Projects Building an A roadster with a paintbrush

I have been craving a hot rod since I could drive but never had the funds, years ago my brother started a project with my grandpa on a homemade, fiberglass Model A roadster. He joined the Navy and lost interest in hot rods so this year I was asked if I wanted to finish it. Started about 6 months ago, thought maybe somebody would be interested in this build? Has anyone else done something as stupid as this before? Have more pictures if anyone is interested.

 

Some more

 

I dont get the paint brush thing, or why it is stupid?

 

All the quarters and everything are made from molds with fiberglass mat and resin spread with paintbrushes. Not really stupid just kind of a hard way to do it. Hoping maybe someone else has done this before.

 

how about the drive train? Tell us about your dream.

 

Putting the body on a stock A frame that came out from under my grandpas A. I have a couple of 8ba's that hopefully i can piece together parts from the 2 and get a strong one, This is grandpas model a and in my mind the quintessential hot rod. I am hoping to make mine very similar to his.

 

Looks like a interesting build, like the use of your Grandpa parts and taking over on your brothers project.
looking forward to seeing it get built.

 

I get it!
You make your own molds too?

 

That's a nice looking A! I'll follow along. Subscribed.

 

Looking good so far. Your grandpa's car is definitely a good one to copy.

 

Good Luck.

 

That's a ton of work that your brother and Grandpa did to mold that body...and it looks great.
It will be a home made treasure when done.
I'll follow but could you make the pics just a wee bit bigger down the road?

 

If you've still go those molds and supplies, i bet you could make and sell some of those glass parts to fund your project.

It looks like you've only got the back of the car made up. Do you have molds for the rest of the car or are you going to find an original cowl?

 

The late Paul Eskew built his own 29 Ford roadster probably 30 years ago.he used my old roadster body to pull plug,He used fiberglass mat and the activator/hardener and the body was nice and he used a yellow gel coat that was flawless.

He built his own rectangular tubing frame,made a 29 glass radiator shell and actually used a rectangle trash can to pull a plug to make the hood.

He did a very nice job and had little money invested,he was happy with the car but didn't like the side profile,,the square tubing just looked unfinished,again he talked me into letting him use a spare set of deuce frame rails and out came the fiberglass again.

He pulled a plug off the rails and he took the glass deuce rails and bolted them on the bottom of the car,,it changed the looks and people actually thought the car was on deuce rails.

No digital camera at that time so all I can offer is crappy photos of a photos.HRP

First outing...



The next show we attended Paul had added the fiberglass deuce rails and the fiberglass top was another piece he made pulling a mold from a early 60's Triumph.

 

A little different style from what I'm trying to achieve but I do like it. It looks like a henry body from afar. I have seen some other home made cars before but none of them really did anything for me. If there's one thing I'm trying to achieve is I want it to look like a real one.

 

Still have the molds and some mat leftover! I have the back all made up and assembled and I have both doors made also. We are using a real roadster cowl and are currently patching some rust. Don't have any windshield pieces though (stanchions/frame) so if anybody has a cheap one that they want to help out a poor teenager with I'm your guy!

 

My grandpa made the molds for fun in the early 80's off of a friends gibbon body. He had no idea 30 some years later his grandson would use them.

 

I'm not one for glass cars, but your story is inspiring. Subscribed!

 

I think Doors might be a magic word. Doors can be hard to come by and are usually quite pricey. If you guys can make and sell those cheap enough and still make a profit, you'll be in good shape. I'm pretty sure there are more Model A cowls floating around out there than bodies for them. This is particularly a thing in the Northeast since so many A's were converted to Doodlebug Tractors up this way as well as all of the cars that got converted into trucks during the wartime gas rationing in the 40's. Being able to make and sell the body from the cowl back is a pretty good spot to be in.

Windshields and cheap don't really go in the same sentence. Good luck tracking those pieces down. Hopefully someone's got a pile of it near you. The cheapest new posts I've seen lately are the Mr. Roadster ones but they're for 28/29.

 

I think if you have a vision you can make a pretty damn nice glass car. here's mine start and finished. I didn't pull my own molds, kudos to you, this is an old Shay Replica body that I extensively modified, Suicide doors, etc. etc. Good luck with yours, lookin good so far.

 

Well I like it. Not everyone builds their own glass body and even less of those build one that is passable. neat project.

 

My friends dad was in a classic car club years ago and told me at one of the meets a guy won top trophy with a glass roadster body on an original chassis. It did have steel fenders and hood. They could not believe how nice the body was. They found out later it was a glass body. You are doing excellent work car looks great.

 

I'm sure a lot of people here could do without the glass body but the fact that you made it and your grandfather made the molds, well, that just cancels out the whole "glass" thing!!! Cool.

 

Oldschool66 Your car was a Shay? WOW! great transformation.

 

Following this build, good luck and welcome to HAMB!

 

Great work man!!! What you've done looks really good, keep after it.

 

Some pictures of the mold process for anyone interested. First picture is The inner decklid mold with the inner door skin molds in the background. Second picture is an inner door with the first layer of mat in it about 1/4 of the way done. Don't have many pictures like this because I always ended up with resin all over my hands and didnt want to ruin my phone. The third picture is a door skin in the mold drying. And the last picture is two messed up inner doors. For some reason the gel coat was bad and crinkled up when we added the resin.

 

we should all take a lesson here.
super cool

 

Ok so, it's been almost three years since I updated this. I check the HAMB daily but after seeing some of the hate on glass cars kind of got discouraged from posting about my project. Anyway, I'll post a quick update for some of the people that were interested three years ago. The majority of my body is nearly ready for paint. My cowl is ready and the quarter panels and panels above and below the decklid will only take a week or so to be ready. I had made my own fiberglass doors and decklid but they still needed some modification to work, plus i wasnt really happy with the way the inner skins turned out on them. To make a long story short, I came into a solid decklid for free and bought a pretty rough set of doors at the goodguys swap meet in July. We aren't sure if the steel decklid will end up on the car as we have already fit the body and the fiberglass decklid to each other. The good news is that we did a really nice job on squaring up the body and the steel decklid actually looks like it might fit really easily with very little modification. The back half of the body is in my garage right now though about 15 miles from the rest of the car so we will figure that out later. Right now I am working in finishing up my chassis which is very close to done. Everything is painted and assembled. Brake lines and cables are ran. Just working on my exhaust and then getting a driveshaft in. Then we will put the body back on and see what this thing looks like. Ignore the tires the front ones were just a set we found in the barn that holds air and the back ones are the front tires off of one of my grandpa's cars.

 

The chassis is the same one that used to be under my grandpa's red car I posted earlier. We kicked up the back of it about 3 inches but the majority of it was all stick welded back in the 70's.