Hot Rods Post war 31 A coupe traditional build?????

Great build man!!!! your coupe is looking great!!!

 

Thanks for the comment guys, yeah that column drop needs something....

 

Heres another picture with a full view of the dsah in it.

 

Next I want to cover the modification of my F1 Steering box to fit closer into my chassis, giving me more header clearance on the V8.
There are several options I know for steering boxes I also have an F100 one but the column exiting from the bottom of the box worked better for me.
So I looked at a few threads on here and also Tardels book and decided to go with what I thought is the safest way of doing the job,
Firstly I had to fix the stub which the column outer sleeve slides over and clamps to. the guy that I bought the box off had cut the column off through this part with a disc cutter instead of removing the clamp and sliding it off ???
so the best way I thought to weld the new stub I machined up onto the the box keeping it in line so the column shaft isn't touching the side of the sleeve at the steering wheel end, was to make an alignment jig
pictured here with the new stub at the top being a nice sliding fit, the large end is also a nice slide fit into the bearing diameter on the other side of the box, the pictures explain it better.....





Once the stub was in position I mig welded it on around the vee I had made....

 

So with that finished I can get on with making the box fit properly into the chassis, firstly I cut the three points off the original triangle shaped flange not affecting the length of the box in any way, then roughly sanded it round to make for less turning on the lathe.....

Then I put it in the four jaw chuck on the lathe and clocked the sector shaft bore dead true.


I then turned it down up to the gusset until it just cleaned up all round as this keep the wall thickness nice and heavy.


Then when I knew what the finished size was I could cut the hole in the frame bigger so that it fits through.


You can see that it gives decent clearance from these pics around the header.

Then I cut a flange out of 12mm steel plate to replace the one I had cut off earlier.



I had to put it up in the lathe to bore it out to a slightly lose fit so it can be welded on at a slight anlge when finished.




Then I bolted it all up to the column and bolted the flange to the chassis and tack welded the flange in place, I actually ended up making a different flange as this one was a bit thin between the hole and the edge, so so with the new flange made I welded it in place.



Then with it all finished I liked the idea of making a finisher so go on the outside as it spreads the load from the three bolts and also looks pretty ;D



Please note these are not the three bolts that will be used when its finally bolted in position...(this has all been done here before)

 

you rock man, that dash looks amazing in there.

 

great thread, get suscribed

nice dashboard !

 

Nice finishing plate. Here is the one I did on the brothers car.

 

Really nice workmanship on the coupe. Keep it coming!

 

next part: tackle was the pedal set up.
I wanted to use a 32 pedal assembly as this is the obvious route when using the 32 K-member as it just bolts in and away ya go.
If only it was that simple as not everyone has a couple of pedal assemblies hanging on their garage wall, so I decided to make my own as close to an original set as possible.
A mate has a mint orig set so I borrowed them to copy, first part was to make the pedal box itself, this was the easy bit, I just made some cardboard templates of each side of the box cut them out of steel plate and had them welded together by a top welder at work as I dont have a Tig and im not that good a tig welder, then machined up some bushes for the pedal shaft to go through and welded them on.
the shaft is just a piece of 7/8" ground bar cut to length and the job is a good un........
see pics they explain it better...... ;D

 

O.K now the Pedals,
I'm lucky enough to have a laser cutter at work which can cut up to 20mm in steel plate and 12mm in stainless which is also accurate to with 0.10mm or .0025" to all the old people ;D
So i made a cardboard template of each of the original pedals then I had to shorten each template by 25mm (1") as the orig 32 pedals touched the floor pan at the firewall, then I took measurements from templates and got one of the draftsman at work who owed me a favour to draw the pedals up on solid works.
first of all I had them cut out of 1mm stainless to check they worked OK

and then I machined up a pair of bushes with clearance bores for the 7/8" shaft, slid them into the thin templates and tried them for size....



when I was happy I then had them cut out of 12.7mm (1/2") steel plate

I had to use the Oxy/Accetylene kit to heat the proper ones and bend them to shape, the thin templates came in handy to copy for the shape, then tried them into place.....




all that was left to do then really was fettle them into shape to try and get that original look which took ages, and then I drilled the hole for the pedal foot pads which I just made from 3mm steel discs with a stud welded to the back.
I managed to find some brand new original pedal rubbers in my cupboard that I have had for years ( Iknew they would come in handy one day) ;D
I had to then bore out the steel bushes and make some bronze inserts to press into them, then went through them with a 7/8" reamer after getting the steel bushes welded in at work



I had to then make the fork to fit the clutch arm into and drill the hole for the brake rod......

 

Then fitted them in, shit they took along time to make, it is only after I had to write it all down that I just realized this.....
hope Y'all like my pedals...???









Sorry the pics are a bit mixed up....

 

So the next stage I'm at is the roof chop, Ive never had anything to do with chops before or any major body mods, the most Ive ever done is widen fenders or just repairing panels, so with my lack of experience I decided it would be a good idea to go and help my mate Kelvin with the roof chop on a customers coupe as he is an old hand with several chops under his belt.
so after helping him finish off Drew's I was confident I could do this ;D
and I really wanted to do it on my own and jump in at the deep end and whats the worst that could happen ;D
So this is the way I did it and hopefully will be helpfully for all of those virgin roof choppers who want to have ago......
so after helping Kelv I came to the conclusion that the secret to a good chop is to make sure that your cuts are dead parallel so when the cuts edges come together there is no gaps anywhere and also that the welds are continuous to keep a even flow of heat into the metal.
here is the car before the chop with stock height roof....


So to keep the cuts parallel I got a 1mm piece of stainless steel sheet cut on the laser at work 4" wide and wrapped it around the body and clamped it on I thought this would be better than measuring as I could then use a scriber against the edge of the sheet to get a good line in the paint.



Then I braced up the body a little to make sure nothing moved on me half way through.


to be continued....

 

Next was to make the cuts, I did these with a 1mm disc as I find this the easiest plus its all I have. ;D
I cut the top off first and then cut the remaining 4" bits off the body, I did the windscreen pillars the same as Kelv does his by cutting the roof off right at the top of the screen and then sectioning the pillars down in the door shut lines and in the windscreen shut line, this way the door hinges stay the original distance from the top of the door and you have no welds visible on the windscreen pillars, its quite hard to explain in words hopefully the pictures will do a better job.... ;D


off with the roof, had to get the wife in to help with this part.


Then cut of the 4" note leaving the windscreen pillars at full height.



cutting through the front pillars was quite tricky with the grinder so I had to take the guard off to get in there which resulted in me forgetting I had taken the guard off 30 seconds later and resting my finger against the no existent guard, ouch......

I cut just inside the scribed lines top and bottom and then trimmed to the lines after with a sanding flap disc.


then cut the inside of the windscreen pillars out so I could cut 4" off the top of the outside parts left, then I cut 4" off the bottom of the inside and tacked them back into the pillars, if you know what I mean ???


this keeps the original roof mount hole on the inside and also the hinge the original distance from the roof and also the windscreen opening studs end up in the right place for the sliders. sorry I didn't take any more detailed close up photos.
so with the roof rough clamped on I was happy with the even gap all round and tacked it on.

 

A view from the front...

and from the back...

I lined up the joins with those cool aircraft type tools called clecko's (I think that's how you spell it?) then I fully welded the roof on using my mig welder as I dont have a tig.



I had very minimal distortion really but on the pass side I had to make a couple of pie cuts purely to match the shape to the drivers side, I suppose this is because the panels were slightly different when they were made, I also had to trim the rear side window front and back to make the area where the glass fits against flat as the thickness of the pillars are different top to bottom, then just put a bit of rattle can red oxide on it ready for the filler.




then I did the doors, it was just a case of cutting 4" straight out of the middle, I used the template again for this.


I also had to trim the inside of the door frame to line up the window channel so the glass will go up and down freely.
next is apply the filler and wheel it outside a take a look at it.

 

While it is a great looking piece on its own, I think it's shape and corners contrast with the dash. The dash is large flowing curves, and the column drop is small tight angles.
They both look great, but in my humble opinion, they don't look great together.

Excellent build by the way!

 

After applying what was minimal filler(bondo) really, it turned out just how I wanted it to and I was really pleased after 2 full days of hard work ;D
I hope this has been useful to all those people who want to have a go at doing a roof chop by thier selves so you either have to be good with metal or good with filler(bondo) then it has a good chance of turning out ok.
Im not saying this is the right way to do a chop, this is just how I chose to do it with steeling other peoples ideas that I liked and adding a few of my own for good measure, as long as the end result is how you want it, it does'nt really matter how you get there.
thanks for reading
Jeremy ;D

 

Hell yes, The ages of time you spent on them really show, and was well worth it, makes me want to go get kicking on my coupe!

-Justin

 

I've been watching this thread for a while and I love where you're taking this build.

I like the rounding idea as well However I was wondering about a different way of pinching the column where it wouldn't have the knee knocker bolt tabs sticking out yet it would retain that deco design.

Your thoughts?

 

Yes, I agree with that comment, I need to round it off, I could make it so that it was in one piece and slid over the column before I put it onto the steering box and just have a pinch bolt in the back where it cant be seen, I will leave it as it is for now and remake it in the near future.
Thanks Jeremy

 

Exceptional!

 

This is to answer the question of what riveting tooling did i use to do all my chassis riveting, hope this helps.......

I bought my snaps for my air hammer from http://www.bigflatsrivet.com/
and I bought my air hammer from a store in England called machine mart, I went for the best quality one that Clarke make, I made the rivet jacks myself used for all the rivets inside the rails and for all the other rivets I made the double ended rivet buck which is held in place with a good G-clamp when used.
The drills are what I used to make the double buck, I ground them to the same radius of the two rivet Heads.
the two rivets sizes for a 32 frame is 5/16" x 1" and 1/4" x 1" and are round head made from steel.
refer to the website above for all the correct ways for fitting rivets and cutting them to correct length, and never quench any of the tooling always allow to air cool

Thanks for all the positive comments guys
Jeremy

 

wow... super impressed brother, I love the stance!!!!

 

Thanks for sharing your pictures, your doing some really nice work, its some great inspiration for the A i have.

Joe

 

Thanks for sharing your pictures, your doing some really nice work, its some great inspiration for the A i have.

Joe

 

Had to subscribe to this thread, your doing some awesome work! Love the pedals, and your coupe is looking great!

 

So I think its time I made an update on my build thread as I havent for a while and im waiting for paint to dry so I got nothing better to do,
The other week I decided to takle the machining job of reconditioning my rear axle bearing diameters on the end of my axle bells.
I read a few techs on this and they all refer to anealing the ends to soften them enough to be able to machine them but I didnt fancy doing this as I dont really know anything about heat treatment and I wasnt sure how it would affect the structure of the metal or how strong it would be when finished, so at work we have these really cool ceramic cutting inserts which are basically designed for machining super hard materials.
so before I started cutting metal I had to make a couple of bungs that fitted nice a snug in the hub end of the bell with a centre in for the tailstock, I made these just a bit smaller than the finished size I was going to turn to fit the new bearing sleeves

I decided to do the work on one of the old CNC Lathes we have at work as it would be a lot quicker and I was able to write the program and set it upbefore hand without the boss finiding out ;D
this was the machine I used.....

Here is the axle in the chuck ready to go....

I put the bung into the end an popped in the tailstock to give it nice solid support......

You can see how pitted they were...


So I started to cut away to a press fit...

this is after the machinig ready to press on my new sleeve...

removed the bung....


then over to the press to fit the new sleeves, put some nice stong bearing retainer on first just for good measure...

and then pressed them on...

The finished article.....

Thanks for watching
Jeremy ;D

 

Next was to fit my new seals into the bells.
as these are so far down inside the bell they can be difficult to fit without destroying the seal, so after reading the rebuild of a banjo axle on here
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=462776&highlight=banjo+ratio
I decided to make my own version of the seal install tool and thought I would share it with ya'll
so here it is, very simple but effective and easy to make (if you have a lathe)....

This part is threaded through the middle and supports the seal..


so with the seal fitted on to the tool, place it carefully into the housing....

then the stepped cap locates into the diff carrier bearing to keep the tool straight, square and in the middle.


Then I used a piece of plate to place over the hub end which the all thread goes through and put a nut on the thread to pull the seal carefully and slowly into place....

Ratchet spanner is ideal to pull it in....

Seal installed all in-tact and nice and square

Thanks for reading, hope its useful to someone
Jeremy ;D

 

So Ive pretty much been in the garage every evening and weekend for the last couple of weeks and the build is coming together well,
the next thing I did was shorten the drive shaft so I could put the axle back together
I cut the 17 1/4" off the end I needed and re-splinened it to fords spline size as we just happened to hev the right cutter at work ;D
then put the coupling back on, pined it and welded for good measure
heres the pics....

 

Then painted the chassis, hope the shine will dull down a bit over time..



Axles on...

Brake pipes next...






engine and box in...








and thats how it sits tonight......