Projects 1950's Tube Frame Sports Car

Thanks.

 

Finally had a chance to taper ream the holes in my four bar brackets. Set them up in the mill so I could keep the reamer straight. After I did the first one and got the depth figured out I found an old nut that was the right size to use as a stop against the table on the next three holes. Pretty happy how the tapers turned out but glad that job is done. My old hand reamer cuts pretty well but it's still a lot of cranking.

 

Very nice!

 

I love this build! Great fabrication and great insight into how you navigate all the hurdles a build throws up.

 

I believe the "Multiplex", manufactured in Berwick, Pa in the mid-fifties should be mentioned in this post.

 

Made a very crude welding fixture out of unistrut to hold the tabs parallel to the centerline of the car. It works on either side.

 

Cleaned the rust off the frame tubes where the tabs sit on the driver's side and tacked then on. I'll wait to weld them on solid til after I get the whole front suspension mocked up .
The upper joint will be fairly close to the header tube. I think I'll make some heat shields out of the piece cut out of the tapered driveshaft when I built the headers. I'll also probably lift the engine about 3/4" to also help with the torque tube driveline angle.

 

Love the details. Heat deflectors are of particular importance.
Old high school friend grew up and had a few helpers 'street rod' his recently restored '30 'A' roadster.
I rebuilt the F100 steering box, he returned to my shop a month later, "My steering bos is leaking!"
The left side header was 1/16" away from the steering box, latter was too hot to touch.
Slight moving of the box AND a neat aluminum custom-shaped deflector was just perfect.

 

I should have about an inch clearance between the header and the tie rod end. Figure if I set the heat shield up about 1/4-3/8" from the header it should help a lot. Should work about perfect because the heat shield chunk is from further down the tapered tube so it's a bigger radius. Plus I like the teardrop shape

 

Got the tabs tacked on the passenger side of the frame. Clamped a parallel to each side so I could measure across under the oil pan to see how far apart they are. Looks like my brackets on the front axle need to be about 34" apart.

 

I'd hoped that the four bar would sit further in than the split wishbones for turning radius purposes but it looks like it'll remain about the same. That's fine. The red mark up line in this picture shows about how the links will run. The original wishbones had been heated and bent to run parallel to centerline of the car. The new tabs I put on my frame are very close to where the original wishbone tie rod ends attached. They're centered on the tube and only about an inch forward. The main reason I moved them forward was for header clearance. My frame is about 6 inches wider than a typical early Ford frame at that point so there's only so much I can do about it. Wishbones could have been curved even more kinda Frank Mack style but 4 bar links can't be.

 

You gotta be close to driving this thing now aren't you?

 

Getting closer but it'll be a while yet I'm sure at the rate I'm going. Next will be heating/bending the spring hangers and then welding the brackets onto the front axle.

 

Finally had a chance to start reworking the spring hangers today. Need to give credit to @Paul here. I'd planned on doing this style suspension for a while now but his current build has helped me think thru the process. I tacked the hangers to a big piece of angle so they couldn't twist on the perch bolts while I messed with them.
Once the hangers were tacked to the angle iron I took a break and cleaned my welding bench so I could actually do something....

Then I bent the shackle portions square to the axle.

And trial fit the rebushed spindles.

I need to either shrink or bore/sleeve the axle eyes. They're a little loose on the kingpins.
I am making a new tie rod out of DOM but threw the old one on for mockup.
There are a lot of parts trying to share the same space. My steering arms were dropped by the original builders. I'll probably raise them back up a little once I get further along here. I plan to run a fairly flat spring so I doubt the shackles will ever get vertical but it helps to visualize interference.
The car previously ran a spring over setup using A perch bolts. To give myself a reference how far to tip the spring hangers in I installed the old bolts and bent the hangers to the same spacing. This pic makes it look like the shackle hole is egg shaped but it's the outside of the forging that's weird, not the bore.

Then I rechecked that they were square to the axle.
This next picture gives a rough idea how my four bar brackets will be positioned.
Still a ways to go but I'm happy how it's coming together. Somehow my bench is a mess again...

 

Nice execution !

 

Well thought out.

 

New tie rod finished.

 

Trimmed the shock link eyes off the top of the perch bolts. They'll get welded back on somewhere to hook the sway bar to.
Most likely they'll go somewhere like this.

Used a spanner wrench as a template for how I wanted to trim the front of the forgings.
Also welded some chunks of steel in that when they're finished will prevent the spring hangers from twisting on the perch bolts.

Ground the forgings to the line scribed around the spanner wrench.

Then filled the leftover void with 7018 stick.

The steel blocks will get milled and ground flush with the sides of the hangers but I ran out of time today.
Tried them on the axle.
Next I'll grind the blocks flush with the sides of the hangers and start working on the 4 bar brackets.

 

Same style as Ed Iskiderian's roadster!

 

Today I got the brackets welded on my axle for the 4 bar. Had to get over the fact that I was welding on a vintage tube but I'm pretty pleased how it turned out.
Used two pieces of threaded rod to hold the brackets the right distance apart while I fitted them to the axle.



Once I had the pieces fitted to the tube profile I beveled the joint where the small piece would get welded into the main bracket.
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Clamped them into place and tacked them with the wire feed.



Burned them in with the stick.
In the next pic you can see the 6 deg caster I built into the brackets.

I'm not the greatest welder so when I welded the brackets on I ran my starts and stops out onto the plate to not risk having any undercut on the axle tube.

 

I wanted to do the spring hangers like Norm did on the Kookie T. I welded the blocks in too keep them from rotating and then contoured them in with the die grinder.

Then blasted and primed everything.



I like to blast my stick welds so the paint sticks.
And reassembled.

Next step is sleeving the axle eyes. I'll also get a new main leaf made for the original front spring this week. The original main leaf was too long.

 

Really nice!

 

That is a work of art Buddy!

 

Picked up a nos Posies 1009L spring which is their low arch 33.5" spring that is special for a spring-over 37-41 axle. I made my spring hangers spacing the same as what it was with the original A
perch bolts. I was planning on running an original A spring with a custom main leaf but I got this whole spring for about half what the local spring shop quoted me for a main. I'll start with the posies spring but I could always use the posies main leaf with my flattened A stack.

Knocked the cheesy plastic bushings out of the spring eye and will be putting g oilite bronze ones in. It's just roughly mocked up with my new shackles in this picture.
It's a tight fit between my shock eye and the spring hangers but this is a worse case scenario that would only happen with the car on a hoist or if you were airborn. Any load on the spring will pull the shocks in away from the hangers.

It's hard to tell from this picture but there should be plenty of room to run the shock underneath the upper four bar link if I lean them on like this. I made the shackle plates to use spring pivot bolts for a flatfender Willys Jeep. The shock eye will have two flanged sleeves installed so I can tighten a 3/8" bolt down thru it and the shock will still move.

Still need to sleeve the axle eyes.

 

Looks Great!

 

Didn't get much time to work on the car this weekend. Had a couple kids under the weather with colds. Got the new bushings in my spring.
I had some flanged oilite bushings that were almost right but needed to be shortened about 0.1". To hang onto them I made a makeshift collet out of another brass bushing that I sawed a split in. That let me chuck them in the lathe.

The flanged bushings made the 1.75" spring 2" wide just like the spring hangers. That way I don't have to trim the hangers, they just won't have flanged bushings. I ran a reamer thru the hangers since they'd been rusted, heated, and twisted.
Made a mandrel to turn down some other oilite bushings I had that will be pressed into the hangers.

 

Excellent craftsmanship !

 

Got the spring eye bushings reamed
Also finished the bushings for the hangers, pressed them in and reamed them. Crummy pic but you get tbe idea.

 

Over the last week or so I've debated how I want to fix the loose axle eye holes. I know many guys heat and forge the axle eye back down around an undersized pin and ream back to .812 diameter. I decided against this on my tube axle since the ends have the window hole in them. I worry about it softening the metal making the hole more apt to go oversize again. This leaves two options, oversize the pin or sleeve the hole. Again, since the tube axles don't have a ton of material around the hole I decided that the oversize pin option was the best. The holes are currently worn out to about .815 and .825 diameters. I finally decided to modify a set of '53-'56 F100 king pins to fit my axle. These truck kingpins are available both nos and repop and measure around 0.857". I shortened the F100 bushings and remodeled the kingpin. I had to face material from both top and bottom so that the overall length matched the early Ford ones while keeping the locking notch in the same location.

I removed the top washer when I faced the top end off. I made new steel washers with a 5/16 hole, turned the heads of some 5/16 shcs to 0.400 like the rivet was on the Ford pin.

Then drilled/tapped a hole in the top end of the pin. The bolts were tightened in with red Loctite and then the heads faced down to the same height as the Ford one.