Projects The 100 Day Waltz to LSRU - Model A Roadster Thrash!

Update?


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Heard he sold his hot rod stuff and took up ballroom dancing

 

I heard he'd rather work on mustangs

 

Matt, I saw you were visiting the H.A.M.B. and wondered about your roadster. Have you been able to work on it?

 

Waiting!

 

Got his hand in a cast I'd assume he's probably using most his energy keeping up with shop work.

 

Let's stage a hostile takeover of this thread to force his return...


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I heard he became disillusioned with the hotrod life, moved to Miami, and is now one of the top tuners for import street racers...

 

^ well that's just Ludicrous. Lol

 

Until he chimes in and proves otherwise...

 

It was a pun

 

He has a lot of stuff for sale in the current classifieds

 

Damnit! That one went completely over my head. Good one!

 

He toyed with the notion of selling it but snapped out of it and decided to sell part of his parts hoard to pay for his cast. Might need a padded dash, Matt


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There. This should hold you guys over for a good while..




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Sweet picture!! I can almost hear the roar with the flame!

Ryan.

 

That is a great shot. Easy to see why the early small blocks found their way into so many hot rods almost over night. Glad to see this build still going it is a classic of a guy and his car growing up together.

 

Hmmm . . . judging by the car sitting next to his hot rod in this photo, you might be right!

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/attachments/img_1484788521-437241-jpg.3430231/

 

Glad to see you are back at it , 29 roadsters belong on 32 rails. I have two.
Frank

 

Hey, heeeey.. I work on what I'm told to work on.

My roadster is sitting on a Model A frame I upswept the front of and Zed.. but I agree! There's not a better combination than an early A on a deuce frame.


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Man this makes me happy

 

I'm still quite a bit behind on updating this thread.. so I thought I'd throw up a couple videos for those who haven't seen them on Instagram or my Facebook.






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Hey man that's awesome I am kicking myself for not getting to the speed shop when I was there for the round up.
GO,GO,GO the first drive is always the best

 

Under it's own power! That's got to have your blood boiling. You've been working on this thing since you were a baby. That alone is cool.

 

Well lookat that!
Didja see the smile on that guy?

 

Right on!

 

Okaaaay .. Here we go.

I'm going to try and get all of the updating here done in one sitting.

I last left off where I was making the rear subrails from scratch. I can tell that's over a year ago because of the "Hagwood Special" on the side of the cowl .. that chick and I broke up in May of last year. Oops.

 

- Body -

Since I kind of jumped around on this project, I'm going to sum up everything that's been done in categories.. So, starting with the body:

The subrails got all done .. Then I started securing the rear half of the body to the subrails to make the body structurally sound. I started with shortening some repop body braces and fitting them to the body.




I first made the trunk floor pan, rolled the beads, and Eric gave me this little crossmember cover he or someone had made at the shop and it fit perfect.





I found some '49 ish Buick taillights on eBay for a great price, so I bought them. As soon as they came in, I got to work centering them up and making sure there was room for the license plate back there ..




Jeff Peterson dropped by to show me how to work the bead-roller like a boss .. If I tried to roll a straight line before, it came out as a third grader attempt at cursive. Jeff showed me some techniques and gave me some tips and we rolled out some floor pans for the sloped part of the subrails, clearing the torque tube then we made the floor pans for between the slope and under the seat. We knocked out alot of work in that one night and I cannot thank Jeff enough for that.





I did some typical hole-filling on the firewall, then got stuck on that. I came back to making the distributor clearance notch way later on, then filled in around the engine/transmission, as well as the front floors.





I haven't rolled the beads on the driver's side front floor, but that floor detaches from the body, so I'll get back to it later. Painted the bottom of the body and the firewall..

 

- Drivetrain -

I assembled the heads last year during the Round-Up then my engine woes came after.



I started with a '57 Chevy 283. I ended up with some .30 over pistons from Eric Carter, I had a local machine shop do the machine work on my block, got it back, started assembling it with the help of Eric Anderson who used to work at Republic Custom Engine and we realized the crank was a little too tight to his liking. I don't remember exactly what happened but I remember the wrong bearings being involved, the crank being too tight, needing an align hone which the first machine shop said they did not have the equipment to - so they offered to send it down to San Antonio for me.

Nope. So I called up Mike Jackson who was in Arlington at the time and asked him if he could do the deed and he said he could indeed. I drove up there, dropped it off, then in between me dropping it off and picking it up, he had made a business move and took over Republic Custom Engine in Garland. I eventually made my way over there and picked it up, brought it back down and we threw it all back together. The engine finally made its way back in the roadster after months of delay and three trips to the machine shop. I threw on the flywheel, clutch, and pressure plate. The transmission adapter is an original Offenhauser piece I had to make some repairs to.



The transmission was going to be a '39 Ford transmission .. Then Steven Boschma donated his '47 Ford three-speed to me, so I gutted that transmission and filled the 78 case with them. Then I got a wild hair and said "Hey .. I've just got about everything here to make it a column shift hot rod." So I gutted the 78 case and put everything back in the side-shift case and sealed it all up. All of the shifter stuff were take-offs from his '47 sedan which I also built at Austin Speed Shop. He had gone to a T5 and had no need for this stuff and I was more than happy to give this stuff a good home. (Thank you so much, Steven .. You've given more to this roadster than anyone else and I owe you so much for that)




After sort of bouncing around on the roadster, knowing I didn't have a title for it and was unmotivated, Kail decided to kick me in the ass and said "We're gonna fire this engine up this week" knowing that it would motivate me even more. So, we took a take-off intake manifold/carb from another project car, plugged up what needed to be plugged, found a take-off distributor, filled up the engine with some water, found the correct oil canister filter for it, stuck it in there, filled it up with oil, poured some gas down the Edelbrock and worked on getting it to at least fire off a couple revolutions. It did. It spat flames. It was loud. It only ran for a couple seconds. But that couple seconds was all it took. I was hooked. I had to drive this car.



Before all of that, I had an idea of what I wanted to do for valve covers. I wanted to see it come to life soon, so I chucked my pair of staggered bolt pattern 7-fin Corvette covers on the mill and got to work.





I made a checklist of what needed to get done on this car and started chipping away at it.. Full exhaust system - original 4-into-2 Hedman headers I did some slight repairs on, straight pipes that exit just in front of the rear wheels, and tips I somehow managed to make after some trial-and-error. I still need to make the hangers for the rear end of the exhaust system .. soon.







Kail showed me how to weld aluminum and we welded some tabs on the cheap eBay aluminum radiator I "de-blinged" and painted black. I bugged some friends, made some trades, got some donations and got a SW water temp and oil pressure gauge to hook up to the roadster just so I can have the essentials first. I'll hook up all of the '54 Dodge gauges later. I chased down and bought all of the nickel and dime stuff for getting the roadster driving..

Chris Hagerty wired up my roadster with a very minimal wiring diagram but everything was tucked in nice and neat.. He rules. I made the fuel line, ran some battery cables from the trunk area, took the battery outta my C10 and used that to just get it running.

Then a couple weeks before the Round-Up, we got it running but it wasn't idling on its own. And it was pushing oil out between the road draft tube and the engine block. I eventually figured out it wasn't breathing since my valve covers didn't have breathers nor did the intake manifold I was using. My Weiand WC4D has the fill tube/breather cap .. So, that needs to find its way on there soon because I'm not drilling holes in my valve covers. A good friend also donated a quartet of air cleaners from Chris at Grace & Co. These are quality products! He's turning out some great stuff - look him up. I'm torn apart on how to finish them .. paint or plating .. hmm.



I eventually made a trade with a buddy for this old Mallory distributor and the roadster is running the best it ever has.

 

I'm just about to use this keyboard for a pillow so I'll finish the updating tomorrow ..