Projects 1930 Buick Wood removal. V-12 Sedan Build

I like your step boxed frame . Glad tosee it as I am getting ready to box my frame an like your idea, thanks for the tip

 

Great to be able to bring some inspiration for your project @Guy Patterson .
I welded in the box plates today, on both sides. They are only bit more than 50 inches long, but they will cover the length needed to weld in the K-member.

The arrow points at a a half 3/4" drain hole ground at the edge of the plate.
A great thing about the frame is that it's in such good shape I only needed to weld in a 2"x 8" piece in the top flange, where rust had bit.

Pretty amazing, the frame is 92 years old after all.
Another plate was cut out to fit behind the K-member, jigged in place here ready to weld in.

The plate ends like this because the kick up will be redone for about 3" more suspension travel clearance. I figure 6" of total upward travel will suffice, and provide enough room to add a rubber snubber.

 

It is really amazing to see how you develope your thoughts and the solutions about how do to and how it should look in the future. You are doing really fantastic work! Keep on, i really enjoy reading your thread.

 

Thank you @40two , very nice to see that someone is reading this.
Now it's time for the kick up. Some time ago I cut out the kick up frame sides, and box plates, and here they come in. Here's how I went on with the process:

Having the frame bolted and tacked to the floor makes this so much easier. No measuring needed to check if things have warped. Also, by leaving half the old kick up in place, there wasn't much chance of the rear part of the frame shifting.

 

When I did the frame repair on my PU I borrowed a buddies frame table and welded it down. Great advice if you want the frame square when you are done. Enjoying your build. Lots of pictures, I like lots of pictures.

 

Nice work thus far. Did I miss the V12 flavor?

 

Thank you @Bandit Billy I enjoy the build, and it's fun to share, especially of someone can get inspired from my ramblings. Here's a couple more pics
@1952henry No, you didn't miss it. There might have been a hint in a picture, but yes, there will be V12 flavoured pics and work coming soon.

Today the outside frame side of the kick up was cut to fit in both ends and tacked. The bottom flange was cut to lenght and then everything was welded solid.

Both inside and outside view here. The right hand side kick up ( top pic in the background) not done yet, so the difference is easy to see.
I had to spray on some flat black to see if the kick up blends in, andI think it does so fairly well. The idea is that if you take a quick look, it could be mistaken for a stock frame

 

The right hand side kick up done today, save for grinding. Times like this I wish that I'd work with motorcycles. Never fun to do the other side. In this case the other side went a lot faster, and now it's done anyway.

This wont be a show car by any means, so I leave the box plate welds pretty much as is. I just knock down the ugliest blobs with a grinder, and smooth it over quick with a flap disc. The frame itself, I want to keep tidy, so I grind those welds smooth.

 

It's been 5 weeks exactly since I posted my K-member sketch, and today it was finally welded in.



Except from part of the old crossmember obscuring the oval holes in the transverse parts, the end result looks surprisingly much like the sketch.
The old crossmember has to be made 3-1/2" higher at the center to clear the prop shaft at full suspension travel. At the bottom, a sturdy new crossmember will bridge the short gap between the transverse parts of the K-member. I'm not certain yet if this part will be bolted or welded in.

 

Very nice work!

 

Thank you @TFoch , Hoping this will work decently when it's all done. The rear suspension will be a bit unconventional.
Today I got the rear axle placed as exactly as I could, centered side to side, square to the chassis, and also the pinion angle right, and then it was tacked in. With the help of a friend, this was easy, but surprisingly time consuming. every adjustment made something else go out of whack. Finally we got it done.

That strip of sheetmetal is 1/8" thick, a diagonal brace was also added in case I'd run the welder into the wheel or something silly. I decided to secure the pinion axle at the yoke too, just to be sure nothing moves.
I designed the brackets for the triangulated 4-link, and will hopefully get them cut tomorrow. I might go get the holes punched, as there are 40-ish 5/8" holes that has to be drilled or punched in 200 thou or 13/64" thick sheet metal.
The unconventional part of the rear suspension is that the lower links will be triangulated, and the top ones longitudinal. Also, a lot of roll understeer will be built in.
Thirty years ago, I was driving an awful old concrete truck that behaved like a drunk fish, due to all kinds of loose kingpins and springs, and it had LOADS of roll oversteer. Stewing over this for all this time, I've long since come up with how I want to do the geometry, and now, finally, I get to try my theories. Hence all the holes, it's all going to be adjustable for differing amounts of roll understeer, and all the way to neutral, in case I have been wrong all these years.

Roll oversteer comes from the vehicle, when driven into a left curve, rolls over to the right. The leaf spring on the right hand side will flatten out, and the one on the left side will bow up. When they do this, the axle will move slighty back on the right side, and slightly forward on the left side. This movement makes the vehicle turn more to the left, which may need a correction, to not turn into the curve too much. When this correction occurs, the car rolls less, and then it also turns less, and may again need a correction, and so on.
This may lead to a need for steering inputs all the time.
Roll understeer is the opposite, and should make the vehicle more stable.
Who knows, it might just work...

 

It took me a few days after all that rambling...
All brackets done yesterday. 48 holes in total.

I centerpunched thoroughly with a big hammer, and had the holes punched at a metal shop. Drilling fortyeight 5/8" holes would have taken me hours, and instead it took me ten minutes to get it done. The guy wanted a fiver, so I gave him ten
Today it was time to get it all set up. After some head scratching trying to find a way to get it set up for welding, I finally got it all tacked in.

After springs and shocks are figured out, the brackets will be fully welded, and probably boxed too.

As I understand it, this kind of suspension is called a Satchell link, as it has the lower links triangulated. It's now set up for maximum roll understeer, but with all the holes it's adjustable to neutral, in case this configuration doesn't drive good.

 

Measuring and planning going on for the front suspension and steering. Balljoints, tie rod ends, steering box etc are en route here from America, Lithuania and so on. I'm leaning towards a Mercedes Steering box on the Mustang front end with rear steer, we'll see how that plays out.
Seems I finally decided on air suspension. I really like things to be simple, so this is a bit our of charachter, but if I don't like it, I can remove it later, right?

The top mount itself is a bolt on part, but I made the backing plate with 3/8" UNC nuts welded to it, and tacked it to the frame. Just below the axle you can see the bottom bracket that came with the 4-links, here turned backwards, because the shocks will sit to the front of the axle, part of it that's visible here will be cut off, and the bottom mount for the air bag will be welded to it.

This is the bottom mount, cut our from 3/16" plate. This kind of work makes me happy that I invested in that plasma cutter. I buy steel from a company that makes snow plows, and it's supposedly some kind of structural steel, that feels hard to cut with the grinder. or it's just because it's fairly thick.. I make my patterns from thin-ish plywood, and trace around them with the plasma torch.
Here are examples of my plywood patterns:

They're 1/8" undersize, because that's how far off the nozzle makes the cut. This is my plywood CNC

The shock crossmember still to be designed, otherwise the rear suspension is soon ready for final welding.

 

Just more of the same going on. The left hand side lower spring mount is done and tacked into its place.

It looks a bit stretched, as the possible up travel is 4", I figured there has to be at least that amount of travel before the bag bottoms out. My first time with this air stuff, so I have no idea what I'm doing. If the ride gets horrible, I can always try to mount a spacer between the bag and the bottom mount. The shock mount is also tacked in now.

Detail shot of the right hand lower air spring mount. I just had to post this pic, it's one of very few times I have managed to produce somewhat decent looking welds * Big Grin*
I got a nice delivery from RockAuto yesterday, so now I have all the ball joints and bushings needed for my front suspension. I guess ball joints are cuss words on here, sorry about that.
I also got some salvage steering parts, power steering box with idler arm from a Mercedes W124, a bunch of universal joints for the steering shaft, tie rod parts and whatnot. All this since I'm converting to rear steer, and this exact model of Mercedes has two tie rod ends connected to the pitm na arm, which is what I need to get the Ackerman to work..
After spending a good couple hour measuring and planning, it will obviously be a tight fit. I will have to build a bit of the frame around the steering box. Interesting work, with lots of problem solving involved.

 

Everything but the shock absorber crossmember fitted now, so the axle came out, and I started welding everything for real. As seen in pic #1 below, the axle mounts got to be pretty wild looking. This is a bottom view, the axle is upside down on the floor. Lots of welding, so the axle will probably be an inch shorter than original, when everything is welded. Surprising if it tracks right after all this...


Pic #2 shows the "rings" that connect around the axle. I figure that if I weld an equal amount all around the axle it might contract about the same. Here the axle is right side up again.
Pic#3 shows a couple small gussets that reinforce the connection between the upper four link brackets and the shock mount.
I will have to dress up the welds a bit, just take the worst and ugliest off. Oh well, no one will see this when the car is done anyway.

 

I finally got the four link brackets done. A lot of welding and a bit of grinding later the axle sits back in the frame.

Just a squirt of flat black over the brackets to keep them from rusting. The axle will probably be sand blasted before paint. Shocks with their cross member still lacking.

Also "Finally", the K-member is ready as it will be.

It's all connected in the center now, the bottom part is cut off of the original front cross member., and the top part is made from steel plate, continuing the same profile as the original crossmember. Again the thought is it would look like it could always have been there.

 

Very nice work, impressive.

 

Thank you @trollst .
Now as the shocks are ordered I will turn to the steering.
I touched this subject a few posts ago:
Since the front suspension has been of the front steer variety (rack and pinion in the front of the axle),and I am going with steering box and idler arm in the rear of the axle, we're facing some problems with the ackerman angle.
Easy as it seems, my knuckles are mounted on the wrong side, to bring the steering arms backward, instead of forward. Generally this is seen as bad practice, since the ackerman angle will be negative. In effect, if I'd just mount a steering rack behind the axle, connect it to the steering arms and calling it a day, the steering would act very badly driving in a turn.
Bending my mind around this issue, I have come up with a few solutions, some of which haven't been very practical. I even ordered up a pair of cnc machined idler arms, which would have worked, but would have been illegal.
Some time ago, I happened to find a pic of a Mercedes w124 steering box.

In this pic the Mercedes box is upside down so the pitman arm can be seen.
Since this resembled the cnc arms I had already ordered, I thought this might work, an additional benefit being that this is all factory made, which would make it legal to use.
The other day I measured all the relevant details, and drew up a very exact sketch to test the geometry.
According to my sketch, there should be no doubt that the ackerman will work as it's supposed to.
In the sketch the pitman and idler arms look like a V, but the measurements are correct and correspond to the actual parts.

It's taken me a lot of thought to come up with this solution, but it looks so wrong when you move back the front axle on a twenties/thirties era car, we can't have that.

 

Nice progress!

 

Thank you @TFoch .Progress feels very slow. Lots of planning an experimenting at this time.
After collecting all relevant parts and all kinds of planning, I got back to fabricating parts for the steering.
Checking for bumpsteer.

A Mercedes outer tie rod was used to determine what lenght would make for the least amount of bump steer. This experimet resulted in about an inch longer tie rod than the original. Original length tie rod resulted in toe out on bump, which we don't want.
A tie rod was made to the new measure from a Ford Granada outer tie rod end and adjusting sleeve, mated to a Mercedes inner tie rod end and its adjusting sleeve. The threads were ground out of the Ford sleeve, and after cutting and a tiny bit of grinding of the Mercedes sleeve on the outside, the two fit nicely, one into the other. A hole was drilled in one side for a rosette weld, and on the other side the clamping slit was welded through, and of course it was welded around the end.

The resulting ready to mount outer tie rod looks almost factory. Now to make another of these.

 

The Mercedes power steering box is a huge unit, and the fact that it needs to occupy the same space as the frame doesn't exactly help.

Here it's seen from the front, inside the frame. A lot of the frame had to be cut away, but it will be compensaed with a sub frame box on the outside of the frame, and a lot of gussets. Lastly a bolted on box plate on the inside of the frame and steering box.
A fairly big notch for the tie rod had to be made, to allow for full suspension and steering articulation with no binding.

The idler arm got a simple test mount made from a 5/8"bolt and some scrap metal just to test the geometry.

The center link was adjusted for length to achieve a zero toe in with the new outer tie rods. Junkyard steering parts were great for these experiments.
The experiment resulted in toe out on turn. This is Ackerman for you, with front steer Mustang spindles turned backwards! I have heard that this is a bad idea and impossibleto get right so many times. Fun to get it to work in a somewhat workable way after at ton of sketches and failed and unworkable concepts.

Today I was at a friend's shop and used his lathe to enlarge the inner diameter of a piece of thick wall tubing.

The Mercedes idler arm and its bushings and bolt/axle is mounted into a tubular part that is a piece of the body. As this obviously can't be bought as a spare part, I had to make it. The blue piece of tubing will be welded to the frame, and the new bushing and bolt kit will be mounted to it.

 

The front en still in the works, I decided to jump back to the rear axle to make the shock absorber crossmember.
I got a used tube that a buddy had sawn off his hot rod chassis, and went on cutting it to fit the frame rails.

"That will work" I thought. Drill a couple holes and just weld it in.
But dang it! I cant have a straight tube for a crossmember after all the work I put on the rest of the chassis.

So. I cut it up, and started with a curve in the top.

Now, that has got some potential. This is not typical by the way, I usually have a design ready before I start working.
Anyway, I drew up the tube on some paper, and then continued cutting. So I ended up with a crooked piece of tubing, cut holes in the bottom to mount the top eyes of the shocks inside the tube, and added 3/4" wide flanges to the sides of the tube to make it look more like a crossmember. I also lowered it about 5/8" to minimize the hump in the floor under the rear seat.

The odd waves at the bottom flanges came from my welding the from the underside.

As there has to be small cut outs in the tube for the top 4-links, I angled up the flange and made a transition to the frame flange.

So now I just have to weld it in. I'll make the spacers for the shock bolts that will go inside the tube first, as it will be easier. The tube is a bit wider inside than the shock eye/bushing.
An annoying detail is the bolts that mount the shocks. The shocks are European style, and are made for M12 bolts. I try to keep imperial sizes on my rod builds, but in this case I just have to grind the markings off the bolt heads. In case someone looks under my car.

 

Work on the project is grinding to a halt now, it's spring, and lots of things to do. I have been procrastrinating regarding the front end. It took me a fw days to figure out how to get the geometry to work right. Finally I did, so I got to start welding things together.


The idler arm bushing housing was welded to an 8" long piece of "inner" box plate. After that the normal box plate could be welded to the frame and also to this part that I turned on the lathe in my previous post.
As I had measured all the parts, I could tackle the center link, which had to be shortened 1/2". When painted, it looked factory, and I was very happy with it. Until I noticed that it wouldn't fit.

My new center link was from a newer year than the steering box and idler arm, soitwouldn't fit. I get just one thread on, and it's in the pic here, just for show. The nuts are M12, and the right one, which I ordered a couple days ago, has M10 nuts. The outer tie rods are done.

As most of the work around the front end is done now, the engine and transmission could be hoisted back into the frame.

I had planned to start working on the engine and transmission mounts, but noticed that the distributors that will attach to the front of the cylinder heads, will get very close to the radiator and grille shell. So instead I decided to continue with the distributors. I really hope to be able to run a mechanical fan, but it will be a tight fit. If the engine goes farther back now, there will be a good dent in the firewall.
So @1952henry Here is where the V-12 flavor will come in.
This engine is from the late eighties/early nineties, and has had fuel injection, ecus, boxes and whatnot. The plan is to convert it to carburetors and mechanical centrifugal and vacuum advance distributors. First task will be to get the Ford V-6 distributors I have acquired to work with the camshafts, and then an intake has to be fabricated.

 

Thanks for the picture. I hope more come along as you progress. Wishing you continued success!

 

Just found your thread and read all the way through. I really like your method and appreciate you sharing all the thought that goes into your build. Thanks for continuing to post your progress!

 

Thank you @1952henry Sorry for the long break, a lot of things have had to be done, wedding for one son, the other one got a new baby girl and also his commercial pilots exam... life happens.
Good to hear that you like it @brEad , sorry for slow progress lately.

I had to learn to draw in CAD to make all the flanges needed for getting the engine to run. There's nothing useful about the low slung original intakes and throttlebodies, so I had to dream up my own. This is a work in progress, but with the parts I'm going to order, I just have to fill in the blanks with some water pipe and sheetmetal to make a complete intake.


1. Upper intake flange ( with a bunch of 2" exhaust flanges to save material).
2. Top intake flange with holes for two four barrel carbs ( bolts to the #1 flange)
3. Drawing for the number 2 part
4. Four barrel carb flanges. These will be spaced up about an inch off the Top intake.
5. 2" exhaust flange
6. 2-1/2" exhaust flange.
7. Intake to cylinder head flange.

I have asked for pricing on stainless steel parts for the exhaust manifold. Mandrel bent mirror finish tubes, upper and lower part, 24 pieces in all + flanges. it will amount to close to 700 €uros, about the same in $. I'll order those parts later, if I get the engine to run right. I do have the original manifolds, so those will have to suffice for test runs.

 

No worries, life gets in the way. I have a hamb unfriendly project, a restoration of a 1952 ford f3 with the marmon herrington 4wd conversion. The flathead 8 would be hamb friendly, but that is about it. I continually glean info from the Hamb like no other. Anywho, I do know how a guy can get pulled away from the "important" work in the shop. I like to read about hamb projects and the problem solving that goes with it.

 

WOW - I was fortunate to have solid wood - I def do not have the skills or patience to tackle the wood replacement in a Buick. My 27 has the same wood structure that I was so impressed with - I just left it alone!!! Great pics and thanks for sharing your build.

 

Nice car, @Rj27buick ! what engine are you running? I think a good wood body might be nice and quiet compared to a metal one. To me it would make sense, there wouldn't be the same echoing, I figure. Some of the wood was good in my case too, but as a lot was rotten, I thought it best to remove it all.
I took the wood removal as a challenge, and it was a lot more work than expected.a big chunk of it was to figure out how to do things. Hence this thread, obviously, I think it says so in the beginning.
I'd love to get the chance to get to ride in a wood body car just for the experience

 

Thanks - straight 6 ford - basically same physical size as original motor so a pretty easy fit. Car was named “BuFord” !! All original springs supporting newer drivetrain so I still have some interesting sounds at times. Keep up the great work