Projects T-Pain's Build: 28 Tudor

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Tight fit..headers have about 3/4 inch side clearance. Steering is going be another trick...but it'll work out.

 

btt

 

looking good bro keep up the good work

 

Here's some new progress.. Drop axle in place, rear and four link, and some nifty homegrown upper c/o shock mounts.

The c/o mounts ended up as a result of painting ourselves into a corner really... had planned to run a crossmember from right to left..weld in some bungs and hang'em BUT with little room...we thought this would make for a cleaner look. While only one is shown...the two are fabbed from a chunk of 2in 1/4 wall tube with nut welded up inside. Some wrap up remaining with the hairpins...pictured, they are still hainging.

Sure was nice to see the chassis wearing shoes!!!

 

Tough crowd...bttt

 

Some recent progress. Donor top install and misc. details. I believe I'll open up a thread for the donor top prep and install so it's not buried in a deep thread. But here's the pics.

Pictured you can see we changed up the upper bracket mount for the coil over and left it open so we could access the nut...previously is was a more of a closed block that had a nut welded into it...we worried that it could be more likely to go unnoticed if was backing off. So we changed it. I'm still not sure if I like it...looks much lighter than the previous.

There was a day of tweaking the wood bows. We took a no brainer approach of holding a strip of wood from front to back to see which was high and low. The biggest offender was the center that lies in the metal bow. Turned out we had to make some reliefe cuts to pull the metal down a bit and then shaved off the top of the bow. Another was about 3/4 low and had to be built up and smoothed up.

 

Next, as we're pulling the visor to the top...I needed to trim the leading edge of the front oak header back so the visor was not obstructed and could sit in it's new location. Makeing the cut while keeping the header in place was a pain in the ass....but was doable. Doing the best we could with what we had on-hand...we got it cut. A big ass grinder with a saw blade...what else could a guy ask for??? Some tweaking with a block plane helped me to finish it out nice and I did keep the angle that it had when it was stock.

Was scratching my head figuring how I'd cover that oak header. While it will be under the visor..it needed to be capped off to the elements. The original metal cap for it can still be used with some modifications. Shown is how I cut away the unnessary section (previously used to tack to the oak header)

If your planning on raising the Visor up to the top of your 28/29 A..... I had to remove around 3/4 of material off the leading edge of the oak header to allow the Visor to haing correctly from the top...left as it was (as was in the kit) it would have been held out to far. As I cut it back I did maintain the degree of slant that corresponds with the metal cap? that is made to cover it. The cap had to get cut up to fit the face. I trimmed off the entire top edge with those nailing tabs AND had to cut out the inside bottom corners (shown) and taper some of the inside bottom flat out so the unit fit flush...this will be tigged up later.

 

coll project so far!

keep us updated!

 

Trimming the top away and the inside lower corner will allow me to use this piece to cover that oak header. The old holes originally used to screw the visor to will get filled up as they are of no use to me in our application.

 

Got the donor roof prepped, cut, trimmed, and tacked in. I'll link an expanded review in an independent thread as soon as I can. The top will get Tigged-up pretty soon.

Unsure if it's common but we did put some weights on the top to hold it down in addition we drilled and placed a screw...one centered at the rear and at the front to make sure all was held secured while we cut and trimmed to fit the opening. Our donor was fitted to the hole in the top...as compared to a lap weld. Unsure if it's technically a butt weld as we welded it to the edge of the opening...Hopefully the pictures clear up what I'm trying to describe.

I decided that making a gage consisting of two pieces of scrap metal could help maintain a consistent 1/16 low donor panel as compared to the outside. Should allow for a very light skim and finish.

Had to make a few relief cuts on the sides...kept them to around 2 inches...it did help. suspect the front edge will need them too but we've left that to my buddy that tig the visor up for us.

 

Customized some brackets for the wishbones. The ones that came with the front end would have had been welded up on an angle to the rail...(not sitting square)...these account for the offset and keeps all aligned nicely. The pinched frame needed them.

 

Ouiet day today...pushing it back up for more conversation.

 

Here's another first...I think. How were going to keep the leading edge of the roof and visor held down. We morticed in some metal plates along the oak header and screwed them down. Will provide an easy anchor (weld) point for holding it all down. Is guarenteed to handle 180mph speeds without lifting!!

Interested in comments on this...

 

Subscribe! You and your dad have some real talent.

 

We kept the donor top secured with screws and some weights (cinder blocks) while we trimmed the top to fit the hole. We left them on for the tack job too...worked great.

Before we cut the top I ran a scribing compass (set at 1/2 inch) around the opening. One edge of the compass was hooked over the edge of the hole while the other scratched the outside margen line. This became the line we used to create a cardboard template. The template was used for the initial cut of the donor.

After the newly cut donor was set on the roof (with that 1/2 excess all around) we centered and added the weights. Next we drilled two holes in the front and back (on centerline) and screwed it down.

Eventually the rough trimming that left a 1/2 inch margin all around needed to be reduced abit more to allow ourselves the ability to transcribe the outside (on the car) margine BACK to the panel where we needed to cut for the final fit. You see we could not see the scratch on the car when the plug was just sitting over the top of the opening. To save time, NEXT TIME, I'd have undercut the patch (from the template marks) so that it was ready for us to transcribe the body mark back to the trim line... CLEAR AS MUD??? sorry

The trimming went without a hitch...was able to keep it spot on to the opening. From the start of the trimming to the finished tacking I'd say it took 3 hrs.

Forgot to mention...if your looking for good template cardboard you may find it at a monument company...they use it to transport the headstones to keep them from getting scratched. Just a thought...worked for me.

 

4444Design and dirt t.......thanks.

The top we used was from a 63 Impala Wagon. The ribs ran long so we had to terminate them and refinish those. In our case we decided to do this on the back row of the ribs. The Impala roof flips up at the rear and we had to get rid of that. We ended up not using the two outside ribs and was able to disect those (points) and re-use them in the termination of four of the other rear ribs. This left us with two to fab/finess to match. Using a mig for this caused the metal to draw-up...after we had to cut the weld open to allow the panel to lay down....it'll get tigged in the next iteration so it'll stay down.

Word to the wise....those wagons are getting hard to find! Why use a mid sixties wagon...it's the narrow ribs that make them appeal to me. I'd like to have one set back for down the road. They aint making em anymore.

 

With edits....

 

I'm subscribed, keep posting.

 

Floored...will do. Thanks for the interest.

 

Hey boxcar. Nice build, the roof looks great! keep up the good work

 

60 Belair...thanks
Shertz TX.....Had some asshole shooting at me...while I was trying to fish by the river....by an old junkyard....you probally know where I'm talking about. Made me pucker up! I was a Randolph troop in the late 80's

 

Some progress today. Test fitted the body on the chassis.....first time since the chop. Found the wheel wells needed some rework to better fit the tires. The S10 rearend was a little too narrow.... could have used another 4 inches. Will go with a larger rear tire and a smaller front before it's over. But I feel we are moving in the right direction. Pictured....I mocked up the visor and shell

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More pics

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Have a happy and safe 4th of July!

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so how about an update?

 

Yeah, it's about a time for an update for us followers

 

My apologies but the car was put on hold since Oct last year. I had some issues to work out with my shop and decided to expand it. I can only afford one project at a time. But, now that I've added a new "stall".... the car in coming home so I can give it regular attention. As it was I was only working on it during 2-3 visits to Illinois a year. Also got distracted with some old gas pumps and signs. I get distracted easily.

 

I understand "easily distracted" all to well. Nice shop though.

 

Great build. Keep us updated. Great to see your dad building with you.