Thanks guys! I can't believe how well received this car has been. I've been slowly knocking stuff out, and I mean REALLY slowly...
Ok Its been a month or so and I basically haven't done anything with the car but I sort of feel like posting. TROG was a blast, wish I could have stayed for Sunday but instead we headed out. Felt like it would pretty cool to shoot a pic of it all dirty in front of the fall colors. Turns out this is the last picture of the car in one piece... Pretty much as soon as we got home I took the whole car apart. Probably not the best idea in hindsight but oh well. As I said the rear suspension needed some attention. First I whipped up some headlight stands for @jmiller1918. Then I started on the rear suspension. I decided to run a T spring with only a couple of the short top leaves removed. I had met an old timer who gave me some tips on putting a T spring in a model A, I posted it on instagram and lots of people thought it was cool so I may as well share it here. He had told me to make sure you run the top leaf of the stock A spring on the top of the T spring. This eliminates the need to run spacers with the T spring in the A crossmember. He also recommended not overthinking it and using the A shackles with a flat washer on either side of the spring to take up the extra room on the shackle. Here is the spring as I was about to re install it in the frame. The A leaf on top and stock T spring on the bottom. (I ended up removing the top T leaves to lower it a little bit more. I also went ahead and stepped the frame the width of the frame which brought it back to basically the same ride height it was at before. It is slightly higher but I am satisfied with it. I still need to finish the subrails and frame step and then knock out shocks on all four corners. I basically finished the front shock mounts, just need to find the right length shocks.
Awesome build. This is the stuff I miss while being away. So, how much higher did the modified T spring put you over the flattened A? The car looks great and congrats on becoming a Flyer! I'll be following you on IG now and look forward to see what's next.
Well its been a year or so since I made this thread, so I figured maybe someone would be interested in an update. When I initially built this car, much of it was slapped together for the sake of getting it going. I have always regretted that decision ever since so after TROG I wanted to redo it. I pulled the car apart and it basically sat in pieces until a month or so ago when I started up on it again. I always wanted to run an F1 trans crossmember in this car but never found one when I was looking. A buddy hooked me up with a real nice one with pedals and most of the linkage for the clutch so I had to swap crossmembers. First order of business was the nearly dead trans was swapped out for a much nicer later style one and the late mount was added for the transmission crossmember. I am really hoping this transmission stays in second gear unlike the last 2 I went through. I have checked out dozens of F1 crossmembers in model As but I never really liked any of them. I sorta wanted to make something that could look stock, but it was also removable (because I like to change my mind a lot) and most of all it had to be very functional. This was what I came up with, it fits all of the criteria I set for myself so its ok by me. There are lots of hours in it, thats for sure... Here is pre- final weld in the frame, so you can get an idea of how it looks installed. It would be pretty cool to do a tech write up for this as I believe it is very doable for the average guy but I'm not sure if they even do that tech oriented stuff on here anymore. I also had to shorten the wishbone up slightly to accommodate the change in crossmember. Today we painted it all in the morning and had to assemble it again to move it inside tonight. It came out far beyond my expectations. Other than that its probably going to get put back together fairly slowly. Working nearly 60 hours a week and working on this car 4 or so hours a day then all weekend is really taking it out of me. Oh well, I will be working on it every day until its done, either that or I will be working on it until 3 hours before I leave for the showdown, just like last year.
I hope thats a good thing! Thank you! It won't look a whole lot different now, but it will slowly become more refined as time goes on. If I ever get enough time to do the top, I think it will totally change the car. That however is very far off. Also, Thanks everyone!!
Yeah! I'm booking you a flight to Texas as we speak...you think they'll consider a welder "carry-on"?
The easiest way to do it would be to find an indent that was from a Ford part, like the bottom of any Ford or Merc X member. Just cut it out and weld it into your F1 crossmember. The hunk of crossmember I used was from a big truck so it was a thicker gauge of metal. Just something to think about... Also keep in mind you need to make sure when mounting the wishbones in the F1 crossmember that you account for the angle of your axle as well as make enough clearance for the oil pan. I only got away with it because of the downward swoop in my wishbones but I also got myself in a slight bind as I cant remove the oil pan with the engine in the car. I opted for form over function with that one.
Got a good amount done on the car, someone pointed out that its been a week exactly since we got the frame painted. So I guess we made pretty good time. Anyway heres a little bit of progress since everyone seemed to be liking the last post. Nothing groundbreaking. Just putting it back together The motor went in pretty easy and we started hooking everything up. Here's one last shot of that crossmember for the heck of it... I had a shot of the hand brake linkage I wanted to post but I couldnt find the picture on my phone so I'll have to add it later. Got everything like brake lines and exhaust buttoned up last night so we were ready to put the body back on. One last shot of the bare frame. Body back on. Today we got everything else buttoned up on the running gear and got the flathead running again for the first time since October. Other than cotter pinning everything, installing the gas tank, and topping off all the oil its ready to roll. I'm honestly surprised it went together so easily and that I was able to locate just about everything I took off of it nearly six months ago. I'll try to get some videos of it running around this week or weekend if I can. I know this update is really redundant for those that have seen all this on instagram so sorry about that. I'll get some fresh content for this soon enough.
The Jalopy Journal
