Man you've given me so many great ideas for the '30 fordor I just picked up. Im so jealous of your planning, fab and welding skills! Thanks for all the great pics and keep up the great work!
Here are some pics of the restraints I made for the air tank. I took some sst. band clamps and small dia. tubing to make the ends. Welding the thin strapping material was fun. Here are the pic's: This pic shows the one end of the strap restraint. I have some thin sst. strap welded to tubing then some small flat bars to create a double link. Everything is held together with a couple of #6 shcs. At the other end of the strap restraint I have the gizmo shown below. To the sst. strap I welded a piece of angle with a hole in it. The bolt shown has been replaced by a piece of all thread and nut to give me lots of adjustment. The all thread is screwed into a piece of round bar with a threaded hole in it. This round bar is slid inot a tube with a slot in it to allow it to pivot.
Hey mosimpson, I have a complete '30 fordor just like yours that I plan to do a pretty similar build with. You think I should pull the body off and put it on a platform like you built or should I take advantage of it still being attached to the original frame-while I work on replacing the wood and doing the chop on the body? I plan to build my own 2x4 frame and chanel the body 4" also. Since you've been through all this already, maybe you would be able to tell me which would be easier in the long run. Thanks, Jeremy
Jeremy I definately think the platform is worthwhile. It accomplishes several different things for you. It provides a solid base while you are chopping and upgrading the body structure. You can use wood screws to fixture body parts securely in place while you replace interior wood or fabricate steel reinforcement. It also provides support for the frame while you are fabricating and laying it out. I upgraded to a thicker top with a white melamine surface that was nice for making notes and alignment marks. I can't imagine building the car without the platform.
ok thats what I needed to know- thanks! I'm glued to your build, so be sure and keep us up to date! Jeremy
Here is a little project I am just wrapping up for the car, the battery box.. It's a little out of sequence, I had been working on the rear floors but don't have time to make that post today. This box is designed to fit an Optima red top. It was a chance to practice my metal forming and use my dimple dies. Anywhere here are the pic's I managed to get of it as it was built: The box flat before corners were cut out: Here is the almost finished product: I'll get a shot of it with the battery in and add it later. Here they are:
In a tribute to BilletProof I rolled the car out of the garage for a photo shoot. Well actually I needed to clean the garage around where the car has been sitting for the majority of the past 3 years . Anyway here are some pics of the sedan. The first four are with the chassis aired all the way up: This set of four pic's is with the chassis aired out:
Lovin it man! So are you able to air up the rear bags high enough to be able to fully open the rear doors?
[QUOTE=GaryB;5662508]beautiful work, how much air do you have between the ground and the body?[/QUOTE] Thanks. It is 6" at ride height So are you able to air up the rear bags high enough to be able to fully open the rear doors? Thanks J. No the rear doors are more like access panels. The idea is to unlatch and then pull the hinge pins when you need to access the removable sheet metal panels inside the car at the rear kick up.
I needed an electrical subpanel for wiring the air bag solenoids and controller. Real estate is at a premium on the chassis so I had to get somewhat creative. First I mocked up the shape of the panel and laid out the components that it would carry. I used a piece of panel board as a mock-up piece while I searched for a home for the panel. Here is what that looked like: As I searched for a place to put the panel, I kept coming back to the chassis kickup area. This seemed like a good place since I had put a removable panel in the floor in this area. I trimmed the panel up to make it as small as possible. Here is what the mock-up panel looked like after going on a diet: I made some standoffs out of some hex steel stock. I put male threads at one end so I could utilize the threaded mounts at the solenoid plate to mount the standoffs. The other end was tapped to accept a bolt. Here is a pic of the panel mounted to the chassis: And a couple pics with everything mounted: I ended up having the aluminum plate black anodized to make it match the frame .
I bought two aluminum bomber seats from Speedway. For seat belts I purchased 5 point Simpson Harnesses from Summit. The next challenge was to build some seat mounts. I decided to build a tubular structure out of 1.25" dia. tubing to mount the seats and harnesses. I used double shears tabs from a&a mfg. to mount the harnesses (http://www.aa-mfg.com/pdshop/shop/ ). Here are some pictures I took during the fab: Fabbin the seat frame Partially done seat frame in the car Seat, frame & harness on workbench Shot of tube end cap I got from A&A Closeup of frame with end cap welded in This shot shows the cutout I made in the seat for the lap belt
A ran brake lines on the chassis recently. Not the easiest thing to take pictures of but I do have a few. My brake lines are 3/16 steel with AN fittings. Here are a few shots of what they look like: Chassis front: Hard line on the Ford 9": I have hanging pedals mounted to a tubular structure in the cowl of the car. I decided to run hard lines out the master cylinders to three bulkhead fittings mounted to the floor kick board. On the other side of the floor I jumper to the hard lines on the chassis with some flexible stainless lines. Here is what the hard plumbing at the master cylinders looks like:
We use Solidworks, a 3D PC based system at work. Just upgraded to Solidworks 2011. Speaking of nerdy, keep an eye out for a post from me this week using state of the art engineering tools for building a hot rod. I know not everybody has access to these type of tools, but I think everybody can appreciate the results. I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I saw the results!!
The chassis was finally ready for the motor. So today I retrieved it from my brothers garage and installed it. The pictures tell the story, but I will add the gantry crane I built a year ago sure made it easy.
Built some lake headers for the car. Started with a kit from lakeheaders.com: Spent some time trying decide where I could place the header relative to drag link: Decided to shoot the megaphone down below the drag link. With that decided I started with the front most tube to establish the angle of the megaphone. Then moved to the last tube to establish the distance from the cowl. There are several good threads documenting this process. Here is what the headers looked like as they took shape: Once I had everything tacked up on the driver side, I proceeded to make the mirror image for the passenger side. I clamped the two headers together and established some measurement points on the welding table so I could create a mirror image of the tacked up drivers side: After I had two duplicates tacked up the only thing that remained was finish welding and grinding for a nice finish. I will mention I also welded the inside of the tubes to the header flange. Here is what they ended up looking like:
Decided to put the car in epoxy primer last year. Holy smokes that stuff is expensive, nearly $500 for primer!! Here are a bunch of random pictures showing the progress. As you'll see, I used a cheapo Harbor Freight gun and shot everything in the driveway.
Mo, you have no idea how much I like seeing your Fordor coming along so well. You have done some really nice work on it and it looks like you are getting close. Bet you are getting excited. Don
Glad you're enjoying the build Don. This whole build is all Dan's fault . However I have no intentions of converting it to a RPU anytime soon! Here's a few pictures of the parts all put back together: