Projects Coupe to truck to tub build thread

Ok fellas (gals), I've finally decided to start this build thread. I'm a husband, dad and dairy farmer and this is supposed to be fun and not a job so the updates will be sporadic. It's going to look like I'm flying through this project but I started working on this 3 years ago. It got shelved when I took on painting a '48 ford panel to fund a trip to California that got shelved thanks to covid but I'm finally back on it. This started life as a 1927 Chrysler business coupe that my dad bought in 1955. My dad drove it for a few years until he decided it would be more useful on the farm as a truck. So he wacked the body off with a good sharp axe (his words) and made a cab out of water pipe and plywood and a wood deck. I can remember it parked in a boarded up chicken coop when I was a kid. I would squeeze through the chicken run and spend my time after school sitting behind the wheel "racing" the old truck. When the coop started to fall down dad was going to scrap what was left of his truck but I couldn't have that and moved it to the back corner of our equipment shed where it sat buried until the spring of 2019 when I decided to see if I could make something out of this. Let the punishment begin. Lol

I had always thought of starting this earlier and trying to turn it into a woodie but the realization that my rough carpentry skills are poor and finish carpentry skills are much worse stopped me from starting. It was in 2014, when I took my family to California to the house of mouse, a fellow (I had just met the year before at Deuce Days and now a really good friend) drove up and took me out in his 32 roadster for the day (Goodguys Del Mar) that the roadster bug bit. I will remember blasting around SoCal in that car long after my brain goes mushy.

 

I'm not going to lie, I had a hard time chopping up my dad's handy work but the vision of a roadster required me doing it. I did reuse my dad's water pipe frame (modified of course) as a stand for my sun distributor machine so I feel slightly better.
I couldn't find any Chrysler roadster rear quarters but when I found the back half and doors off a Chrysler 4 door sedan, I decided it was going to be a tub instead.
I took the 4 door doors and cut them in 1/2 top to bottom and mixed the front of one with the back of another to stretch out the doors (this is going to be a 2 door tub)

 

More door work.
Starting to make the inner.
Forming the door top.

 

Finished.

That's it for tonight.

 

I like it!

 

Cool build! I love these "making something out of almost nothing" builds.
Will be following.

 

Yeah, I'll tag a long. Show me what ya got

 

I accept the blame for getting 40ply infected with "The Bug",....and proud of it! This young man provides hope for us geezers who lament the waning of interest in traditional Hot Rods. So looking forward to the joy this thread will provide from a guy who still works 24/7 and is a fulltime Dad and husband.

 

Thanks Bill. I will be following his build.

 

Thanks guys, I'll try not to disappoint. Since the guilty party outed himself here's the roadster that did the biting.

Another update tonight but these pictures are still from 3 years ago. Here's an easy task, patching the lower cowl.

Because this was a Fisher bodied Chrysler, the body was basically sheet metal hammered over a wood framework. This is me tacking in a filler panel between dash and cowl to seat the windshield.... don't get too attached I'm going to chop it back out in 3 years. Lol


Time to push it outside to get an idea of the profile. I decided it needed to be a bit shorter. I thought chopping around the wheel well and pulling the back of the body ahead would help hence the tape. My hope is when finished to chop off the end of the frame and have the body look a bit like it's been kicked in the ass.

 

Looking great. Tubs are cool. Even cooler as a two door.

 

Following.

 

Ambitious pro'-jek to say the least! Intimidating pile of parts however, looking at your interior door skin and "door tops" indicates wonderful things to come. Anxious to see the next installment.

 

Love it. I'll be following along.

 

Ok gents, another installment from 3 years ago. I really wanted to shorten it down and pull the back of the body ahead to allow the wheel wells to fade out the back. With everything thing braced I chopped the upper half of the body loose. I think I pulled it ahead 5-6"?


Here is the body being tacked back on.

The great part about starting with basically junk is you can't really screw it up, you either make something out of it or you occupy your time and work on developing a skill.



Back outside for another looksee at the profile.

The look is getting there but there's still a long way to go. That's it for tonight. Thanks for watching.

 

This is where the project stopped. I took on what was supposed to be a scuff and respray job on a 48 ford panel to make some cash for a trip planned spring of 2020. Long story short, the trip got cancelled and the old Ford was way past a respray. Ended up stripping it to bare metal and patching rust and doing complete bodywork before painting. They spent more than they were expecting but they got a better lasting job and my name isn't on poor quality work but the tub spent an extended period outside. Here's some pictures of that ordeal.
Before
After
I had to coax them along to fix things that we're going to look terrible after the body was painted and be harder to correct after the body was painted. They didn't want to bother cleaning and painting Under the hood, don't bother with the interior either but I new it needed to be done. They said it was the right "call" after everything was finished. I even fixed the hideous dash on my dime because I hated it so much.

Poor roadster patiently waiting in the cold. At least there's no worry of rotting the floor out.

 

Another level of difficulty to the "stick-to-it" challenge.

 

Alrighty then, with that detour out of the way this is where I started back at the tub about a month ago. Because this desire for an open car started with a ride in a '32 roadster and since I'll probably never have enough coin to own one I'm going to borrow a few design elements from the 32 to use in the tub. So here I am starting to work the cowl/windshield area. My favorite part of the 32 is the way the door top flows into the cowl and dash. Obviously a 27 Chrysler cowl has a different shaped cowl than a Deuce so I can't copy it only give an impression of it. Also I gave a bit of thought to possibly making a Duvall style windshield but passed on that. I like the simplicity of a laid back windshield, I imagine dry lakes racers doing that to cheat the wind. The problem I ran into with laying the windshield back is, I couldn't get the center of the windshield back enough, so as it tilted back the outer corners of the windshield came off the cowl. So to fix this I cut back out the filler strip I had tack in 3 years ago out, trimmed the dash top back and made a new filler strip to the shape of the windshield on its laid back orientation.
I then started to mold the door top into the dash. I wanted a bit of a brow to the dash so I bent up a piece of conduit and welded it in place.
Next step fill the space between.
A little welding and grinding to clean it up.
Next a filler panel for under the dash brow and a triangular filler to transition the door to the dash.
And more welding and grinding.
Stay tuned...

 

Well I'm in, this is getting interesting.

 

Its a Different Unique project build ,

 

I keep looking at this pic of my Tudor and the crude chop job and then to your "truck to tub" conversion and,.....I'm thinkin ahhhh, why not???? In the meantime, I need to get back to attempting to make something to show for my lengthy procrastination(s).

 

Half as much bodywork and half as much paint, Bill

I tacked in an old windshield frame I had laying around (I'll probably have to build my own) to see how everything looks.

Not bad but looking forward along the top of the body from the back it has kind of a high cheekbone Angelina Jolie look and I'm not digging it. I'll leave it as a place holder until I can find an affordable roadster windshield stanchion off something to modify and see if it hides it a bit, otherwise I'll chop it out a try again.

Next step is making the top edge of the body to match the door.

 

Had a machine shop make up a set of dies for my bead roller that match the top bead on the body. I don't have a slip roller so I made a sort of press to roll the top edge of the panel. So started by pressing a roll in the top of the patch panel and then rolling in a bead.
Then into the shrinker to put a bit of a curve in it. Then tacked it in. The press that I made is only 3' so I'll be making the top of the body in sections.
That's it for tonight.

 

Back at it! Next step was to continue around the corner of the body with the bead and rolled over top. I spent lots of time thinking about how to do this and after enough pieces went into the scrap barrel, I decided that I'd have to make the corners in pieces. I know there are guys out there that could make the corners in one piece but that's above my skill level (for now) I started by tracing the curve of the corner onto a piece of cardboard. I then transferred that shape onto a piece of hardwood. I hope my wife won't miss the bathroom vanity front it was the right thickness
After a bit of time with the rasp and sander, I had a hammer form for the bead.
I then cut a strip of sheet metal and attached it to the form.
After a bit of time with a body hammer I ended up with the bead section of the corner. Little "wacks" with the hammer work best and you want to move the whole area a little at a time. Once the bead was tacked in, it was time to make the rolled over top bit.

 

I started the top edge by putting a strip of sheet metal in my press and forming the curve. This section I started shrinking to form the corner.

My shrinker isn't very deep so I couldn't shrink enough to form the corner fully and had to resort to making a few relief cuts that I had to weld up later.
Here's the "finished" corner.

 

Whoops! Forgot to post the picture.

 

Never under estimate the skills of a busy farmer

 

That'll work... moving right along in the right direction. That Plymouth coupe's a beaut also...

 

I like it!
Nice metal work.

 

Very nice work....