Excelsior Stahl sports are available in those sizes I believe. They are pricey but a decent looking radial tire.
If anyone is wondering this Coupe has a Fordor or Cabriolet hood, they both had different cowls, and the belt line and hood had a matching bead. Bob
We're not allowed thick spacers. I'll check what's going on next time I see the car. Fronts are 4.50 x 15 I'm pretty sure. Rears are either 32 or 4 wheels.
A banger powered A coupe would have little or no use for a radial tire. Well anything with a traditional type banger. I probably would not go that route but I am not into the whole resto rod scene, hell I wasn't into it when it was stylish. Now if one was going to use one of those modern high revving, 400+ horse modern bangers that would be an entirely different story. But if that happened in my garage I certainly would not tell it here.
LOL! I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I don't know why guys do this. I always want to ask them, When you look at a car do you lay on your belly? I don't so I don't want to see videos like that. Hold the camera at normal eye height like you're a grown up! The other thing they do is hold the camera super close to the car so sometimes you can't even tell what you are looking at. When you look at a car do you stick your head 6 inches away from the car? Back the damn camera up so we can see what the car looks like! Anyway, I do like the stance of this car. Bigs and littles and a dropped ax is a pretty standard way to get this stance. A banger with a stick shift would be a fun setup. A modern turbo engine with 6 speed auto would work well but wouldn't fit in here.
No offense intended but this is totally OT for this forum. We are still trying to make due with the old non computer stuff.
I agree. I only chimed in when bangers were being thrown under bus for lack of power. 215 bop would be the ticket. Weigh less than a banger, lots of stuff for them and were turbo charged at one time. Before all the knowledge known now. And automatic trans have been around since '32. All non electronic...no ecm/ecu stuff. Be great in a neat '29 coupe with a great stance. Sent from my XT1710-02 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Still listening to / for suggestions of front ends and rear ends to get the stance/look for a '29 A coupe. Thoughts on wide five wheels /brakes? Sent from my XT1710-02 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Maybe not. '26/27 T rear crossmember and matching spring gets you a 3"-4" drop just using these parts in an A frame. Reverse main leaf gives you another 1". Take out some leafs, another 1/2". Z the frame gives you 2". Add tube shocks, would ride like stock.
I love old cars with minimum tire to fender clearances. It's just a nice look. But you have to be willing to accept a pretty rough ride if it's the look you want. I do, and I try to keep mine to maybe 1.5"-2" of travel. I use firm suspension, but not stiff, and also install poly bump stops between frame and rear axles to make them ride better, yet avoid contact between tires and fenders. Nothing looks worse to me than huge gaps above tires.
View attachment 4918826 Dropped A axle & reversed eye spring in front; stepped frame, Corvair coils & ladder bars in the back, 15" F-100 wheels, and off the shelf tires. Decent stance, drives and rides nice. No fear of driveways or speed bumps and pretty much all hot rod with no poser accouterments.
There is no up travel on the setup, well, maybe like 1 inch? follow the curve of the tire into the fender, looks like it would rub now
Would you share the details on how you fitted the wires to the 9" and kept them tucked under the fenders so nicely?
Stance on that car is great. Banger and automatic. Has anyone mated one to a modern 4 speed auto, 700r4, AOD etc. Deep first gear and OD, with right gearing to keep the banger in its power band? Would definitely be a labor of love to match it all up.
My old 34 roadster ran a really tight tyre to arch clearance but had a rock hard ride. Looked good but you felt every bump
750/16 and 600/16. Juice brakes, '40 Ford rear, later '40s F1 up front. F1 steering box. F1 K-member, heavily modified. F1 pedal assembly. 4" dropped Model A axle. '39 toploader 3spd. Modified '39 rear axle to position the spring pack over the axle like stock Model A. Shortened drive shaft and torque tube. Unsplit wishbones, highly modified. Reverse eye mains front and rear, and removed 3-4 springs from each pack (trial and error). MGA shocks, custom brackets, shortened dogbones, modified arms. 8BA flathead. All without taking the fenders off. Rides just fine (turning radius is tight, but no real issues other than some tire rub in tight turns). It's actually comfortable to drive. Wide 5s seem pretty hot rod to me.
I ran across this. Interesting read and pics. A walk through on a how to do. https://www.hotrod.com/articles/model-a-altitude-adjustment-2/ Sent from my XT1710-02 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
If you are wanting a modern rear and can get away from the streetrodder 8"&9" BS a Jeep cj7 AMC 20 or even an early dana 35 has the right wheel pattern for ford wires, lots of ratios available, limited slips are also out there and the axles can be had damn near free. (They break with big off road tires but you won't hurt one with skinny bias tires)
The 9" rear end came from a 1957 Ranchero. The Ford 9" from 1957-59 are significantly narrower than most others. The adapter/spacers for the rear wires came from Rally America - solid steel not aluminum as many are. The rear wires (originally '35 Ford 16") were modified to 15" and also widened some to the inside.
Come on and I'll take you for a ride so you can witness yourself, na' you'd probably cry. Oil pressure and temperature gauges are overrated That photo was up a 4% grade at 7000' elevation. 2.22:1 rear gear It has oil pressure and it only blows water out the radiator when it looses a head gasket. 77 HP to the rear wheels and the car weighs less than 1700 lbs. It's a OHV conversion on a B block @Hamtown Al will attest that we cruised to Cali 75-80mph all day long. He kept looking in the rearview mirror and the car was still there Ask @TrailerTrashToo who followed me to the next town east, into a 50 mph headwind in a full fendered, flathead, banger A. He commented about the speed we went....oh, its instrumented like Henry built it, no temperature or oil pressure gauge. Don't underrate a banger Not quite the look but one for me...though it will probably get a '35 front end which should drop it another inch and a half....and I can keep the mechanical brakes...yes mechanical brakes can be made to work well. It's 7.50 x 16 rubber on 5.5" wide wheels the rear and 6.00 x 16 rubber on 4" wide wheels. Oh, it has a banger and @Hamtown Al would keep seeing this in his rearview too...it's a lot heavier and if you haven't caught on....I like messing with the Flathead V8 girls, especially when they say..."you go ahead and lead so we don't loose you" and they disappear in my rearview mirror....oh, the blue '29 Roadster has one of those
CONFIRMED! That is one aggressive banger, got torque right out of the green light. p.s. Thanks for lunch, next trip it is my turn to buy. Russ
As far as suggestions for the front set-up, it's all covered in this thread. The same stance can be achieved with different combinations of parts. The top spring and axle had the "same" drop with a deep drop I-beam and a standard main leaf as the set-up I run, a dropped 32 with a reversed-eye main. Regarding the rear, width is important if you're going with a transverse spring and also fenders. A 1935/36+ banjo rear is easy to convert to transverse leaf because of the distance between backing plates along with bolting spring mounts onto backing plate mounting bolt locations. There's a lot of info on that around here. Fact is, as long as the numbers work out, it doesn't matter what type of axle. Obviously, the look is important on a vehicle like the coupe you posted, so sticking with what worked in the era would look best. My car is being built to a completely different era but the considerations are the same. I narrowed a Pontiac rear axle for my coupe and there were a few things I needed to consider. Not all backing plates are "flat", meaning, like the early Ford banjos, you cannot fab up a spring perch that bolts on and sits close to the backing plate. So, that meant I needed to weld on perches. To which I had to plan on leaving space to work with. My goal was to run less than 59" total width. It took some mental gymnastics to get it all figured but really it's not that hard. There's so much information on what already works. In this pic, below, you can kind-of see how I had to plan for clearance of the brake lines and cylinders. Also, if I ran a stock Model A spring, I wouldn't have been able to fit this spring. The perch width distance would have been too wide. Luckily Posies makes a narrower spring. Wide-5s are neat. You'll be spending a bit more for brakes and wheels in the beginning if you don't find a complete set-up. Finding a good set could take a little while longer since they're not as common as 40+ Ford juice brakes.
4" dropped axle, reversed eyes front & rear removed half the leaves, the rest is tire rake. Yes the ride is shit but I wouldn't have it any other way
I following along here too. I’d like to get mine down another inch or two in the rear but as it is it’s only 1” away from the snubber. I put 8.20 x 15 bias plies on it to fill the fenders. Man, Model As have big fenders to fill. I’m still playing with wheel and tire combos trying to find just the right look. Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app