I want to knock two birds out with one stone and keep it simple and have this as my intro/build thread. I reside in Gainesville, Florida. I turned 30 in January. I have always had a passion for traditional hot rods. I have been lurking for a good while on here and have learned so much from a lot of you guys out there. I want to begin by thanking you all for putting in the time and effort into sharing all the information. It helps guys like me build the confidence and learn to tackle a first time build. As easy and simple as these cars are there is a lot that goes into these builds. My wife and I received Ole' Nelly April 26th 2016. I had been buying and selling cars/trucks working my way up to a model A sedan for a long time. I finally came acrossed this car and had to have it. My wife and I drove Nelly just about everywhere up until November 6th 2016. Between the time we got the car and then I chopped the top 4" and located some 16" wires and had the powder coated. We put 2600 miles on the car in this time frame. November 6th we decided to tear it apart to pull the banger for what we were hoping to be rings and gaskets. Upon tear down the Babbitt bearings were shot and we decided it was time to make a choice. Rebuild the banger or build an Av8 sedan. I have always wanted to build an av8. It took me a few days to decide which route I wanted to take. Once I made my mind up my wife and I set out a goal to try and complete it within a years time. I lucked out and found a good donor car, a '41 ford sedan that runs and drives but needed work. Perfect for our intention. We got the car home that night and had the engine ready to be pulled out that evening (Dec. 20th. So now that we had a lot of big parts I needed to figure out our action plan for getting Nelly ready for the swap. Since we haven't been collecting parts for years and really dont have anything to help us along with the build as far as parts go. It is crucial for time management to pay attention to all classifieds. I wasn't able to come across an f100 crossmember until here recently. So I decided to purchase a fabricated one from Industrial chassis. It's a cross member designed to the f100 specs and has all the holes needed to bolt the pedals to it etc. the trans mounts with biscuits and uses the wider foot print trans mount. This can either bolt in or weld on. It will be welded in once all the mock up is done. In between waiting for parts here and there, I tore into the ignition system and learned about the crab distributor. I completely rebuilt it. Then I rebuilt the 94 carb that was on the engine. After the carb, I was going to rebuild the generator. At the last moment before ordering the parts for the rebuild I decided to go with a 12v power gen unit instead. I located a late 30's fan, ordered it and an offy pulley to mount the fan to the power gen. This will be a very nice setup and I won't have to worry about it at all. I recently got my radiator off eBay. It may or may not have been a good choice. That's to be determined. I have a friend that builds hot rods for a living helping me along the way with info. He will soon be getting involved with the build. He is going to look at the radiator and etc to see what we can do with it. He will also be welding my flange to the steering box once I get it back in the mail. Shout out to: Jail house bob for the f1 box and to house of fab for machining the box etc. Both great guys to do business with. Dave Havlir from house of fab has been great. I will be receiving both the box and a pair of headers from him in the near future. As of right now I'm waiting to receive these parts so I can continue my mock up and finalize everything. Then I'll take it all back apart and weld it all. My buddy Rob that builds hot rods for a living will be doing surgery on the eBay radiator and welding the flange to the box. I also will have him help with the pedal linkage setup. He built a jig to do a 3" drop on a model a axle so we will be tackling that together as well. I would like to lower the car a total of 5 inches but without putting a z in the frame. I know this won't be accomplished. So my plan is to lower the car as much as possible by suspension and see if I can live with it. I'm going for a late 40's theme anyway so slamming this sedan to the ground is not my goal, however I would like to get the car stanced to my liking. Oh and we will be going fenderless. So this is the beginning of my build from November 6th 2016 and catches you up to where we are right now March 30 2017. Also sorry to all the purists. I have always wanted to chop a model A. This was my first chop ever and one of the biggest tasks I've taken on. It taught me a lot about myself and to just approach it all with a game plan and see it through till the end. I'll tell you right now I had to pucker up cutting into this body. I literally started the cutting wheel 3 times up to the body before actually finally committing to the chop. It was extremely hard to convince myself that it was okay. There are a lot of things I would change on my next one. However, I hope you enjoy and please feel free to comment and add your two cents for direction and input. I have a lot to learn and take well to constructive criticism. Thank you to all the fellow HAMB members again for taking the time and posting all the info you do. More pictures to come... Jeremy
Chopped top stocker is just too cool... Won't see many of those babies parked at a run or a show... The tiquers will be stroking their beards in a semi confused state... My choice for the undisputed Queen of the Rootbeer Stand... By the looks of that chop you can only order small mugs, the large won't fit through the window... rock on !
@Ron Brown has a post on getting an A pretty damn low with out Zing the frame. I picked the version I liked the best and followed along on mine. It came out pretty low, I'll see what the final stance is when the rest of the weight is added but I've no fear about it looking tall. Looking forward to followimg your build!
Nice sedan Jeremy, looks like you've been doing your homework. What a awesome project for you and your wife. Congrats!
Here is a direct link to his lowering thread http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/lowering-my-model-a.995027/
Great looking car and nice job on the chop. I want to do that to my tudor also. Soooo.....are you going fenderless or keeping them?? I know someone who needs a complete set!
my first thought was, Damn way too nice to cut up ( i know...I know) but after seeing the chop. WOW that is way cool!
I agreee with you. Any extra money right now is helping me with forward progress. I also don't have a ton of extra room to store them. However if I did I would more than likely hold onto them. I'll be trying to load more pictures this evening after I do the deal with the fenders.
I say keep the fenders they aren't that hard to store. Run it fenderless with the splash aprons still on it and when you feel like fenders bolt them on! Best of both worlds.... saying that as a guy who spent time hunting down all the bits and pieces to run full fenders on his fenderless car lol
I tried fitting the aprons on and didn't care for them a whole lot on the sedan. Which is funny because that's the vision I originally had of the car. None the less I understand the idea of keeping them. I was fortunate enough to have a buyer last night and the fenders sold. Maybe I'll regret it. Maybe I won't. As of right now all the extra money from the parts goes right back into the build. Everything helps. I wish I could up date my pictures. For some reason I'm having issues on my phone which is my only device. I'll have to con my wife into helping me download pictures to her computer. Once I get off work tonight I plan on doing that with her if she isn't busy. I'm off tomorrow so I plan on Working on Nelly a bit. Stay tuned for more pictures. Hopefully a short video tim lapse of the chop too. Enjoy your weekend everyone.
Yes, I think the aprons alone look better on a coupe or roadster not so much on a tudor for some reason.
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