As requested, here is a look at some of the reinforcements that have been welded in. These booger welds certainly look old school. The firewall has been torched to clear a different steering column and the package tray has also had a chunk cut out of it but I'm not sure what for. To me it seems to have all the hallmarks of a rush job race car body, but it's straight and square, so I'll take it. The history is a sweet bonus. Thanks everyone for lots of pointers on multiple subjects. There's a lot to digest and I'm filtering through it all right now. To say I'm psyched about this thing is an understatement. I'm not going to start jacking with the body until I get some books in my hands, and some expert eyes on the car, but I think I know how I'm going to attack the body mount problem. In the meantime I am very interested in getting the motor to run. I was able to pull it up into the garage today - it's supposed to rain for the next week. It's cramped in there but that's OK, at least it'll be dry. As for the title questions, no, the number on the title doesn't match anything on the car. But that can be fixed. I'm told it came with the body, but in Texas, nobody really cares. The DMV told me just to put the title's number on the car somewhere, so that's what I'll do. I'm not planning to box the frame, even for the V8 - I'm not sure I could ever afford to hop up that 8BA enough to twist the stock frame. Boxing the frame is cool and traditional but ultimately pointless and puts the frame at risk of warping or cracking. Plus, it creates corners all along the length of the frame rails that will trap water and dust. I know I will spend more over time if I start with the banger and later swap the flathead in, but I want to drive this thing yesterday and since I have never driven a Model A this will help me make performance decisions when building the V8 chassis later. I have no idea how long it will take me to build up the V8 chassis - I'm guessing a long time - so I'll focus on this for a bit.
Trev, I will be over on Saturday. I will bring these "How to Restore Your Model A" books and that should be a huge help on how things looked originally, and then that will give you an idea of what mods were done and possibly why. The Wise County Antique Auto Club swap meet, better known as 'Decatur Swap Meet' is next month, Feb 26-28. I know you blew your wad on getting the car, but I also know you have some cool shit that you can turn to pick up a few bucks. I plan on going on the 26th, so maybe we can meet up and check it out. http://www.wcaac.com/dsm.htm
Trev, here is another pre-war swap meet. Its a bit of a hike, but I scored a nice steering wheel for my project (even though it isnt a pre-war car) there last fall. I will probably be going to this one as well. http://www.pre-war.com/Info.htm
My copy of How to Build a Traditional Hot Rod arrived today. Along with a copy of Atlas Shrugged I didn’t order... you tell me. Robin, count me in for Decatur. I’m not sure I can make Oklahoma!
Am I understanding correctly that I can just pull the oil filler tube right off (in theory)? There is a dirt dauber nest in there. I am thinking I want to drop the pan and pull the tube to give both a good clean before we start trying to turn the engine over.
After owning a banger and now driving a AV8 tudor, the difference is there for sure. Few key things I can tell you on the journey. A solid running banger with intake, High compression head, and lightened flywheel will damn near amaze you compared to a stock AV8, the weight differences and the way a good hopped up banger run can for sure be cool hotrod. Biggest difference in driving is the torque difference and how it comes in, but the simplicity of the banger is down right bad ass. I think if you get the banger running and can drive it you may be hooked on that lil motor for sure also. The AV8 is fun and bad ass in its own right also. A stock AV8 can cruise the model a comfy at 65, where the banger in stock form is out of ass. You can make a hopped up banger cruise 80 with OD and some goodies. Where the AV8 and a gear swap you can cruise 80 with not much else. Love the coupe man, I think your on the way to some cool things in your future. Im down here northside of Houston if you ever need something let me know. I got some model A honey holes here around town. My banger coupe unrestored that I sold almost 2 years ago. And the latest tudor, from this to this in 2 months. Hope this fuels your fire brother.
Stubbs, I’ll have to bother you next time I’m down Houston way. That Tudor transformation is sweet. I think it’s a very real possibility that I end up leaving the coupe banger powered and find a different body for the V8 chassis once it’s ready. My heart was pretty set on a truck so maybe one will come along down the road?
I soaked the cylinders a few days ago and as of today, it turns over by hand. Not yet sure if the starter is any good or if it will fire if so. I can't see any valves moving.
Take the front cover off and take a look at the cam gear. It could have disintegrated as they were made out of some kind of fibre. Did you take the head off to observe the valves or are you looking down the spark plug opening. Also take the side cover off and look at their condition. It's just gaskets that you are going to need anyway.
I'm just peering down through the spark plug openings for the moment. A fiber cam gear? What's the rationale behind that? That seems like it would have a very short life.
To get more familiar with the motor. Fiber is 1. less sensitive to tolerances 2. quieter 3. cheaper 4. able to last as long as the other internal components (sort of, kind of like "lubed for life" parts aren't)
Thanks. Staring at diagrams is only so helpful. Watching someone take it apart answered a lot of questions. edit: OK, I guess they were just sticking. A few more revolutions and now they are all moving.
I would not start taking things apart. Focus on getting it running. You need spark and gas. Clean the points and see so the carburetor works. Want something to take apart, work on the carburetor. Simple design. Clean out all passages. Be careful and not damage the gaskets and reuse them. You can go back later and put a carb kit in if you chose to use the motor. A banger will run on one cylinder. Get it started and if a valve or two are sticky, it could loosen up. Ford used fiber gears for many years. The odds are your's are fine for now.
It turns over now and has compression (blew a few gallons of water out of the muffler when I turned it over with plugs in it). I am done messing with it for tonight, Robin is coming by tomorrow and we'll see what we can do with it. I spent a while playing with the transmission and also checked out the brakes. I still need brake rods, but the brake mechanisms are functional on each corner. My blurry dog is ready to ride.
Robin came by and we got to work. Yesterday I had already busted the engine loose so we were able to more or less get right into the meat of it. It wasn't long before we had the old girl spinning over. Can you say "grease"? Water just kept coming. It was insane. I ended up putting a bucket back there to catch it and there's currently like an inch and a half of water in that bucket. We let it pump out as much as it could. It came with four plugs installed and no two of them are the same, but 3 of them sparked so we decided to go for it. This one is one of the better on the lot! So here's the setup we wound up with. Three cylinders, baling wire for spark plugs, the 6 volt coil that came off my flathead, the original distributor wire, a host of sketchy wire splices, and a can of starting fluid. Will it run? Yes. Yes it will.
When we went to bolt the steering column to the gas tank, I noticed something. This is a very good gas tank, but someone has cut the steering wheel support off. I got another tank with the car, which is probably not any good and maybe not worth trying to save, but it has the bracket. Can I cut it off and weld it onto the stub on the good tank? I'm not sure if it will weld good.
Congrats....use the the late 31 steering column bracket. It's a great improvement to the gas tank mounted one.
We need to make sure the block isnt cracked somehow that all the water that came out the exhaust didn't come from the radiator....anyone have any input on this train of thought??
What color is the oil?? Does it look like a milk shake?? Doesn't necessarily mean it's cracked. It could be a bad head gasket. Did you guys change the oil before starting it??
The oil didnt have water in it. And it looked decent. And we didnt change it. We wanted to make sure it was solid enough to at least fire before doing too much more to it. It dawned on me on the 95 mile drive home that we should try to understand where all that water in the exhaust system came from. The engine really didnt "run" for much more than 5 to 10 seconds if that long.
The oil looks fine. Changing the oil wasn't on the agenda today but it is something I will be doing soon, obviously before it is allowed to run. Today we just wanted to see what works and what doesn't so I could figure out what parts I was gonna need. The car has been outside, in a field, for a while - at least a few years. Everything seems to fill with water very quickly in that part of Texas. The muffler has been full of water since before I started turning the engine over. It started belching it out the first time I turned it over with compression. I do not think it came out of the engine. If there is a pinhole on top of the muffler or a rotten/missing gasket anywhere on the exhaust system it would pretty quickly fill with rain water as the muffler is downhill of everything.
Did you check for water in the oil? Loosen the oil plug and if there is water in the pan, it will be the first to come out. Won't hurt to check the transmission and rear end also.
How about oil in the water? Here's the bucket full of water that it belched up. Looks like swamp water.
Oh. Nevermind. I bet this thing froze with water in it. So to recap: the oil on the dipstick looked great - good oil level and good color.. I guess the stick does not reach to the bottom of the pan. Obviously changing the oil first is always a good idea, but the engine was either going to be good or bad and nothing we did today would hurt the engine if it was good - it only got cranked a few times and not for very long. Draining the oil today would mean not being able to do anything on the engine today except drain the oil. I knew I was going to be going to the store tomorrow to replace the plugs anyway so since the oil looked OK based on the stick, I decided to put off draining it until after we tried to light it off. There was no water in the radiator when I picked the car up, so it has been sitting in the pan at least that long. There was no water visible in the combustion chamber when turning the engine over, so I still don't fully understand how that volume of water made it into the muffler from the engine. This is disappointing but not really surprising. The engine was pretty much a freebie, it would have been a bigger surprise if there was really nothing at all wrong with it. I guess the next project is gonna be pulling it apart for a post mortem.
The Jalopy Journal
