Hot Rods Getting the bugs out -My T coupe build

HA! Been there, done that too many times.

 

I don't follow the instructions that come in the kit when I do the wiring nor do I tend to write things down as I do them. I will tag the end of the wire with a piece of masking tape, sometimes. Consequently, a bunch of wires don't go where the kit intended; such as the alternator exciter wire. I hooked up a generator to give the car a Hamb era vibe but left the wire in the harness to use for the a/c compressor. I lengthened the wire at the other end with left over wire labeled "left rear turn" - no sense wasting perfectly good wire to go to the a/c controls. Later, I came to my senses (somewhat) and vetoed the a/c idea. The generator cooked its armature so on went a one wire alternator in its place. I hope to eventually drive this car to places I haven't been so I added an underdash radio player with a GPS screen. I need all the navigational help I can get. When I test drove the car out of the garage, I discovered that rearward visibility is somewhat lacking so I added a backup camera because as I mentioned before; I need all the navigational help I can get. The trick is to do this without getting extra wires all over the place and not in the main harness so the wire that was marked out for the third brake light gets hooked up to the camera in the back and in the front where it originally plugged into the turn signal switch plug goes to one side of the backup light switch on the transmission that previously did nothing. The alternator exciter wire now goes to the other side of the switch. The key to this is in remembering what I did when I initially wired this car since that was some time ago and I didn't label any of it. Does any of this make sense?

 

Nice build! Good call on the backup camera too! With that 'mail slot' rear window that'll make all the difference in the world!

 

Now that I have wired in a backup light switch, it was time to put the shift tower cover back on the floorboard but it just didn't fit. I had made that cover as tight as I could possibly get it over the shifter because I wanted as much space as I could get on the floor for my feet - and I don't have big feet either. I even moved my dimmer switch to the end of my turn signal stalk. Now it was a case of not enough clearance for the plastic plug on the backup light switch. Incidentally, I purchased an OEM style plastic cover for the wire terminals when I knew that I was adding the backup camera because I didn't want the chance of the wires shorting out on the underside of my shift tower cover. That plastic plug sure was pricey though, even if it probably only cost pennies to make. Ended up cutting the cover and checking to see if it cleared. Made a little hump in the cover and welded it in place with my torch. That cover has a lot of welding scar tissue from this and the number of times it had been modified to get maximum foot room.

 

GM, so how are you switching the backup light and camera on/off or did I miss it somewhere previously?

 

That is what the backup light switch is for. Put the car in reverse. I feel a bit awkward about mentioning all this about my cheap radio, GPS, backup camera unit since it is way off the Hamb guidelines, but what do you do? There is a current thread going about American Graffiti being a great movie and a lot of the charm is due to the sound track. This thing provides all that while a period correct AM radio doesn't anymore. I need to hook all this up before the dashboard gets bolted in place. I mention all this here to let everyone know I'm not dead yet.

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Living in a rural area it is pretty common to be out at night and not have well lit areas when one needs to back up. Many times I have had to ask for help or get out and look at the area before backing up. The downside to living in the country. On my buddies 37 coupe I wired in a 4 inch plow lamp that I attached under the car by the rear end out of sight. Hooked it to the floor shifter that activated a micro switch in reverse. That was like a fog lamp at night and worked very well. I need to address this in my current build. Frankly. it is one thing that I had completely forgotten about until your post.

 

Its a tight fit in a T.
But that is what make them so cool when they are done.

 

Since vtw asked about the backup setup, here is a picture of the backup camera. It is above the middle "2" in the license plate. Nice and small so that it shouldn't draw attention to it. It was time to get back to putting the dash back in place. It just does not want to go back in that easy. There is the matter of the added kick panel upholstery making things a bit tighter on the ends but there has to be other things causing me grief. Now my heater and choke cables are too short. Replacement 1964 Valiant control cables might be hard to find. Also, I should have put my con rod steering column mount on before putting the dash back. Getting the reassembly sequence wrong is bad when there is a mess of stuff behind the dash. The passenger side of the dash was hard to push back in so I made this jig that bolted to the "B" pillar door latch and a scissors jack to push it back into place. Whatever works.

 

GM, slick idea and position on the camera. Where is the display mounted?
Had a similar surprise this week putting the cowl back on the 31. Along the way I had neglected to remember that the filler strip above the cowl needs to be bolted in with the cowl. With my 50 dash one cannot get to the bolts so had to take it all apart and weld nuts to the filler strip and put the bolts on from under the dash. Not an easy affair given the space available to get under the dash. Much easier 20 years ago, HA!

 

The display unit can bee seen in the picture from the left side, beside the con rod. It measures 7"×4". As for weatherstrip, check out pictures from the previous page. I bought stuff off Amazon. I clicked on "windlace" and "weatherstrip" and found it. I really like the one that clips in place over the metal edge. Of course, have no idea at this stage if it will work.

 

I managed to sort out the control cable issue. Rerouted the choke cable a tiny bit and it hooked up. As for the heater control cable, I shortened the heater hose on the side before the valve and lengthened it on the other side. Mounted the steering column and it is getting very uncomfortable sliding under the dash - way too much stuff back there. Hopefully after I get this all done, I can move onto doing the headliner. I came to the conclusion that if I had done the headliner earlier, I would have had way less room to do all this other stuff. At this point, I can still stand up in the cab. Still not decided if I should mount the seats before the headliner or after; it should be uncomfortable either way.

 

"Different" is when Ken Austen ran the Sully coupe with a Ford six. It's a look I have long admired, since the 50's actually. I like what you have done, even though the '32 frame has always seemed a tad heavy looking under a Tee. I had the Buzz Bomb at my house for a while, and should have kept it, but life intervened.....

 

Cabong, I totally agree. Channeled looks way better. I chickened out.

 

Finally ran out of excuses to work on the headliner. I purchased my headliner kit from Classtique Upholstery in Lino Lakes, MN. They have a youtube video on headliner install but it is on a T Tudor. It was just different enough from a coupe to provide problems. The first thing involved wrapping the perimeter of the wood frame and the cloth tends to bunch up going around the curves at the back. Sort of like the issue of shrinking and stretching sheet metal but the cloth doesn't want to shrink. Next problem was in trying to do this by myself. The video has the headliner being installed with the wood frame standing vertical but the coupe headliner only has supports for the middle two headliner bows. I got my nephew to help but realized it was better to just do it myself than to have a kid helping who thinks he knows what to do. This time, I placed the wood frame flat on my work bench and tacked it in the center of the two headliner bows before trying to fight with it vertically. The video said to hang the supports about 1/8" below the wood bows to allow for stretching the material and to staple the cardboard strip flush with the edge of the wood. Unfortunately, the wood for the underside of the the headliner bows on the coupe is curved so it doesn't provide a clear picture of where to staple things to. When you look at the picture of my finished headliner, this problem is clearly visible. The headliner is puckered up on the front bow. This is where I left it when I decided to come in the house and go to bed. This morning will involve some staple removal and rework.

 

Nothing hamb era about killmat but most of have some in our rides. Nothing wrong with subtle non visible improvements

 

Now that I have put the wood roof back on the car with the headliner, it sure is dark inside the car now! Had another failure. Tried trimming the corner where the headliner butts into the vertical sides with black fender welting, held on with two-sided tape. Came out the next morning and it had fallen off. Too much strain for the tape to hold it on. Onto plan B. On a more positive note, I mounted the sex lights. Love that purple glow they give off. I might not be getting much done, but it is starting to look like a real car now.

 

First time I came across your thread. Nice coupe you're putting together! I appreciate the commentary as well. Keep up the good work.

 

The local upholsterers need not worry about me getting into their business. I glued the foam and vinyl onto the pieces that go around the back window and C pillar areas. I was pretty sure that when I curved them into place that they would wrinkle, and I was right. I would need to keep the panels curved as I glued and stretched the vinyl into place - but how do you do that? Since I'm getting antsy to get this car done, it will do for now. I just threw the seats in place before calling it quits for the night. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Drive it and don't look back Wouldn't bother me at all so long as it can be driven and enjoyed.

 

Being in a land where it is predominately winter, there is a tendency to have rubber mats on the floor to ward off all that nastiness; and this thinking has persisted in this build. The car gets floor mats. This has more to do with my cheap carpeting - I think if I look at it too hard, it will wear out. Anyhow, I started by making a cardboard pattern, followed by a rubber mat that I bought from Princess Auto. Of course, this means that in the flyer that came in the mail today, I could have gotten it for $10 less if I waited another week. After thinking over how I would cut it, I came up with using an angle grinder with a cut off disc. That sent ugly black rubber debris all over my hands and face. Later, in final trimming, I found out that tin snips work great on it with no mess. This is the end to most of the interior work. Next step, on to hanging the doors back in place.

 

I really wasn't looking forward to putting my doors back on. Perhaps I should have left the top hinge off when I chopped it. There was just enough misalignment there to make things difficult the last time the door were hung. The difference this time is, I'm dealing with painted parts i don't want to scratch. After a lot of struggling, they made it onto the hinge pins but they don't fit the door opening. Just a bit too tight where they latch. Remember the scissors jack setup I made to squeeze the dash in place? I reconfigured the ends so that it would line up with A pillar and gave it a squeeze. All I managed to accomplish was to bend my angle iron brace. When in doubt, make it stout. Spent a long time making the thing strong with a straight shot from the A to B pillars and cranked on it until I chickened out. I had better hustle if I'm to make it to Victoria for Deuce Days. A bit of paint touch up needed.

 

Looking back in my previous posts, I see that I mentioned the pitfalls of my window regulator install and how I managed to locate another set of Jeep Cherokee regulators back in March. I figured that it would be a simple case of just duplicating the modifications I did the first time but use ugly modern Jeep window cranks but it was not to be. I mounted one, tried the plastic crank and the splines just stripped out when I tried cranking - not good quality. Back to the original game plan of using the '46 Chev window cranks. Getting pretty discouraged at this point - see my moaning and groaning elsewhere. Anyhow, my good neighbor Craig, came to my rescue and fixed the problem. The Jeep regulators come from '90 or thereabouts Cherokee rear doors; chosen because rear doors probably have less wear on them than front doors. With the T doors being so narrow, I trimmed the mounts to fit as tight as possible to the inner door skin with 1/4" nuts welded on for attachment. The looping track is very tight against the door skin and I cut new holes to mount the window cranks lower to clear my '40 dash. The track is mounted in the center of the door. I made the door glass a bit too narrow to fit between the felt runners but with this setup, it still works pretty good. The repro T regulators I tried the first time around just had one arm and not a scissors setup relied upon the felt channels to guide the glass going up and down which wasn't a great idea with loose fitting glass. Tight glass would present a problem too - a Goldilocks sort of thing. There are similar window regulators that are powered but I think that with narrow doors like these, the motors would bulge into the door cards.

 

That is a pretty slick ride, and a fun read. Good work!

 

So, thw windows now work? What did your neighbor actually do?

 

I posted this under "getting old and cranky".

 

Having to resort to a jack push on already painted parts made my you know what pucker! Glad it worked and you got the door on!

 

I'm really liking the coupe!
I have one myself but not as nice.

 

Thanks Ken - now I have to go read about getting old and cranky. It's nice when your neighbours are on the same board.