either an A or T bed (the guy I got the body from had quite a bit of touring stuff but no pickup beds up for grabs). I'm thinking I MIGHT get a little extra storage out of that idea rather than hacking up a pickup bed... Your thoughts?

 

Here is shortened touring that has been around a while, friend owned it in the early 70's, it still had a nailhead, '39 trans, and banjo rear at that time (it also had psychedelic paint and Indy tires). Not too traditional then or now; but it may have been in an earlier version.

 

Hmm...I kinda like that look. Slightly different, but not over the top. On the other hand, I just went thrugh Blue One's thread again. This time what he did is a lot more relavent, so I picked up a lot more this time around. I like how he built his pickup bed and how he widened the back panel of the tub to mount flush with the body sides. Extremely impressive work to say the least.

 

Looks a lot like the Wintec Roadster. Wonder if that's where they got their inspiration from?

 

There was a rash of short tubs in the late sixties. The most famous I can think of was Mickey Himsl's car. I can't scan and print anything right now, so a picture will have to wait.

 

Yes, the short tub thing seemed to last about as long as ribbon paint.

 

Mickey Himsl? I always just knew it as the Himsl tub so I just thought it was Art Himsl. They must have worked together with the Krazy paint jobs on the vans of the '70s. What happened Chip did someone start making T tub fiberglass bodies? Anyway that made it possible for taller guys to fit into T roadsters. I think Mickey also bought Von Franko's black version of Grabowski's T. I've seen the tub with the Plymouth tube axle and Krazy paint at Billetproof in Antiock Ca. in the last few years. It's been fully restored. Wish now that I had taken a picture of it.
Yesterday I was going through some of my old Hot Rod magazines and I noticed that the buckets in the early to mid sixties although a lot of them had fiberglass bodies the builders were still using old Ford suspension. I guess that was still before Kits took off.
Don't know why but I'm having trouble downloading photos. Think I'll post and go into edit. That worked before. That worked. Don't know why.
I know the second photo isn't a T but it is still an early '60s roadster.

Gary

 

There's at least on picture of Himsl's ribbon-painted tub (and others too, I think) pictured in Andy Southerland's "Hot Rods of the 1960's". I'll see if I can scan them tonight.

My meager contribution to theis excellent thread.

 

Thanks Tim, let me know if you have any questions along the way of your own project.
Larry.

 

Larry, I really do like your approach to your build. I'm leaning towards going a similar route with the pickup bed. It seems like getting a repro tailgate and fabbing the rest (or getting help with fabbing the rest) is the way to go. As far as the pickup bed is concerned, is the tailgate the only panel you purchased?

I gave the sheetmetal I have a really close look the past couple nights. I'm pretty sure my cowl is a 1917-22ish, and I'm guessing the passenger's side body panel has been patched with a poor quality replacement panel from half the front door forward to the cowl. Where the panel joins the cowl on the driver's side has a bead rolled in it, so it looks like it slides under the bead on the cowl. On the passenger's side (the one that has been patched), there is no bead on that panel, and it has a 90* brake in it, so it won't slide behind the cowl... They also did a poor job patching it lol. Just lapped it in there! Other than that, I'm pretty excited with what I ended up with.

 

Cowl (with brackets/braces that seem to get in the way of mating the body sides to the cowl)





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Driver's side body panel, and mating it to the cowl- seems like that cowl bracket is in the way, I can't get the cowl and body panel flush where they would meet the firewall without cutting that brace out...I must be misunderstanding something.





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Passenger's side. You can see where the patch was lapped in. Also see the break on the second pic? Seems like it won't mate to the cowl like that, especially since the other side only has a bead rolled in it.





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Hi Tim, The repro tailgate I purchased is a model A tailgate, and I also purchased the formed curved rail that the tailgate hinges mount to. I narrowed the tailgate 4" ( 2" cut out of each side under the tailgate hinge straps) to better suit the dimensions of the T body and also narrowed the curved rear rail section to match.
As you can see I then built the rest of the bed to suit what I had and wanted.
You mentioned the rear section of my body, I did widen it to match the side panels and as you saw on my thread I also then completely rebuilt the back of the body including the top rear lip of the "tub".
Larry

 

Dash, door, seat frame, and back panel. The dash and seat frame are pretty scaly and pitted, not sure if I will use them... The door is kinda pitted too, but I think it will clean up ok. I have hinges somewhere, just need a latch.









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Something that you will find with the old metal T parts Tim is that they won't fit together like you might like them to or even as nicely as newer metal parts will fit.
If the parts came from different cars it can be even worse.
The best thing to do is to look at pictures of how they go together and then you can decide if you want them together differently ( like I did with widening the rear of my "tub"to match my side panels)
You can then modify and assemble the body to suit your taste in how you think it fits best.
Larry.
You should also acquaint yourself with Mac's model T parts and get one of their catalogs, they may well have some parts you will need.
I got new door hinges from them etc.

 

Larry, thanks for the info! I am pretty sure I will be doing almost that very same process in the near future (not sure I will widen the back of the body yet)! Looks like I have a great reference for the work ahead! Thanks again!

 

I give up! I can't load or post pics either! Chip, this Himsl car? http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...7888&page=3&start=54&ndsp=31&ved=0CF8QMyg3MDc

 

Gary, That '29 belonged to my friend Al Rogers, it was called "The 7 Year Itch", pretty cool car !

 

That's the car Blownfuel!

 

Ya, actually Gary, an early 'glass body maker by the name of Steve Archer did the short tub bodies, along with regular length tubs, and even extended tubs. If you have ever seen the old PSI catalogs from the late sixties and early seventies, they were probably the largest seller of his tub bodies. The one I showed that I was building the frame and chassis for about, what 200 pages ago is an old Archer body. Damn nice stuff too! The p/o of my car, Roy has the part of the Archer tub mold, and two Himsl trike molds. He was a personal friend of Archer's before his passing in the early eighties.

 

Yup! And you will find a completely irrefutable fact in that different year parts, even within the same "T" date range will have different braces and such that will prevent them from fitting readily. The trick to fitting these things in reducing them to what I call a "pelt", and matching up the bolt holes to begin with, squaring it up, then bracing.

Don' Hot Rods here on the H.A.M.B. showed a super simple jig that his son made up to straighten out a beat '29 rpu body a couple of years ago. He very simply took a piece of 1" plywood that was about 4' by 5', and made a center line lengthwise. He measured and marked both sides of the fire wall, and measured and marked the sides of the body at the back. If I was doing the same for yours, I'd pick the straightest of the two sides, which in your case looks to be the left, and trace it on the board. copy that, flip it over, and trace it on the other side of the board. Now you have two equal sides to copy and make square from.

I have a few pictures saved from "Turkeyjerk's" build from several years ago here for some bracing ideas.

 

Chip--That last pic is an Instant Classic! Tim--I sent you back a PM/Conversation Reply Blurb. Did you get it? Looks like there is enough help on here to get you started.....

 

I didn't see it Kiwi Tinbender. If you sent it via my e-mail.... Well, that's a story in itself. Been a mess for a few months now. I knew I forgot to have kids! I can't seem to borrow one long enough to fix it!

 

So i was over at my buddy Don's and he had this picture on his shop wall. It is Lewiston Idaho in 1962
and this is how they did it.

 

Paul, I got your PM and replied, but not sure it went through. I sent it again.

Chip and Larry, thank you for clearing up how these old bodies fit together and how many are different from each other. That looks to be the case in my situation haha. Thank you also for the bracing photos. That gives me some great ideas.

Gary and Dana, you both mentioned the usage of conduit for body bracing. I will most likely go this route for at least part of it as I have the bender and conduit is cheap. I'm going to wait until I follow up on a couple leads, then make some patch panel and reproduction panel purchases to start putting this together.

Thanks for all your help. It's greatly appreciated!

 

Just be careful to avoid the fumes while welding galvanized EMT, as Dana said earlier,
the fumes are toxic.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Welding-EMT-Conduit/