After a 12 year hiatus from hot rodding, I’ve found the motivation to get back on my ’31 A coupe build. My 21 year old son is a mechanical engineering student and my 18 year old son suddenly took an interest in old cars. I’ve taught them to maintain their own vehicles but they’ve never really been “in” to cars like I was. I recently got news that my father has cancer; his prognosis is good at the moment. He started this coupe, which he named “Spooky”, back in the mid 80’s. I realize I may only have a short time with Dad and the boys all around me, so I’m ambitiously planning to finish this three-generation build. The build is in full swing and I’ll include updates, but first I’ll give some family hot rodding history. Heck, Dad started the build 30+ years ago, so there’s a little history on the coupe. Dad grew up in Macon, GA. He was a kid in the late 50s and a teenager in the 60s when hot rodding and racing was in its heyday. Dad got the car bug honest I guess. My granddad George used to go down to Central City Park to watch the moonshiners, i.e. stock car racers run their 40 Fords and whatnot. The only time he took the family on vacation was to the Daytona 500. George had a sweet Harley around 1954. That’s Dad on the back of it at 5 years old. Dad had three uncles on his mom’s side of the family and they were all car guys. Charles, Bruce and Denny were the hot rodders in their south Macon neighborhood. Their house on Hightower Road was the hangout for the neighborhood kids. Bruce was the main hot rodder of the bunch in the 60s. He was in his early 20s in the mid 60’s when he inherited a ’31 coupe parts car from his grandfather Robert. Bruce decided to make it into a hot rod. Robert had another Model A he used as a daily driver until they took the keys from him when he was in his 90s. That’s Robert in his 70s standing next to his coupe. The oldest brother Charles worked at Dixie Auto Parts. He frequently hooked up Bruce with parts. Denny was Dad’s youngest uncle and only a couple years older than Dad. Dad was around 15 when they started building the coupe in the mid ‘60s. Bruce liked driving fast. He had plans to make the coupe fast on the top end. Charles located a ’54 Olds 324 in the junkyard while Bruce found a three two-barrel set-up. They mated it to a Lincoln Zephyr transmission and dropped it in the coupe. The Zephyr also donated it’s rear end. They stripped the unchopped coupe, channeled it and called it good. Due to the gearing, it wasn’t that fast in the quarter but, according to Dad, it would do 95 mph in 2nd gear. Many fell victim to Bruce’s coupe on long backroads. On Sundays, the neighborhood kids would hang out at their house to tune the coupe and take turns going sideways down unpaved Hightower road in front of the house. Bruce would take bets on how soon he could get an unsuspecting passenger to beg him stop. They always begged, one pleading for mercy from the floorboard. Bruce sold the old coupe sometime around the late 60s, replacing it with a ’64 Galaxy sporting a hot 427 built by local William Pender. No one was absolutely certain where the coupe ended up after the sell. I remember going to a car show with Bruce back in the 80s. We saw an old coupe that he though was his from back in the day but he wasn’t certain. The owner wouldn’t part with it anyway. Dad lived within walking distance of Bruce and Denny’s house. He wasn’t quite old enough to drive when they built the coupe but he grew up in the hot rod culture. It left a lasting impression and passion that he passed on to me. Here’s a pic of the coupe he snapped with his kid brother Jerry standing next to Bruce’s ‘31. Dad cut his hot rodding teeth with Bruce and Denny and that coupe. It would be twenty years before Dad had his own Model A. He scratched the itch with fast cars and motorcycles until then.
Thanks for sharing. Great story. Looking forward to seeing your build. Time to make more memories for your sons.
Ohhh, Brian... I see some custom rocker panels added on below the door...the 'just right' chop and loss of drip rails give it a 'smooooth' look! I think '39 teardrops fit into those holes in the rear panel, nice. I see 'control arms'... well, we were good for a minute there... All things in stride, we should let this slide! Great thing you're doing in the family... Down your way, folks call it 'tradition'. In HAMB's way, we call it the same thing. (In Harm's Way?)
Well about those rocker panels... I'm getting around to it, but Dad plucked the rusty body out of a field. Instead of using patch panels, he fabbed up some rough sheet metal to build up the bottom. He shortened the door the width of the frame, giving it the appearance of rocker panel. He claims folks use to shorten the doors around here but I've never seen it. Drip rails were rusted so he shaved 'em off. I added the '39 lights after I inherited it. And yes, I was going with IFS before I saw the error of my ways. I'm currently modifying the frame for a tube axle install. Yep, it's all about getting the kids involved. My 18 yo ran his first weld bead Sunday. He got the hang of it pretty quick so I let him weld up a motor mount jig.
please replace the gutters, IMO...the car will look funny without them... they sell a pair of straight gutters that you bend... $100 pr. they also sell curved as originals that are a little more, worth every penny as they don't bend easily without twisting... if your header wood is bad or is removed rosette weld the gutter from the inside through the former oval nail holes...
Agreed on the drip rails. I have lots of body work to do. All the header wood is gone so it's easy enough. Dad's uncles used to take him to drag races at Camp Wheeler in Macon, both to run the coupe and to spectate. Camp Wheeler was an abandoned WWII army base that was converted to a drag strip. The strip drew some big guns like Don Garlits and Hubert Platt after a while. Somewhere around here, I have an old 8mm video converted to VHS with some racing action. Dad told me of one memorable Camp Wheeler race in particular. This black ’55 Chevy with the moniker “Second to None” showed up and whipped everyone. Right at the end of the day, an identical ’55 Chevy rolled off the trailer and staged against the first. The late showing car took the first by a fender. On it’s door was painted “None”. Ah, the heyday of drag racing.
About the time dad hit 20, Vietnam was in full swing. He enlisted in the Air Force and was away for a few years. He came back home to Macon right after. The gearhead disease still ran through him and he built a few cars and one nasty Kawasaki bike. The most memorable was a ’64 vette with a built 427. To this day, it was the fastest I’ve ever ridden at somewhere north of 150. I couldn’t have been more than 8 years old or so. I still don’t think my mother knows about that. Dad was a good father with occasionally poor judgment. That ‘vette cost him his eyebrows once. He was looking down the carb throat when the engine backfired on him. I’m kinda glad I wasn’t there to smell it. He infected me with the hot rodding bug, but I’m not sure it was intentional. When I hit 16, he sold me his ’72 Mustang Mach I for $200 and a shotgun. The engine was absolutely worn out along with most everything else. I still remember his advice on car ownership. It went something like this: “Son, you have three choices when it comes to owning cars. Number 1: you can buy a new car, but you don’t have any money. Number 2: you can buy an older car and pay someone else to work on it, but you don’t have any money. Number 3: you can buy some old POS and learn to work on it yourself. Now which do you think you will do?” And so with that, the course was set. Dad showed me the ropes as we built my first engine in his shop. I was hopelessly afflicted. I read every Hot Rod magazine I could get my hands on. I spent the next two years of high school classroom time sketching cars, calculating compression ratios and engine RPM at various speeds. I was so fascinated with moving parts that I decided to become a mechanical engineer. Dad could tell I had the disease. Bear with me, I’m getting to the hot rod.
Haha! Yes, I meant height. Some time in the mid to late 80s, Dad’s uncles Bruce and Denny found a deal on a ’30 four door sedan body complete with fenders and hood. Now in their late 30s/early 40s, they thought it was time to build a car again. It wasn’t an A coupe like they wanted, but they weren’t willing to spend the money that coupes commanded. Dad helped here and there with it. The sedan motivated him to get a rod of his own. I hung out at Denny’s near the end of the sedan build, mostly because he had a welder and an oxy/acetylene set-up and I had body work to do on my wrecked ‘72 Mustang. And where else could a 19 year old get Milwaukee’s Best free of charge? I still remember the headaches, brazing a quarter panel out in the hot Georgia sun after having more than a few. Denny was always tight, preferring to fabricate anything you didn’t absolutely have to buy. That was certainly evident with the sedan build as it went along. He grafted in a Mustang II front end on home built 2X4 steel tubing rails. Some other junkyard car donated its 351C and FMX as the build continued. Bruce was the money guy, buying whatever parts were needed and paying for the engine build. The sedan wasn’t a fast car, but it was a good cruiser. More importantly, it helped them re-live their glory days. I wish I could find a picture. Denny was quite the fabricator. After building the sedan, he had several donor cars sitting in the back yard. And he had some yard work he had put off for a long time. So Denny decided to build a small tractor using a 2.3L four-cylinder Pinto engine. He somehow cobbled up a deck lift with a Torino steering box paired with the Pinto’s power steering reservoir. He managed to build the frame out of an old engine hoist and stand. What denny lacked in funds, he made up for with hot rodder's ingenuity. Sometimes Bruce and Denny's ingenuity didn’t have a good ending. Back in their childhood, the space program was taking off (pun intended). Every boy around wanted to build model rockets. Bruce and Denny quickly tired of the store-bought stuff and decided to build their own. Even solid fuel home-builts lost their appeal when you could still see them as they reached max altitude. No, they needed to build a rocket that could take out Sputnik. So they built this monstrous, 4 foot long liquid-fueled rocket. It was such an engineering masterpiece that they didn’t want to lose it when it hit the stratosphere, so they staked it to the ground with a long chain. I guess they just though it would stay vertical until the fuel was expended, probably something they saw on some cartoon of the day. When they finally lit it off, the rocket stretched the chain for a fraction of a second before nosing over and spinning along the ground around the stake. They set the entire field on fire and every fire truck within driving distance responded. How they avoided injury is a mystery to this day. But I digress… Next up: Dad finds his coupe.
[ Around the time Bruce and Denny were building their sedan, dad located a ’31 A coupe body in a field near Kathleen, GA. It was rough as a cob and had trees growing up through it. Dad borrowed the man’s chain saw, paid him $500 and took it home in 1985. Here's the body as he received it. It was in such bad shape that he chiseled it apart to the point where you could have slid the pieces behind your workbench. Dad made a make-shift sand blast both and got to work. I think I still have sand in my ears. His uncle Bruce, the old hot rodder, got in on the action, dropping by on Saturdays to help. Dad didn’t have a wire welder at the time, so he went old school and brazed the sheet metal back together. These were glorious days for this young gearhead.
Dad took after his uncle Denny. He wouldn’t spend money on a part when he could make it instead. So with that approach, he found a ’73 Maverick parts car that donated its engine and drivetrain. An old Datsun pick-up gave up it’s torsion bars. Dad would build the rest from there, at least until he had to spend money on it. He fabricated a frame, IFS control arms and modified spindles. He used the Maverick leaves and 8” rear to cobble up the rear suspension. Now my Dad is a gifted craftsman. Cars were just one of his hobbies. He is also an accomplished knife maker, blacksmith, and even built his own flintlock muzzle loader starting with nothing but a barrel blank. It is a work of art. He also scrimshaws, builds dulcimers and repairs antique clocks. He makes beautiful, working things starting from nothing. But an engineer he is not. In my senior year of engineering school, I was on a team building a solar powered race car. I signed up to design the front suspension, so I learned a little about caster, camber, instant centers, scrub radius, bump steer and the like. I told Dad that while he did an outstanding job on the coupe suspension fabrication, that his geometry was way off. It looked good to him, so he left it unchanged. In the spirit of hot rodding, he used what he had. After we would get the coupe on the road sometime later, I would be proven right. He should have named the thing “Ditch Hunter”.
Well this project took a turn for the better. I always wanted to run a four speed but I didn't have a single part. All the piece parts are pricey. So I ran an auto, and being stuck with an auto, decided to run a big block in this latest incarnation. I just scored a 302 4-speed Toploader from a '68 Mustang. It came with all the fixin's: pedals, bell, clutch fork and all the rods. It cam with an original Hurst shifter. Looks like it's time to hunt for a small block. I'm thinking high-winding 289 or a stout Cleveland.
Dad went about as far as he could go with the coupe without spending money. I moved out in ’89 to go to engineering school. The coupe sat untouched until 1995 when Dad decided to give it to me as a late graduation present. On a joyful day that ranks only behind marrying my wife and the birth of my sons, I dragged it home. Obligatory thumbs up pic. I picked up where Dad left off. With nothing more than dad’s wire welder (he finally got one!), a sawzall, grinder, pnuematic dril and cut-off wheel, I finished the chassis. I had a kid myself by this point, so I had to save for months or wait on tax returns to make bigger purchases. I decided to build a warm 351 Cleveland for it. I rebuilt the Maverick’s C4 and it’s 8” rear received a set of 3.55:1. I plodded along with the build, scraping up all the time and money a young man can afford. Around early spring ’99, I was getting close to having it on the road. Up until this point, Dad and I never worked on the coupe together. Now anyone that lives around Macon, GA knows that Fincher’s Barbeque has been a drive-in hot rod hangout since the 40s. I think they still have cruise-ins to this day. At any rate, they were having a pretty big event a couple weeks away. I set the cruise-in as my target date and called Dad. We planned a thrash session to get the coupe on the road. Dad took off work and came over to my house. For three days, we thrashed all day running brake lines, finishing the wiring, mounting the grille and such. We smelled of sweat, transmission fluid and whatever else that funk is that it’s every shop. It was going great right up until the end. We cranked her up, set the timing and all systems were go. No leaks to be found. Unbeknownst to me, I mis-positioned the shifter bellcrank on the valve body actuating rod. There are two positions; I picked the wrong one. We were ready to take her for a spin when I put her into gear, felt resistance and heard a loud pop. The parking gear took a dirt nap. Sadly, we didn’t make the rod run at Fincher’s the next day but it didn’t really matter. I had just spent the best three days ever with my Dad. Better than all the camping and boating trips combined. No cruise-in could ever match that.
I went through the transmission in the next few weeks and got her on the road. It handled poorly and would scare you to death in the curves. You’d hit a bump and have to guess which way it would dart. Every time I drove it was a near-death experience. But, oh, the straightaways! Coming from a ’72 Mustang, the light coupe was a bit quicker on acceleration. I once stomped it on the highway on-ramp and nearly hit 100 before I merged. I drove it on the weekends and occasionally to work for the rest of ’99. In that short time, I had one memorable story that my son Garrett and I will never forget. Garret, about 4 years old at the time, rode with me over to Allen’s house. We were there to sort out the wiring on his BBC Nova build. We left later that day and headed home on the curvy backroads. Never forget this life lesson: loud exhaust and Chinese axle bearings should not be mixed. I had Flowmasters that ended at the rear end, and of course the coupe didn’t have any carpet or sound deadening. That car was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think. So there was no way I could hear that cheap axle bearing as it started to grind. After we rounded one particularly tight curve, I felt a really bad vibration as the left rear squatted down hard. I heard the most awful scraping you could ever imagine. I’d swear in court that I saw a 20’ long rooster tail of sparks chasing me in the rearview. The next thing you know, my left rear axle, complete with wheel and tire, passed me in the far lane. You think it’s embarrassing when a little old lady passes you? That’s got nothing on your axle leaving you behind. I skid-steered the coupe to the shoulder and looked over to check on Garrett, still secure in the four-point harness. He simply looks at me and says “oh great, now we’ll never get home!” After the tow home, I replaced the axle and gave her the old circle track racer trick where you tack weld the bearing collar to the axle. Not much time was spent on the coupe after that. That same year, I would sell my first house and start building my current house. After the30X30 shop was complete, of course. My oldest son Garrett, who got the memorable ride.
The coupe sat there untouched in the shop while I built my house. Even after I was finished, I just didn’t drive it. Frankly, the ill handling made it unenjoyable. It wasn’t a simple fix to straighten it out. It needed a complete suspension redesign. Sometime after 2000, I robbed the coupe’s engine to stick in my daily driver ’65 Fairlane. The coupe set untouched until around 2004 when I decided to scrap the frame and suspension, fab another frame and set it up for a 460. For another year or so, I was pretty active on the coupe and I was present on the HAMB, as well. I built the frame out of 2 X4 tubing, added a 9” rear from a ’69 Mustang, Competition Engineering four-link and coilovers. Influenced by too many street rods from the 90s, I sat up the front suspension with a tubular Mustang II set-up (don’t worry, that’s changing). One does not simply go to O’Reillys for 460 headers in a Model A so I ordered a Hooker header flange kit and a bunch of U-bends and J-bends to build my own. That was a job. Next time, I’ll do it with a TIG instead of a MIG. Dad did make it back over to help around this time. He had previously chopped it 2 ½. I wanted a 4” chop so he came over to help me do the deed. The power went out while he was there, so we hooked up a Sawzall and worklight to the generator to make the cuts. Fun times. Career and family involvements got busy and I got a bit burned out on cars so I took a break after that. The coupe gathered dust in my shop for 12 years or so. Until a few weeks ago.
My youngest Luke, now 18, has always been a truck kinda guy. I offered to build an old Mustang with him for his first car but he wanted something that could sling mud and haul deer. I bought him a ’94 F150, simple enough for him to learn some wrenching skills. I noticed he had been watching a good bit of street racing on TV lately. All of a sudden, he mentioned he wanted to get into cars. Maybe the Run What Ya Brung Drags in Reynolds, GA back in 2005 finally stuck. Some kind fella let him sit in his FED. I think he actually only said “Dad, I’d like to build a fast old car” but what I heard was “let’s get back on the hot rod, do a ridiculous amount of work so you can teach me how to fab, weld, wire, build engines and make everything we can’t buy”. He’s never been overly interested in my Fairlane, so I decided to sell it to make room for and finance the coupe build. The Fairlane is sold and I’ve gotten him involved already. First thing we did was some ride height mock-up and then we stripped off the IFS. Now I realize he might not have gearhead disease as bad as I would like to imagine, but his interest thus far is enough. That mere suggestion was all it took to reignite the hot rodding flame in me. That and Dad’s health. I want to get my kids on this build while I still have them at home. I want Dad to be there when I fire it up and get it on the road again, with him behind the wheel. This time, we’ll make it to Fincher’s come hell or high water. Now, on with the build…
First things first: getting rid of the IFS. I got a complete front end out from under HAMBer johnold1938's '32 roadster. It's an early Pete and Jake's tube axle and four-bar set-up from the early to mid 70s. That's traditional, right? It uses 1967 Volvo 122 discs, which is kinda weird but all they had back in the day. I mocked up the front end to evaluate ride height. It's sitting about 2" higher than I originally planned. I might have to consider dropped spindles, spring behind axle or whatever. the rails were straight (no inboard taper) with the IFS). I was going to pie cut and angle the rails in but there was still a lot of work to grind off all the old brackets. I decided to lop the whole front end off the frame off and fab new forward rails. I fabbed new rails with 2X4 X 11 ga tubing. Using repo Model A frame horns, I taper cut the rails with a cutoff wheel. I don't have a fancy chassis jig but I do have a 4' X 4' wending table that's 5/8" thick. It's fairly flat if you ignore the 1/8" dip in the middle. It makes a good chassis jig if you don't mid working in sections. In this case, I already had the whole back half of the frame. I started off by laying out the frame centerline and key dimensions taken from my CAD drawings. A sharpie marker works quite well. After that, I clamped 2 X 2 tubing to mark the centerline and then installed the rear frame on the table. I welded angle iron to the table, which served as front rail locators. Since my table isn't completely flat, I spanned the new front rail and old center rail with another piece of 2 X 4 tubing. This straightened the rails suitably for welding. I added the front crossmember at the 103" WB location.
Go with smaller front tires, that will help lower it. Maybe a leaf or to taken out of the spring? Reverse eye on front spring already or not? Wait til you get all the weight on it and see how ya like it. Looks pretty good already, yeah not much rake but keep going. You will get there. Tall skinny rear tires will help too. Dave
Spring is reverse eye already. That mock-up pic shows the final rake. I'll probably take a leaf out for starters. Like you suggest, I'll assess after I have all the weight on it.
Capped the tapered front rails. Residual stresses in the tubing roll form-and-weld manufacturing process cause flanges to curl up when you cut them off. So you have to tack, clamp, tack to make them flat.
The old Pete and Jakes front end is installed. It still sits a little higher than I want, even with a couple leaves removed. It's riding on Towel City front runners. I fabbed motor mounts form 7 ga sheet. Some of my favorite side tasks are drill jigs like this one for the motor mount bolts. The 351C and toploader were dropped in just as soon as I tacked the motor mounts in place.
The Dodge caravan seat is just about as far back as it can go. I might be able to notch the frame and get a couple more inches before it hits the four link brackets. Either that or I need to find one of the Falcon trans tailhousings with forward shifter mount holes. I hate to mod this '68 shifter.
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