Projects Shade tree Model A speedster kind of thing

Nice job on the cap. Is your fuel tank vented or have you got a vent hole in the cap? If not, you might have starvation issues.

 

Look great! Just another kool detail for the jalopy!

 

You sure are a talented fella!

 

Love your build and I have subscribed. Homemade resonates with me. Just wonder why an air tight fuel cap. I don't imagine you're planning a charcoal can evap system.

 

Thank you. I need it airtight because I am getting tired of the rattling little electric fuel pump. I'm going to modify this old brass thing I found to make a pressurized tank. I think I'll leave the electric inline, though, rig it so I can power it up on those long road trips I'm going to be making sometime in the future. Hahahahaha.

Actually, it's not really a pump. It doesn't have a check valve, and just had a cork plunger. Must have been designed to transfer small amounts of liquid, suck it up and spit it back out. I hope it wasn't for livestock reproduction or something. I took it all apart and made an old style leather pump cup for it. Soaked a disk of leather in melted paraffin and trimmed/formed it to fit. The little rubber tube is just a bumper for the top of the stroke.



I puzzled and figured on where to mount it. It's so pretty and old fashioned that I wanted to stick it on the outside somewhere, but the cowl fairing and the e brake handle got in the way on the drivers side, and I couldn't reach it easily from the drivers seat if I stuck it on the outside of the body on the passengers side, so I decided to stop trying to be so cute and mounted it in the dashboard. I'm kind of against excessive decoration, anyway. More of a "form follows function" type. I backed the dashboard up with a 1" thick piece of wood and cut the proper size hole through both of them. On the back side I have one of those rubber plumbing connectors with a hose clamp. Holds it fine.



Dang, this is a long post. Anyway, this next dammit nest is my regulator and check valve. This will all be kind of out of sight inside the passenger's footwell. The low pressure regulator is the doohickey with the knurled brass top, adjustable from 0-15 psi. I got that from Graingers. That short section of water hose joins the brass tee to a plastic (!) check valve from an outboard motor priming bulb. I got that from the spare parts pile. I'm holding it upside down, but the pump will connect to the brass nipple, and the plastic check valve nipple will output to the tank. Lots of plumbing and figuring left to do, and I was going to hold off on all of this until it was done, but a couple of you were curious about the cap, so... Here's the whole mess:

 

really cool! nice work on the cap, pump & attachments!

 

Well, I got it all plumbed up and tried it out. Had a couple of issues. One is that my homemade pump leather wasn't sealing well enough, had to make another one. I tapered this one in cross section by pinching it on a bolt, chucking that in a drill, and lathing it on a belt sander. Should have taken pictures, but the new one seals much better. What doesn't seal is that outboard motor squeeze bulb check valve. I have a real one coming. I could get it pumped to 2 psi easily, but it all leaked out the pump. I did get the cap finished up. Put a little bend in the top handle and shortened the roll pins. That mess next to the tank is just that epoxy putty that you knead to mix. Made for patching fuel tanks. It's also sealed inside with some miracle goop.


I also had to cobble up this elbow from big box store parts and a homemade barb. You can't see it, because I keep forgetting to take pictures of stuff, but there is a copper tube sticking down inside the tank and curving up under the gas cap so when I slam on brakes a little less gas will get in that line. Putting the elbow on top of the tank would have been better, but I don't have room under the body. That's the difference between a project that evolves and one that's planned out from the get go, I guess.



Soldered that business on with a torch. I drained the tank and blew through it with a shop vac in the fill hole for about 15 minutes first, though. Don't want to blow up my speedster. Haha. I won't lie, I was still a little nervous. I'll make a video to prove that it works, once is does.

 

Well, here you go. Got it all plumbed once again and put back together. I tee'd in a kind of modern 0-5 psi gauge I found on the auction site for $10. I'm sorry it's not an antique, but oh well. SU's like about 2 psi or so. I set the pressure relief valve at 3 psi, pumped it up to that and let it sit for an hour. It lost 1/10th of a psi in that time, so I think it's a success. Takes about 150 pumps to get it there if the tank is empty. I have 1/2 tank in the video. You can count how many strokes it took to get it up to around 2 1/2 psi. I can't remember, but it didn't seem too bad to me. Notice the absence of the anachronistic clatter of the electric fuel pump when I switch it on in the video. That was the whole point. Might not seem like a good reason to go to all of this trouble, but it was griping my ass. Somebody might mention that ultra modern clear vinyl hose. Maybe one day I'll get some of that old style fabric covered fuel hose, but for now this will do. Anyway, here's the video. Enjoy.

 

It’s great. All the home made, creative solutions capture the spirit. It just looks like a fun, satisfying build. Thanks for sharing.


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Nice job on the fuel system, and entire car. One of the best on the H.A.M.B.

 

Thank you all. I've still been chasing my overheating problem. I think it is a combination of slightly retarded timing and a rich mixture. If you remember, it was lean with the stock needle and the stock head, so I filed the needle down a bit, but with the police head and the B distributor added, it was suddenly rich. I tried building the needle up with solder, but really wasn't satisfied with that, so I made a new one. Just chucked a brass rod in a drill and lathed it on the belt sander by eye, then chucked it in the real lathe and finished it off with a file and calipers. It seems to have worked. My daughter who is home from the Naval Academy pooted around for a good 30 minutes and it didn't boil over like it had been. It's progress, anyway. I'll take it back out on the road as soon as this rainy spell we're having gets over with, and I fix the brake light switch that I shorted out when I was adjusting the brakes. Hahahaa. I made a little video of her. She wasn't pushing it because the road is muddy, and she didn't like the way it was slinging up off the tires.

 

She looks surprisingly small in there. Is she a small girl?

 

Your daughter looks to really enjoy driving your speedster. Awsome you get to share it with her.

 

Fabber,
She's not a big girl. That orange thing behind her is a boat pfd, so she can reach the pedals. She was just tall enough to qualify for pilot, though.

 

You are a Great Dad! Most kids now a days wouldn't even know how to drive this. Almost time to take her to town!

 

Man, thank you, but it's easy to be a good father when you have wonderful children. I realize that I'm real lucky in that respect. I won't argue chickens and eggs with anybody, and I don't want to change the direction of this thread, so I don't intend to go into this in any more detail, but I have 5 kids, and they all think I'm a little eccentric, but they are kind of proud of it. They all like the car.

 

well,they only think a 'little'??-you have it made!!

 

I know some of you must be tired of my piddling ways, but I'm just going to keep on posting. My steering column holding doohickey wasn't up to the job. Those wood screws just split out. Probably could have seen that coming, but...



So, I made up these things:



The brass barrel nuts go in holes in the dashboard. They look like they are too close to the bottom edge, but that upright piece is notched and glued up the back of the dash, so there's plenty of wood there to hold them. Some of you with sharp eyes will notice a little epoxy putty around the right hand one. Don't be too hard on me. I just drilled the hole a little off and fixed it.



You can see my speedometer hole. That thing is in Colorado with e1956v, the speedoservice guy. I contacted him about making me a cable, and it's such a weird little speedo that he asked me to send it to him. Called me yesterday to tell me that the odometer was broke, which I knew, but that he figured out a way to at least line the numbers up. What a seriously nice guy. He also calibrated it. I'll post up a high speed video of it when it gets back to me. Hahahaaaa.

 

Its funny how you can chuckle over that...yipes (I've had moments like this as I'm sure many others too)...theres just some things you wouldn't want to test out...a flopping column...Your Lil Ole Hotrod was in a period of primitive transition between steel and wood...I might even be thinking a backing plate beefing the wood up and attaching it to the cowl with some carriage bolts. Its interesting, that period of the yesteryear, the wood versus steel was very much in evolution because of things like that...​

 

Stogy,
Nah, no yipes about it. That column is bolted to the frame pretty solidly. There wasn't any danger (beyond the inherent danger of the whole rig). I guess, over time, some metal fatigue may have set in from my wrestling with with the wheel, but it's pretty solid now. I'll take a picture from behind the dash tomorrow and post it up so you can see how the wood part is set up.

 

I'm actually quite unaware of how strong those columns are if disconnected at the dash area...As you say the mount at the box may well support the column despite no support at that area.

 

As promised. I'm not sure this little drawing and picture will clear things up, though. The column drop is notched so that it lies flush with the dash on the front, and is glued and screwed to the full height of the dash on the back side. The barrel nuts I made are buried in a double thickness of wood, and the dash itself is solidly glued to the body and the laminated frame, which I need to reinforce a bit, but that will be another post.


For perspective in this picture, the little hole you can see my blurry ear though is the speedometer hole, but from the back. I was holding the camera down by the clutch pedal.

 

I mentioned that little frame that the dash is glued to needs reinforcement. It hasn't broken, but when I'm tugging on the steering wheel I can see it flexing, same thing when the car goes over bumps, which I do quite a bit. Went back to my boatbuilding roots and made some futtocks and glued them in. They fit real close against the body sides and the backside of the original frame, and are epoxied both ways. I'll know if it helps in about 24 hours. I'm going to add more reinforcement at the tops and bottoms to help tie them in to the dash and floor. As always, thank you for looking.

 

Rwrj, I've been slowly collecting parts for a build of my own, and just wanted to say great work, and that your build is why i joined up.

 

Haywire,
Dang, man. Thank you. That's a lot of pressure, though. Haha. Make sure you start a thread when you get going. I can't tell you how much the encouragement means, not to mention the actual help and advice you will get.

 

...You have ALL my encouragement fellas...keep the vintage cool coming...its priceless...Thank you in advance of your next posts...

 

Haha Stogy. You've been here from the beginning, I have enjoyed your participation. These pictures show the reinforcement I did to the top and bottom corners of the reinforcement I did to the cowl frame. I have some sanding and painting to do, but you get the idea.







I only showed one of the bottom, they are the same on both sides. Floorboards are getting a little wild again. Haha

 

Just like an old airplane RW...you just have one minus the Wings.

Speaking of Wood, Spruce Goose comes to mind...looks great...the evolution continues...

 

Speedometer and new cable is on its way to you.

 

Man, that was quick. Thank you. I'll post it up when I get it installed. By the way, I like the Blues Brothers reference in your sig.