Projects Project Mattitude: the Beginning

Thanks man. Just doing what I can.


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I like the changes... you might consider ordering the Roadster panel that goes between the cockpit and the trunk rather than welding up the tiny Coupe panel!

Snyders have reasonable prices... check them out!

 

anytime man I need to undertake some metal work on my sedan but it will have to wait I'm ready to have something to drive so its time to find a lil roadster or something

 

Hm. I'll have to look into that. Good idea. Except I've already cut that panel apart. I'm about 70% through with the welding. It's coming along great though..

I'll upload what I did with relocating the rear cockpit edge tomorrow or Tuesday. Quarters are for the most part finished too. Thanks anyways.

Sedan.. Didn't you post in the Model A Sedans thread a while aback? I'm going to go snoop through there and look around.


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Just looked. I thought I had seen you post one of a green chopped fender-less sedan that was still at stock height. But that was someone else's..

Got any pictures you'd like to share?


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I've got a build thread for it under my first rod

 

Since I'm stuck outside the printmaking shop that I volunteer at, I thought I'd go ahead and upload the pictures from modifying the rear edge of the cockpit..



I don't have that many clamps or any of those sheet metal clamps that I've seen on here. All I have is a handful of vice grips, a set of 3 c-clamps (which looks like a beginner set.. Figures), and magnets. So I made do. I worked on this part of the build last.. Summer, I think? Before I learned a lot. So bear with me.





To keep that curve in the rear quarter and the transition from the flat side of the cockpit opening to the curve, I pie cut along the edge and tacked them in as I went so the panels would line up straight. Then I fully welded it in and ground this down. This is before being ground down completely. I came back with a panel to fill in that pie cut. I also made a pie cut in the other direction so I could hammer part of the panel out that way it would all flow together.




Now that I'm a little more experienced, when I look at it, I can't help but think maybe I should redo the little patch I did last year. It's not as smooth as I would like. The passenger side turned out about the same. But that got taken care of as I'll explain in my next update.



In my next update, I will also share how I filled in the corners of the gap on the quarters and fixed some more FNG mistakes. This is when I stopped for the evening.




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Keen eyes will also notice that I decided to cut the 7 inches from the edge of the brace behind the door jamb and back versus cutting through the brace. Another goal is I want to keep as much Model A parts on this as possible.

Almost as if Henry made a single special edition Model A roadster back then.


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Looks good man nice progress


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What he said. Great stuff!

 

Thanks guys.


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So where I left off earlier today, I had cut the entire back top of the quarters from the trunk edge to half an inch (reoccurring theme, hm?) above the body line and moved the rear edge of the cockpit opening forward 7 inches and welded in the sides. This left a huge 7 inch gap in the back that I wouldn't have been able to let slide.

So to fill in the sides, I used a backyard method used for many decades.. Finding something round and bending the patch panel over it to fit the curve. Here's where I made yet another FNG mistake. I cut out the almost square piece of metal and curved it at a right angle. Well.. I didn't take into account how the body tapers back so I ended up with a triangular gap to the side of the patch. As usual, I came back and filled this in.







But I wasn't anywhere close to calling this done. I was only a beginner with metal shaping, welding, and hammer and dollying.. So this haunted me until a year later (maybe a month or 2 ago) when I got back to it. But you guys will have to wait to see because there were 2 huge FNG mistakes made in between both milestones. Don't worry, they got taken care of.

Here's the driver's side..





Again.. There are a couple areas that I'm not too thrilled about. But I assure you I'll come back and take care of these.

Expect an update in a couple hours.


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I like the direction you are headed too. Keep it up!

 

Damn man moving right along guess I better get to work on mine lol


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Thanks. I wanted to do something different from what I've seen on here. One of the reasons behind the name "Mattitude" which I'll explain later. It's hard to be original these days. But I haven't seen anyone hack up a Sports Coupe like I have so.. I'm determined to make this work.

Ah. No. Lol. thanks though. All of the stuff you see here didn't start taking place until January of 2010 or February. So this is all from the last 16 months or so. I didn't want to start a build thread without building up stuff to share so I could keep a steady feed.

You're still ahead of me at this point. You've got all the major components to make a rolling frame. I still don't have a frame yet. The one you see in the pictures, I borrowed from my brother in law. I want to buy it but he won't part out the lot that the frame comes with which is a lot more A parts that I could use as well. We'll see what happens because I want the lot. Just don't have the dough for it right now.


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I think your doing a great job here. I like what your doing, sould be a cool car.
Subcribed... I be watchingthis one.

 

Ahh shit man I've had mine a year or so now and haven't done shit with it lol I got my frame out of Cali


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I agree. It should be cool when done. I don't know how this would compare to all of the greats on here. But we'll see when all is said and done, uh? Thanks, man.


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California!! That's too far for this broke college student.


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So. It's been a couple hours. This means it's time for another update catching y'all up to what I've been up to for the last year and half.

Here goes..

Huge FNG Mistake Number Uno..

I wanted to patch in that 7 inch gap between the sides I had already gotten done (for the most part) but didn't have any new sheet metal. I still haven't used a piece of new sheet metal. Everything has been scrounged out of the junk piles but after this one incident, I learned to start with the best metal possible. It certainly wasn't a good idea to cut out a patch from an old bedside.





I thought to myself "yeah, I can hammer those out. I can shrink that area. I can make this work." but that humbled me. Now fellas, I believe honesty is the best policy so here are the mistakes I made on this one. But more importantly, mistakes that I made that I learned from.

1. This was a piece of metal I should have never even thought of using. Memo to self: use the best sheet metal possible.

2. I got trigger-happy welding this up because I wanted this over with. Memo to self: slow down with the welder. Taking your time pays off in the end.

3. Quit being such a FNG. Memo to self: self-explanatory.

So with a badly warped rear panel.. What was the next step to do? Cut it out and do it all over again, of course. But that didn't come until after my second Huge FNG Mistake.


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I did some work on the passenger side which came out looking a little better..



Huge FNG Mistake Number Deux:



If you look closely.. The passenger side is just a tad lower than where it should be.

4. Measure, remeasure, tack,
measure, remeasure, tack,
measure, remeasure.. Then finish welding. Memo to self: remember patience pays off..

So here's how I fixed that problem.



I cut it to where I would be able to pull it up with a tie-down hooked to my garage door track. Then I cut it out some more and tacked it.. After countless times of measuring and remeasuring, of course.




Oh, and I replaced a part of the patch that was bothering me.




I also eyeballed it as well just to be sure my tape measure wasn't lying to me.



So far.. So good.



Not completely ground down and hammered.. But the general shape is much better. After all was said and done, everything lined up much better.

The current timeline for this is about late July 2010.

The cowl brace section was 2 months ago. I kind of jump around but everything else after the cowl brace section is in order.

Thanks for reading.


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I'll see what I can find. There's not really much of a traditional hot rod crowd here. I can probably count on one hand the number of HAMBers in Amarillo off the top of my head.

I'm a Graphic Designer major at the local University and I took Printmaking last semester and fell in love with it. Silk screen printing to be exact. I do plan to try some of the other methods though. I've seen your work.. You do excellent work. Anyways, I volunteer at the university-owned printmaking shop, Vermillion Editions Limited which was bought out of Minnesota or Michigan. I can't remember which "Mi-" state. Maybe it was Montana?

But I started out the semester as one of the lesser students with bleeding everywhere. Then at the end of the semester, my Printmaking MFA professor was saying that he couldn't even print a 4-color as good as I had just done.



So I'm thinking this might be a possible career path for me as I love the amount of discipline it takes to master Printmaking and Scott Frish (my MFA Printmaking professor) is one of the best. I'm hoping some of his talent will rub off on this young 'un.


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looks good

 

looks good.

For the part of the "T" bar that is missing in your quarters maybe someone around here has the back panel area they have left from a top chop froma 28-31 A tudor, its the same T bar material.

JEFF

 

Finally! A good description of that!

I actually plan on taking that out. I want to weld in a new body line that's similar to the '30-'31 Model A body line where it looks like a really thick bead but instead of branching out into the body line at the bottom of the roof, I want it to finish in a half-circle. It's difficult to explain. I'll probably sketch it out to show what I mean and put it up on here. I'm having a hard time figuring out how I'm going to get the "T" body line off though. Any suggestions?

The reasoning is I think it would look much more cleaner if I had the '30-'31 A style body line welded to the quarters and it just bolts like

(quarter panel - middle panels)

rather than..

(quarter panel - "T" bar - middle panels)

Do you see what I'm saying? I'll try to come up with a way to explain it that's not so elaborate.

But we'll see if later on down the road I decide I'm being too ambitious.

Thanks for the advice.


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Here's a very rough sketch of what I want to do with the body line in the back which will eliminate the "T" bar.



The body line will be very reminiscent of the '30-'31 Model A body line in the back. I just drew up what it would look like on a '30-'31 but with the top of the body lines changed the way I want them to be. I'm thinking the body line that runs along the sides of the trunk will probably be the only changes in the back. I want to preserve most of the '28-'29 character this car has.


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I personally like the t bar, dunno, its a 28/9, if you want a 30-31 get one

The t bar is spot welded to the quarters the whole length, pain in the ass to get off.

 

I knew it! I was sitting there thinking "All them bolts have been drilled out! That thing must be rusted on there." Haha.

True. Hm. I just might stick with the "T" then. I'll sleep on it. Has anyone ever welded them to the body to smooth them out? Any tricks ever been done to the "T" by anyone back in the day or today? I like it too but I want to clean it up somehow.


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Great build so far, very impressive for a first ground up build. I'll be watching this one forsure!