Looking real good man! That stuff takes some time, doesn't it! Keep it up though, you're getting there Dan
To finish up the B pillars I did some fine tuning on the profile of my custom made 1/8" plate jams before welding. I remember from reading Dodgerodders post about how much all the steel subframe added to the weight of the car. Checking back with Doderodders post he was estimating "5,783 lbs". So I decided to drill some holes in the jams to keep the weight down. I figure if I add holes to as many as the pieces as I can my car should only weigh 2891 lbs. Anyway here's the pics of the jam. <!-- / message -->
Excellent! I like it! I'm going to run into this issue as well as I stiffin up my body and add reinforcements. Looks good!
After finishing the B-pillar fabrication I fit it up to the upper subframe pieces and tacked it all together. I then removed the whole side subframe so I could weld it all up. Here's a pic of the upper side frame assembly tacked and removed from the car for finished welding. I used 1.5 inch square tubing for the other pieces of the subframe just because they seemed to fit the areas that were left by where the wood used to be. Here's a pic of the subframe assembly welded and placed back into the car. Here's the driver's side.
Yes, you, sir, are blind They are showing up now. Man, that looks GREAT mo! You are definitely on the downhill side of things now. I like the holes too-nice touch. You've about got that thing back to being a body again instead of a pile of sheetmetal & wood-no easy task! How are you going to latch the doors? Are you going to use the originals, or switch it up to bear claws?
You wrote the playbook for this build Dodgerodder Bearclaws it is! Work has begun on the doors, stay tuned for pics and progress. I think you'll recognize the doors when you see them. Thanks again for all the support and your build post. There is not a week that goes by that I don't dig through it for reference
I now have a four door ! Did a bunch of work to get all the doors hung and operational on the car over the past few weeks. Here are some pics: The bolts were so rusted in the front doors I had to drill out the bolts to remove the hinges. Not being the world's straightest driller I needed to rehab the threads. Spent some time at the lathe machining some threaed round stock pieces to weld into the old hinges. The back doors didn't have any hinges so I purchased some from Speedway. I clamped them in place and used a long piece of round stock to get them in line. With the hinges positioned where I wanted them I tacked them in place. Checked everything and welded them to the vertical member of the rear subframe.
Ok I'm a litttle out of order on my post's. The previous post showed some work I did on door hinges. Before that was done all four doors had to be rebuilt. With all the wood gone/rotten and some doors missing there jambs, a whole new door substructure needed to be built. I built new jambs out of .125" x 4" flat bar. There are three cross braces on each door, top, bottom and just below the window opening. At the top I used 1x1X.06 square tubing. I stitched the skin to this where it was previously nailed to the stock wood brace. The two other horizontal braces are 1x2x.06" steel tubing. I drilled some holes to make them more visually exciting. These braces are welded between the two jamb pieces on the door. I made a pattern for the correct shape of the door so I could transfer it to the flat bar and bandsaw out the new jamb pieces. I then tack welded them together and belt sanded all like pieces at the same time to produce identical parts. The jambs are tacked to the skin in various places and then small gussetts are spaced along its length and welded to the skin and then the jamb. Each gussett was carefully sanded to achieve a good fit. Here is a pic of the finished rear door: The jamb piece that curves along the rear fender well was hand formed. On one side I formed it over my knee and the edge of the welding table. On the other side I took the piece to work with me and put it in the finger brake. By making a series of slight bends spaced along its length the shape was produced. Both methods seemed to work equally well. The second method was easier on my thigh Here is a final shot that captures the finished product. Again thanks to Dodgerodder for his great post on his build. I am truely benifitting from the documentation of how he solved the subframe dilema of a four door
cool build dude! i think this build is going to be my "first flashback" of the new millenium! wish you were closer would really like to see this one in person.
A short post on the continuing subsframe wood to steel conversion for the Fordor Sedan. I needed a way to tie the lower subframe to the the upper. So what did I do? Exactly, I visited Dodgerodders thread and reproduced what he had done Bent some 1.25 dia. tube with my recently finished tube bender (JD2 style). The tubes are tacked to the 3/16" plate that lays on top of the two pieces of 2x1x.06 rectangular tube that run from the cowl to the rear of the car. The other end of the tubes is tacked to the 1.5" x .12" square tube that was cut and shaped to run along the fenderwell. Both sides were done to match. The steel work is producing the desired results the body is really stiffening up nicely. It sure does take a long time though Here is another shot from a different angle:
mosimpson, build looks great! one word of advice though! ditch those speedway hinges! they are CAST. I bought a set for my 32 project and had them break already and the car hasn't left the garage! they SUCK. they broke right where it changes from flat mounting area to the dual tangs the hing pin goes through. I ended up welding mine back together but I am going to order a high quality set asap!
Scooter - here is a thread talking about these style benders http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=228697&highlight=tubing+bender I'll post a pic of mine this weekend. I didn't buy the JD2, bought a kit, machined a bunch of required parts and assembled a JD2 clone. I'm not sure it was worth the trouble but it kept me busy for a while
Here's a pic of the bender I built. I bought all the flat pieces cut to shape and added all the holes. I made the round parts and bought the die. I think if I had to do it over I'd just buy a JD2 bender. I had plans to build a motorcycle frame from scratch but have since ditched that idea in favor of this Model A project.
Before starting your frame I suggest you view the post by Brianangus "How to build an early hot rod frame". Lots of great ideas, drawings, and photos.
Santa showed up at my house early this year! The weird thing is that he was driving a brown van instead of his sleigh.
Thanks for the compliments guys. Special thanks to Santa's elph Eric at Riley Automotive for the timely delivery of my Christmas present.
Moving to the very rear of the car with the subframe I made a frame for the rear window out of 1" square tube x .06" wall. Here is a pic of the window frame layed out in the car before welding: I tied this into the c-post at the rear doors by making two curved bars out of the 1" square tube. I sliced the tube at 1" intervals through three sides of the tube in the curved area. I formed the tube to match the body contour and tacked up the sliced area to create a curved bar. Here are the pics: I try to prime behind the bare metal that will be unreachable later. I figure a little rattle canning in these areas will help later in life. You can see the black primer in the picture above. Here is a pick of the window frame being welded up:
I finally got around to doing something I was hoping to avoid. I removed the roof panels from the c-post forward so I could get in and do the welding at the upper subframe I really didn't want to cut the sheetmetal loose just to have to weld it back in place after finishing the subframe welding. Oh well !! Here is a couple pic's of the car with the roof panels cut loose and removed: Here is pic of the upper subframe at the windshield header, a-post before welding: And here is joint after welding: Now it's time to build some steel bars that will be the substitute for the old wood bows that were the roof of the car. Welding them in should be a piece of cake with no sheetmetal to deal with
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