I agree with the Cut it Up line of thinking. I have always said "If you want to build a 10 start with the closest thing to it and you'll still have a long way to go". At my age I don't have time to salvage Scrap Iron even though I can do it. The end result is the only thing people really care about when your done. They really don't even want to hear about how you got there. The Wizzard
Nice work on the brake pedal mods and the booster/master mounting. Thanks for sharing the work to get the car fixed. Very inspiring post with the detailed pics and explanations.
Well, I am going for the chop with NOS doors will be using NOS fenders as well but wont do much with them. the `50 I did back in the early `80 had rounded hood corners frenched headlights `53 Desoto Grille I don`t think I am doing that to this `49. Would even use door handles if I could find them for a `49.The 50 I did back then it had a 4 inch chop my next will only do a 3inc in front 3.5 in rear. I did have trouble seeing out of . The owner near St. Louis now added spotlights which would make it worse to see out. I will try to upload photo of it. Los like it worked this photo taken at 2017 Grand National Roadster show in Pamona. Amazingly he drove this out there and back in January 2017 that took some doing. I had it fairly clean without pipes and fender skirt chrome. Well I am messing up your thread will stop blabbing.
So I've just been doing alot of different things , Made my transmission mount , used a mock up flathead and got it all bolted together so I could set everything, and test that.. you know everything actually works , and thankfully yes I can actually use the 3 on the tree and it does in fact go through all the gears like it should ( I'll take the small victories where I can find them) . I still have no idea what the throttle linkage is supposed to be like because apparently I'm missing 1 part of it but ill just deal with that at a later time. And I've also been working on starting the dash restoration as-well. The interior i plan on running basically 100% stock in appearance as far as chrome and stainless and the over "feel" obviously the materials with be a little nicer but I love the look of the stock dash. The first thing dash-wise I wanted to try fixing was the clock... I tried and failed in my Porsche because it was an actual gear inside that broke so basically just wanted to see if this was workable or not before considering looking for another , or getting it fixed. After opening it up and cleaning everything i noticed that when you put voltage to the unit ... nothing happened , the winding action still worked and would make the clock "tick" but i already knew that one of the springs was too weak and it wouldn't run because of stretched spring... the second issue was the electromagnet in the clock wasn't doing anything thus it wouldnt keep the clock wound... well that was a shockingly easy fix... just re-solder the connect and it worked just fine.. ordered a new spring from mcmaster-carr and taadaa one working clock that besides the outside bezel needing to be re-chromed is ready to go in the car.
So next up was the Speedometer , very simple rebuild basically just clean/paint and grease a weird a squeak in the speedometer mechanism. After that was doing all the other gauges , now these I have been acquiring NOS gauges as well as finding old gauge clusters so I could take the glass out , because with mine unfortunately the writing on the glass was deteriorated far to much to be usable. I simple waited and bought the gauges that had nice glass so I could use for mine and now i have nice looking gauges (bar the re-chrome job that will happen later) I test all the gauges before putting everything together that way when i start doing my preliminary wiring i can make sure everything works before final assembly. Tip: when cleaning the old glass normally there is nothing wrong with it no matter how dirty and crusty it is simply use warm water and a brand new out of the pack razor blade , place it at probably a 5-10 degree angle off the glass and making sure the glass is always wet simple apply alittle pressure and scrap everything off.
So few more things done... one that was truly horrible ...de-hog ringing all my seats in preparation to get them sandblasted as-well as a few pieces like the dash and window garnishing that's just to big to properly sandblast in our sandblaster. After what felt like 1000 hog rings everything is now ready and hands finally don't hurt after a week. Also sneak peak of what I've actually already got 95% done , flush mount push buttons from @CoolHand
So i'm sure this could have been done many different ways but this was how I choose to do it. So to start I wanted these to be more of a flush fit than protruding from the door. With the top of the door where i planned to put these having a decent radius I knew i'd need a flat surface , then a curved surface that fit the door. Every now and then we have to cut out holes in some 1/4" steel plate and that's where these 2 "washers" came from because we always save them ,because you never know when they could be handy. Started by putting them in the lath and turning the center down ~.075 , then grinding the sides so they have the right curve to match the door. Some welding and grinding later they are in and done... now the mechanism to actually open the door.. I first tried the simplest way and just adding onto the door mechanism to see if it would open... no not even close by increasing the length of the arm, I was instead of pushing the latch trying to twist it instead. So I need to find something that would make the contact point closer to what it should be with an original handle. So I made a type of offset cantilever that when you push the button it would also push the latch in the "sweet spot" and open the door. Now this did work but it was just a little to stiff so I took the spring out of the door buttons because between that spring and the stock spring in the door mechanism it just had too much spring to be reasonable. After that they work just as they should and I think they look damn good.
So not much in the way of progress...that makes for good photos , I got the brake system plumbed and its done. Cleaned up all the seat frames(sandblasted/primed) getting everything ready for upholstery same with all the rest of the interior parts... basically lots of cleaning and priming before the next expensive steps like paint/upholstery/chroming/stainless straightening/polishing. I've got all the materials for the SS exhaust as well as my fuel system but have been busy with both customer cars (mostly because the coming steps are some of the most expensive) , and finishing up my commercial pilots license. Bought a mercury accessory wheel recently so was kinda jazzed about that , still needs to be restored but i have it now so at-least that' s something. Hopefully after this customer car is done then i can start back up on the mercury because currently the lift is occupied and i need it to do the exhaust/fuel system easily.Also still trying to figure out what colors to paint everything which is a task.
That Merc accessory steering wheel was a good score. Did you get a horn ring and a good horn button with it?
So it had a good horn button (brown one) , and i have a nos one (red) that's perfect , the horn ring was unfortunately broken and missing the ring part but has everything up till where the ring would be so I've either got to search for a ring (doubtful ill find one) or just use the bit I've got as well as the wheel itself as a templete and make one myself ...which is what will actually happen probably.
Luckily I had found a great complete horn ring at the swap meet some years past and I had two cast in brass. They have become so hard to find I cast two rings and two sets of plates that are mounted to the wheel spokes and they came out great. I have been told a year or so ago that the guy that recast steering wheels in Escondido CA. also has horn rings as well as the two pieces that connect to the spokes. Can't for the life of me remember his name right know. I would Google it and give him a call.
PS. In case you didn't know, C & G Ford in So Cal has re-popped horn button for the Mercury acessesory wheels.
Amazing work! Looks fantastic! Thanks for sharing the details. I'm subscribed. Btw, I didn't know that many Clecos existed !
Its been awhile since any updates , for the most part the last year not much happened between living/working 2hrs away from the car and doing bondo work (which i hate) I didn't get much work done. Well with the Corona virus the flight school I was flying for went under so now I have a lot of time , thankfully I'd been saving up for chrome/upholstery/paint so I'll instead be planning to do a lot more of the interior work than I originally planned. So to start some of the projects I've been working on : Interior Stainless , I had all the stainless for this car but unfortunately passenger side was very damaged but the driver was decent only a couple small dents. I started by fixing the small dents in the "good" side by drilling a hole in the back of the stainless and slowly tapping them out/ then sanding polishing repeat till happy. Then after I had the Driver side good I needed to use that as a template for my bad side. I had a set of 4 door stainless so I used some of that to actually fix the 2 door pieces. And thankfully after everything was over its had to see where it was welded together. The bottom was easier than the top since its simply a straight piece of stainless.
So I plan on using the original fresh air vents ; but the original plastic pull tabs had some cracks and the small tabs that keep it in place were broken off. So started by cutting some .5" aluminum plate into a rough shape , then drilling and tapping them 8-32 and finally doing some finish work with the cut-off wheel to make a set of small cuts then using a file to finish them.
So another little thing, The back glass has the vertical pieces of stainless held in place with this metal backing plate and the trim simple snaps into it.. well sadly like everything it rusted so I needed to fix it. Started by getting a couple hole punches the exact same diameter as the inside of the original little outside arches. Then made another piece that was the exact same as the "valley" . I clamped the middle to the table and then manually bent some metal up, then clamped my "fixture" together [which was just some bar-stock with the hole punches welded on] and then clamped everything together and started manually bending again as well as tightening everything up with a small chisel. After trimming the excess metal off and welding it onto the original piece the trim still snaps together as intended.
I admire your fab skills and understand how important being exact on parts such as these is. A snap lock don't give you any margin for error. When I seen the end shot of the part you made the thought of Henry being very cost effective and me being a Ford truck guy I thought maybe he had used the metal bed strips he had been making for years. Looks to be an exact profile but don't know exact width. Could it be?
@Mbartils ......so glad to see your updates! Your creative skills and workmanship are excellent and inspirational. Looking forward to future posts. Best Wishes, Ray
So whats the second worst thing to do besides paintwork in my opinion...wiring... but also one of the most important things. Because one of my pet peeves is seeing the wiring so i always try to hide everything whenever I have to wire a car so when its done you cant see anything except the bare minimum . So that's what I've been/am currently doing. So to start I always planned on at-least having the original radio in the car... now I never held any hope of getting it working (basically it would be a face plate that lite up and knobs turned but thats about it). So started by gutting this... miracle of electro-mechanical engineering and basically getting it so that its just the radio case and the bare minimum of mechanism so that knobs still workand push buttons still give the appearance of being operations. Now I needed to mount the msd box for the engine somewhere and funny enough its basically the perfect size to fit in the radio...so that's exactly where it went.. So my radio runs the engine in this car.... I have another face that's currently getting re-chromed with all the knobs and push buttons as well as another plastic insert that's not cracked.
So the wiring is still continuing , it doesn't make for great photos thou. I made a battery box for the rear trunk and included a master battery switch in the mounting so its accessible from underneath the car. Also one thing I did which I like was put a deutsch bulkhead fitting hidden in the passenger side for the wiring of the engine/front end
Some of my chrome came back so now I can start finishing some dash wiring and put the taillight together for good.
The Jalopy Journal
