Hot and humid here in the Twin Cities today, so let's do some welding! Got the rear shocks done. Decided on tube shocks in the end. Mounted them to the rear end using "41-"48 Ford radius rod ends. Big thanks to HAMBer ProtoTypeDesignFlauz for supplying those! Chassis done, time to prep for paint!
I hope you plan to do some more welding before you prep for paint. ( Unless you did so after the pictures ) If not, then you are not finished. the upper and lower shock mounts should be welded all the way around, it does not look like they are in the pictures.
Yup, these are tacked in for placement. Much easier to finish weld under that 8" with it off the car and rolled upside down.
I know where you are with that while some of the welding has been done on my 26 RPU, a lot is in the tacked together stage too. Taking it all apart will mean a couple days of welding and finishing. At least !
Marx, the car is looking nice! Glad to have helped you out, with a small part of a cool build. Now I know how I am going to mount my rear shocks on my '26 roadster.
MARX, I just stumbled upon this build thread last night and looked through every page. As the builder/owner of a '27 roadster on '32 rails I can certainly appreciate what it takes to make the frame fit the little T body. I have seen many different takes on this and I don't believe I've ever seen a dogleg put in the rear rails to get them inside the subrails, allowing the subrails to stay more or less intact. That is really clever! How you did the toe panel is absolutely essential to gaining leg room and comfort, I did very similar by putting my toe panel on a steeper angle and shoving the bottom forward. I think I gained about over 6". I don't know how people run the stock floor, especially with a lower seating position, because it puts your ankles at an akward position that gets real uncomfortable real fast! All the work you have done on this car so far is really nice and that you are running an Olds is just way cool! If I had to pick on one thing, tho, it would be your seating position being really high. I would have liked to see you figure out how to get as low as posible so your whole neck and head weren't above the windshield. '26 & '27 Roadsters are my favorite hot rods, period, and nothing kills me more than to see one that looks really bitchin and sleek sitting there then seeing it go down the road later with half of the drivers body sticking out of the car. My car is using the lower windsheld, like you, and when I sit in it I am looking right through the middle of it and when viewed from behind all that can be seen is the upper half of my head above the body. I have my seat cushion right on the floor. When I built this car one of my biggest priorities was to not sit up in the wind like every other one I've seen. Keep up with the awesome progress, can't wait to see it done!
I'm enjoying the thread, and also have a T roadster in the works. Like Dennis said, get down low in there! The one thing I've never liked about T's is that too often owners look like they're sitting ON them rather than IN them!
The chassis, bones, front axle and springs made the trip to the sandblaster this week! Chassis is in the body shop and getting a little massaging, and should be in paint by the end of the week. The rest of the stuff spent a couple days with the powder-coaters. Made the difficult choice of selecting chassis and body color a coupe weeks ago. Stay tuned for pics revealing the decision...
Couldn't agree more, Dennis. It's what kills it for me when roadsters get channeled to deeply, too. Looks kick-ass in the drive-way, but silly on the highway. My final seat position is one of those details still yet to be dialed-in.
X4 on seating position. Sitting low on the car is exactly why I didn't channel my car's body.My seat is almost on the floor.
and the winning color is....International Harvester Baja Brown! I'll get some pics of it outside when I can, but for now, here it is under shop lights.
Assembling the clutch it became obvious that my standard GM pilot bushing was not going to work on the crankshaft on this particular olds. The opening was considerably larger. Made a call to Titus in search of a solution. A couple measurements later his machinist friend turned me a nice little steel adapter. Fit perfectly, and tapped in nice and snug. Now if I ever need to replace my bearing I can just pop in another standard GM piece.
Needed to make a bracket for my clutch slave. Spent a little time leveling a nice straight shelf into the block for a good clean mounting spot. Then mocked up a cardboard bracket, transferred the template onto steel, cut it out and welded it up.
Throwout arm was exactly an inch too long, so I spliced it and added the extra distance. Added a small tab for a return spring.
After sectioning the dash so much, I still needed to do the same to the inner bracket for the rear mounted gauges. After much deliberation I've decided to stick with the stock gauges that were in the mystery dash. Maybe they work, maybe not. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. Bracket done and in.
Last winter we cut out the motor mounts and brackets I'd originally made back at the beginning. They incorporated the single large bolt on each side of the Olds block, and I just never was able to wrap my head around that being enough. I just couldn't let it go. So I picked up a pair of Hurst-style mounts and trashed the ones I made. I will sleep that much better now. And they look plenty cool.
Looks good. Take out those speedway rubber motor mounts and throw em away, they split right away, call up chassis engineering and order a set of theirs. jeff
Got the body up to the media blaster this past weekend. Picked it up and ran it over to Bob Fulmer's body shop today to get it sealed up. If there is anything prettier than cleanly blasted steel: then I've never seen it.
The Jalopy Journal
