Projects Alienbaby17's Model A Truck Project

Yeah just throw some heavy stitches in there this time. It will hold. Great build by the way.

 

Thanks, 510madmav, I enjoy your build as well!

After a little time away to get over my frustration & disappointment I gave it another go with the rear axle mounts. Rather than remove the one good mount and bevel and re-weld them both I decided to just reinstall the one that broke off and to give both mounts a full bead along the inside edge. As I've mentioned before I don't intend for this to be the final weld, just something for mock up purposes.

I finally got the axle mounted in place yesterday. To make it easier I pulled the bed back off of the truck. I also only installed four of the eight leaves for the rear spring. Even though I thought my welds this time were stronger than the initial tacks that had broken I still didn't want to push it. I did measure that the four leaves I left out were about an inch in thickness and compensated for that by putting in a 1" piece of wood in their place. Once that was done I wrestled the axle into place and bolted it up.

I was pretty pleased with myself until I noticed one fairly big problem. I let the jack down and set the weight of the vehicle on all four tires for the first time. I had grand visions of rolling the truck out into the driveway and being able to walk all around it and give it a good look over in the light of day. I decided to give it a little push and nothing happened. I made certain all of the wheel chocks were out and tried it once more- again nothing. It felt like the brakes were locked up but I knew that wasn't possible as there weren't even rear drums on the truck. I jacked up the rear end and found the left rear wheel would only turn about 45 degrees. The right rear wheel turned fine and when I turned the pinion the right side turned but not the left. I tried giving it a good tug but still nothing. I immediately started thinking about everyone that had cautioned me about the potential of warping an axle housing by welding on it. The thing is, I tend to err on the side of caution in situations like that and I knew the risks before I did any welding. Also after studying the mount that broke I could see my penetration was very poor (which led to the weld braking). I don't think I could have warped the housing but I really don't know.

The other thing about the axle that popped into my head was from the night I bought it. Only after getting the thing into the back of my truck did I notice one of the center section nuts was missing. I asked the seller if he had the differential apart and he said that he infact had taken that one apart. When I heard that my heart immediately sank. In my past I've usually had good luck with buying rear axles, swapping mounts and just changing fluid before installing them. Now I knew I was going to be into it a lot deeper. Once I got home and unloaded it I noticed a few other nuts were missing as well as the pinion yoke. It was a little disappointing but not the end of the world by any means. It occurred to me that I couldn't remember if I ever even checked to make sure everything turned and worked before I started to install it. Bummer.

I tried to take out the left axle shaft to inspect it but quickly realized I was going to need a slide hammer from the shop to accomplish that so I just put it back together and on the ground for the mean time.

I wanted to put the bed back on to see the truck looking more 'together'. The problem is that this bed is from a Model T that someone had converted into a utility trailer. I think there must be something that goes between the bottom of the bed and the frame that I don't have. Without it the bed would sit across the frame and balance on top of the rear crossmember which is almost 6" above the frame rails. I decided that for the time being I would raise the bed up with some 2 X 4's. I made a little wooden frame and fastened that to the vehicle frame.



Then I positioned the bed on that got it as centered as I could and ran a pair of screws down through the mostly rotten wood floor of the bed to hold it in place.

Things were looking pretty good after that except the back of the cab seemed to be too low. Earlier over the weekend I had run a couple of bolts through the inside of the cowl to the factory body mounting brackets on the frame. It fit like it was made for it! Which, I guess it was. Once that was done the rear mounting holes at the back of the cab lined up perfectly. I don't have any of the body mounting wood yet so I grabbed some discarded 2 X 4 remnants and made a temporary body mount. Once I snuck those between the subrails and the frame I thought things started to look a lot better.



I still have a lot I want to get done before I put this away for the winter but today I feel pretty good about things.

 

[QUOTE I still have a lot I want to get done before I put this away for the winter but today I feel pretty good about things.[/QUOTE]

Winter = hot rod building time.

 

Ha! That's true, Rich! However I have to do most of my winter 'building' in my head. I only have a two car garage and in the winter I give half of it to my wife. That only leaves me one spot and three projects. I'll have to disassemble most of the truck to store it away for the winter. One day I will have more room for winter work.

 

I brought home a slide hammer from work tonight. I wanted to pull the left axle shaft out of the 9 inch to see why the wheel wouldn't turn much. Removing the axle shafts from a 9 inch is pretty easy. Once the brake drum is off there are four nuts that go onto studs that have to be removed. Then the axle should pull out. A lot of times you will need to give it a little 'muscle' to help it. A slide hammer usually makes pretty quick work of this job and in this case that proved to be true. After two whacks with it the axle shaft popped out.



It was pretty apparent right away that the outer wheel bearing was the problem. It was fairly crusty and the bearing was mostly seized. I was relieved that I hadn't warped the axle housing. However, I was a little concerned that the bearing had rusted up that badly. It made me wonder about the condition of the rest of the internals. I know the previous owner had disassembled it and left it without lubricant in it. I think I will get a new wheel bearing on it tomorrow and clean up the axle shaft. Then I think I will empty a couple old quarts of gear oil I've saved for many years into the pumpkin to hopefully keep things from getting any worse. I know the axle will need to be completely gone through but I don't want it getting any crustier in the mean time.



My wife caught me with the camera as I was inspecting my shaft.

 

Looking good! This is a nice build.

 

Jay why not pop the other axle out and drop the pumpkin while you have it tore down this far?

That way you could inspect the gears/diff and make sure it's not toast. Then you aren't left wondering if it's a rotted mess or good to go. Pull it out and if it looks good throw it back in and fill it with lube. If you just fill it with lube now you'll have more of a mess to deal with later. That's just my opinion on it ( which doesn't mean much! ) .

 

Sweet build! A Model A pickup is something I can dream about, someday when I'm done with my o/t cars, I'll hopefully be lucky enough to find one.

 

Just found this thread, build is coming along nicely! Can't wait to see more updates!

 

That's your old frame!

Looking good Jay!

Remember, my shop is open all Winter. Plenty of time to rebuild and refurbish parts!

 

It's looking great already too! Glad it found a good home. Looking forward to seeing this truck come together!

 

Many years ago when I was trying to convince my wife that I was a suitable candidate for marrying I promised her that she would have a garage stall to keep her car in over the harsh Minnesota winters. Living in the 'big city' as we do our lot is rather small and we only have a two car garage. Over the winter I store one of my old cars on "my half" and let her keep her car on "her half". Being a bit of a pack rat this usually turns into rather tight fit but I have always managed to pull it off.

This year I needed to do something with the Model A to make room for her car. I realized the only realistic option was to disassemble it and store the majority of it in and or around my F100.

So, in the period of about an hour's time I took the product of a years worth of collecting, scavenging and building...



..and turned it into this disaster.



I did receive some good advice from Stefan Hokuf (Pinewood on here) earlier this year. We were corresponding about the process of building a long-term project. He mentioned that while building his A coupe one very important thing he found was to always be working on something even if it was only something small. This helped to keep the project from losing momentum and getting moth-balled for weeks or months or years. This is good advice.

Over the winter I have few small things lined up to keep the project moving forward.

One small thing to keep me busy will be restoring a set of headlamps I found at the Roadsters Swap last month. I had been wanting a pair of 682-J headlamps for a while. I'd looked online and it seemed like the average price for a set was usually around $75-80 for an original, complete pair needing to be completely redone. Add another $15-20 on top of that for shipping and I was looking at around $100 so I always held off on buying.

I hadn't even been really looking for a pair when Beau and I saw some at the last swap. I almost even walked away from them before Beau convinced me that they were too good a deal to pass up. For his reward I let him carry one of them around for the rest of the swap.

I ended up getting a nice, complete pair with tags and only one small dent in one housing for $45. I was pretty happy about that.



My plan is to strip and repaint the housings and then convert them to modern 12 volt lamps. Should keep me busy for a little while.

 

Yeah, I hear the weather's hell where you live.

 

It can be. Our temperatures can easily vary over 100 degrees in the course of any given year here. In the winter it can get down WELL below zero with near Arctic windchills. In the summer we can go over 100 with tropical levels of humidity. Sounds terrible but the people are great and the old tin is in abundance.

 

Nice build!!
I too am preparing for the deep freeze, I just tucked in my fairlane for the winter.

 

Jay, my shop will be warm and cozy for all the little projects you want to work on.

Still jealous of your scores at that last swap! What a morning!

Those lights should clean up nice. Be sure to keep your springs readily available too. Bring them by and you can detail them. I like Stephan's advice.

As far as weather...no earthquakes, no hurricanes/tsunamis and no floods. Our lakes and trees make up for the rest. We have it easy!

 

Yeah, but it takes so long to get there and the old tin is probably just crashed Probes.

 

^^^^^
The crashed probes come from Wisconsin

 

Hmmm...I thought they would have come from Florida.

 

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the passing of Ron Young, "Youngster" on this board. Ron passed away a few weeks ago. A lot of people knew Ron from his legendary T Bucket plans which he gave away for free and inspired numerous builds.

Link to Ron's T Bucket plans.
http://www.netquickposse.org/tbucketeers/Youngsters_T_Bucket_Frame_Plans_V1_0.pdf

Although Ron was a fellow Minnestan he was known all over the country in the hot rod community. In addition to his T Bucket plans he was well known for his knowledge, experience, helpfulness and generosity.

I never met Ron in person but corresponded with him many times over the years during the course of my projects. He was always VERY willing to freely offer up his time and advice to help fellow Rodders.

His passing is a great loss to the hot rod community.

R.I.P. Ron "Youngster" Young

Ron posted earlier in this very build which is one reason I wanted to stop and take a moment to acknowledge his passing.

If you would like to share your thoughts about Ron, please do not post them here. Here is a link to a thread specifically for that purpose.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=750641

 

Any updates on your pickup?

Aaron


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Hey Aaron, thanks for asking.

The truck has temporarily fallen into the infamous, "Project Blackhole".

At the end of last Fall I had to disassemble the truck for Winter storage.

The truck went from this...



...to this in around an hour.



After that I had to 'squirrel away' pretty much an entire truck (plus MANY, MANY extra parts) to make room for my wife's car in the garage over the winter.

So I got creative.



The empty pick-up cab made an awesome spot to store the five or six extra hoods I'd somehow managed to accumulate over the previous year. Talk about putting ten pounds of s@*t in a five pound sack! I threw an extra door on the roof and shoved some other parts in the nooks and crannies.

Then I took the bed and put it in the back of my F100. It didn't take up much space in there and left me most of the storage room in the F100 over the winter.



Photo is a nice illustration of how truck dimensions changed in around 20 years.

After that I had to put the chassis out to pasture.
I stopped to take a photo of it half way through our unbearably long winter.



Sad, I know.

I had planned to dig it out around the first of June. Two weeks prior to that the wife came out to the garage and was poking around. We got to talking about our 80% finished teardrop trailer which had been tucked away in the corner of the garage for the last 5 years. We decided we would put a couple of weeks work into it and finish it so we could either sell it or at least store it outside. Three hours later I had dug out the trailer. She came back to the garage to check on my progress and gave the trailer the old stink eye. She said she remembered how much we used to argue when we worked together on the camper and said she now thought it was a bad idea to work on.

After spending a few hours to get it into a place we could work on it I wasn't about to put it back into deep hibernation. I made the call to give it a few weeks to finish it myself. Well.......that was two-and-a-half months ago.

Just like with a car project nothing goes as quickly as we envision it will. I was having fun at first working on the trailer. A few moments I even contemplated selling the Model A off because I just had too many projects. But I kept telling myself, "Just one more weekend on this and THEN I will get back to the Model A." But one weekend has lead to another weekend and now summer s half over.

Earlier today I wrestled with the realization that there is so much left to still finish on the camper that I might not get back to the Model A at all this summer. It was kind of depressing. I'm really starting to resent the trailer for taking up all of my time this summer. But I feel like I'm so close to finishing it that I have to see it through now. Sucks, but a reality.

I guess there's no reason I need to rush the Model A out but I do really miss working on it.

We will see....

 

Nice F100, the pic of the A bed in the back looks familiar


I'm in a similar situation, but looks like our weather is better right now.


Thanks for the update. Hang in there, it's a marathon.

Aaron


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It's been the better part of a year since my last update.

The project has finally awoken from a year-and-a-half hibernation in the back yard. Last Saturday I untarped and disassembled the chassis and loaded it into the back of the F100. Even in small 'pieces' the bigger chunks were killer to load by myself. I had an offer of help but turned it down because I like to be independent- terrible decision in retrospect. Regardless, I got everything loaded and brought it down to the workshop I have been renting with a handful of the locals. Once there I began to set everything back up to the state it had been in a few hours earlier.

I'm looking forward to getting back to work on this. A big problem for me was that I overthink everything. This tends hold me back a lot, especially in areas I don't have a lot of experience or expertise. I had hit a road block on the project and was a bit overwhelmed with how to proceed with it. Now in my shared workspace I've got the benefit of a good group of guys with an amazing knowledge base to help me out so I'm hoping to make some real progress.

For now I've decided to leave the cab and box tucked away in storage at home. My first priority is to get the chassis done and until then the body would just be in the way at the shop. I did have a spare Model A cowl lying around so I set that up on the frame to give me an idea of proportions.



Those of you with good eyes may recognize the character in the left of the photo. He has a build going here as well.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=667069
If you haven't checked it out you should. If mine turns out even half as well as his is going I will be really happy.

As of right now I have 90% of the pieces I need (except for the body) down at the shop. The first big swap of the year is happening Sunday and I hope to pick up the last couple ingredients I need.

 

YES! So happy to see it in the shop. It'll be ready in no time!

FWIW, Jay is the one responsible for me even thinking about building a Model A. I knew nothing about these two years ago. Now I get to help him!!!

 

Hey jay good to see this going again. Over thinking sounds like some of my process too

 

Go man go!


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Update time:

In the two months since I brought the carcass of my project down to the shop I have made some progress. I have also butchered some perfectly good steel, overthought many fairly simple things, gotten half as far in twice as much time as I planned, spent more money than I intended to and discovered I can't use several of the parts I had planned on using for this build. So, I guess you could say it's been a typical 2 months in any project build.

Part of the reason this build initially stalled out was because I had gotten to the point where I was very confused about several key parts of the chassis construction. In time since then I have read quite a bit and talked to numerous people about the correct way to set up a chassis. One of the frustrating things I was finding was the inconsistencies of the responses I was getting. I'd ask one reputable source a question and get their answer. Then I'd ask someone else the same question and get an entirely different response. I was talking to a friend about how this was driving me crazy and he said something so simple and true that it really put me at ease. He said, "Maybe there's more than one 'right' way to do something like this". Of course! From that moment on I was at peace with the idea of compiling everything I had read and using my own best judgement. So that is what I did.

Over the winter I had some un intended success gathering parts. Once I had written off the project it seemed like everywhere I turned someone had a piece for me. A friend needed a carburetor for a project and rather than pay me the $20 I was asking for it he offered me a TH350 for it in trade. I figured at a minimum it would be useful for drivetrain mock-up and accepted his offer. A few months later a running 305 Chevy motor became available for $50 so I scooped that up as well. For a very minimal financial investment I now had the start of my drivetrain.

Using a SBC engine in a stock Model A chassis creates some clearance issues. My options were to either reverse the firewall or to recess it for the necessary extra room I would need. I'm 6'0 tall so I thought the smaller sacrifice of interior space lost with an engine recess was the better option. I'm also planning on running a full hood on the truck so it wouldn't be something many people would ever see.

A couple figures I had found that most builders seemed to agree on were these; the engine carburetor mounting surface needs to be as close to level (zero degrees) as possible and the transmission tailshaft should be going downward at approximately three degrees.

I went to the first swap of the season and came away with a lot of important pieces I needed to help with the mock-up phase. I needed to find an intake so I could easily find level on the engine. I found exactly what I wanted, a mid-60's two barrel 327 intake with an oil fill tube in the front. I wanted the oil fill tube so that I could run some early Chevrolet script valve covers. I wanted the two barrel because I like the idea of getting a little better MPG and crisp performance. (Right now I'm driving a mildly built 390/ four barrel around as a daily driver and the mileage is killing me). Picked up the intake and carb for $10 and had a guy trying to buy the carb off of me for a tri-power set-up before I even left the grounds.



I also was able to locate a short SBC water pump (apparently a necessity in the application I am building) for $4. When the time comes to actually put a pump on the engine I will get a new one. The price is only $20 for one but at the time I just needed something to establish clearance at the radiator and already felt like I was hemmoraging money so I cheaped out and now have a core. I also picked up an old four blade fan for a couple bucks as well.

The first thing I did once I had all of the ingredients together was to check out the rake of the chassis as it would be sitting with the weight of the body and drivetrain in it. I had already temporarily mocked up the rear end and spring. I sat the engine and transmission across the frame approximately where they would be mounted. I then added every other piece I had sitting around that I intended to use of the car and a couple hundred pounds of old free weights I had around the shop. I measured the angle of the frame rail (front to rear) and found that the frame went nose-down at four degrees.

Once I had that established I removed the front and rear axles and suspension and set the frame up on jackstands at the previous height and incline.

I had an old junk cowl I had picked up for practically free the previous summer and decided to use that to help. I mounted it to the frame in the factory location and then assessed approximately how much would need to be removed for engine clearance. Then I got out the Sawzall and went to town.

I wheeled out the cherry picker and set the engine into the frame rails and experimented with various heights and locations using jackstands to support it from below. Once I had it approximately where I thought it belonged I put the radiator in place and checked my clearance with the fan. It looked OK but I still moved it away from the fan about another half inch just in case numbers changed at all as it came together.

Next I figured out where the mounts needed to be on the frame. Beau had given me some engine-to-block mounts that worked out perfectly so I just had to make some mounts to weld to the frame to mate up with them. The version I ended up using involved some 3/16" 3" square tubing. This was my second attempt at making the mounts. The first did not go so well. The plan was to weld my frame mounts into the frame channel and then further reinforce them by boxing them in. Worked out pretty well- eventually. This step took quite a bit longer than I would have liked but I am pretty happy with the results.





The transmission mount was actually a lot easier. Initially I had planned to use a modified F1 truck crossmember and pedal assembly. Unfortunately because of the height of the engine the F1 mount wouldn't fit anywhere close to the right height. This meant I not only needed another transmission mount but also a new pedal/ master cylinder. I ended up taking the easy route. I picked up the Speedway catalog and bought a universal TH350 trans mount. I had done some measurements and ordered the mount with an eight inch drop. It worked fine but I probably could have gone with only the six inch drop and mounted it a little lower in the frame,. Yes, it is an ugly, tubular mount but it was cheap and quick and no one will see it.



I ended up having to cut about 3.75" off of each side of the mount to have it fit in the unboxed frame. Then when it was a snug fit I put a floor jack under the tailshaft of the transmission, set the angle at three degrees negative and bolted the mount to the trans. Then I marked where the mount sat and welded on the end flanges and bolted them in. Easy. And done.

 

Glad you're back at it.

Aaron


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Cool project. Stay motivated!!!