For a long time, I've been gathering parts for a 1934 Ford 5 window coupe project. My car is being built along the style of a early/mid 60's style drag car. This means that I want the nose up, rather than down. I wanted a drilled & chromed beam axle, along with chrome hairpins. This meant that I'd be drilling an original Ford axle, rather than buying one of the new aftermarket versions, which could be purchased with the holes already in it and chrome plated. A friend gave me a nice Model A axle for this project. I began the project by finding the center of the axle, center punching the location for the center hole, and laying out the location of the other holes - working from the center out to each side. When center punching the location for the other holes, I noticed that the shape of the valley area of these old axles isn't uniform - which makes centering the hole more difficult. The arc of the hole pattern has to match the arch of the axle or you'll end up with a crooked smile pattern in the axle. After marking and center punching each hole location, I began the process of drilling the holes. I started with a 1/8" bit and worked my way up through 5/8" diameter bits. At this time, I noticed two things - #1 being that the larger diameter holes are a bear to drill and #2 was that I'd gotten a couple of the holes off-center. I then decided to take a break from this project and ponder how I wanted to proceed. At 5/8" diameter, I'm still a good distance away from the desired finished hole diameter of 1". A few weeks ago, I took the car's frame to my local sandblaster (Steve Epperson - Epperson Sandblasting 423-357-5777). While waiting for the blasting to be completed, I noticed that Steve had a new addition to his machine shop area - a CNC mill. I talked with Steve about my axle "situation". He assured me that he could make it look right. Check out the result, below. I have a new found respect for the old guys that drilled their axles the old fashioned way.
Nice looking Model A axle. They do look good. That body shell looks real nice also, but I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the complete floor. That's really incredible. Wow
Use NEW hermaphrodite dividers though!!! Used ones are full of germs & disease. They are nasty & you don't know where they've been. JH
Thanks, guys, for the kind remarks as well as the tips on drilling the axle. I've already narrowed a '64 Pontiac rear and have a 3.90 posi third member for it. I have a nice Borg Warner T-10 4 speed and am working on getting the pieces to either build a .125 overbore 283 or use a 327 block and use oversized Z28 302 pistons. I already have an early Edelbrock two 4bbl carb intake, as well as some other goodies. I was going to run either an F1 or F100 steering box & column, but I scored a mint condition original '33/4 steering column & box at Hershey last fall. I made patterns from an original coupe seat (the wood and the metal bottom pan) and can now make a good replacement for the original seat (once it's upholstered and installed in the car, it will look just like the original seat). My version of the seat uses the original wood and original springs. If nothing bad happens tomorrow, I'll be ready to take the seat to the upholstery shop. I'll have some photos to post of the seat, soon.
The Jalopy Journal
