1928 Ford Model A Sedan- Drag it til the wheels fall off…

[colnerov]

Sept 21, 2023 9:40:45 GMT Dez said:

Sept 21, 2023 8:25:42 GMT colnerov said:

Gates are another, but the trick is to get the hose from a reputable source who will stand behind it. It's easy to fake the printing on cheap hose.

Colin

Be careful with gates. Afaik they don’t make/sell a R9 rated hose. If they do, nowhere stocks it and the one they try to sell you is R6 or R7. They then get uppity when you tell them it’s not good enough! I went to two separate suppliers on their word that they sold ‘ethanol proof’ hose, but what they gave me was not what they presented it as. There’s little point buying R6 or R7, as although it will last longer than cheap stuff, it isn’t ‘ethanol proof’ it will still deteriorate.

Hi, Good to know. I was assuming the name was good because they have a reputation as far as fan belts go. So thanks for that. I usually have Cohline, But I think it's as much, if not if not more so, about the supplier as the product.

Colin

[Dez]

Sept 21, 2023 9:57:06 GMT akku said:

I got "proper stuff" - I forget the brand but its not cheap. A mate works in a hose specialist. The days of 15p a yard fuel hose are well and truely gone....

Yup. Amazes me how eager a lot of people are to cut corners on it tbh, for the sake of 20-30 quid for an entire cars worth. I guess people were so used to it being too cheap for too long.

[Dez]

Sept 21, 2023 13:26:57 GMT colnerov said:

Sept 21, 2023 9:40:45 GMT Dez said:

Be careful with gates. Afaik they don’t make/sell a R9 rated hose. If they do, nowhere stocks it and the one they try to sell you is R6 or R7. They then get uppity when you tell them it’s not good enough! I went to two separate suppliers on their word that they sold ‘ethanol proof’ hose, but what they gave me was not what they presented it as. There’s little point buying R6 or R7, as although it will last longer than cheap stuff, it isn’t ‘ethanol proof’ it will still deteriorate.

Hi, Good to know. I was assuming the name was good because they have a reputation as far as fan belts go. So thanks for that. I usually have Cohline, But I think it's as much, if not if not more so, about the supplier as the product.

Colin

Yes I agree, a trustable supplier is as important as the right product. In a world of faceless internet sellers with baseless reviews, that can be a hard thing to find.

[Dez]

another small issue sorted. I was getting some scrubbage on the rear tyres. Only on the torque side when I floored it.






The gap was pretty tight tbh. This was with 30mm spacers.



Options for thicker ones were 35mm or 50mm. The latter would look excessive so I went with the 35 and hopefully it’s enough.


I can get a finger down there now, but havet yet driven it in anger to gauge the result.

[Dez]

I’ve not been doing much car stuff recently for a variety of reasons, but that there mk14dr sorted out this gathering pics and shared them with friends, and as I travelled down with him this thing features rather heavily.
there’s also the fact he takes good pics. I’ve mentioned before that the reason I don’t bother with taking show pics is I’m usually with Dave and he’s so much better at it.

So here’s a pic dump of his efforts. I may go back and add some names and details but for the minute we’ll see if trying to upload 32 pics at once breaks the uploader 😂

[ducklooker]

Most excellent!

[Dez]

Well it posted 32 pics just fine, but has properly mixed up the order.
Meh.

Circling round and backtracking with some of the other pics I have, not long after the gathering I went on the longest trip I’d done out to sturgate straight, as part of my shakedown and tuning. This was two weeks after the gathering, once I’d got glass in but I was still working through issues with various things. About 15 miles of fast-ish b roads and country lanes.
I met up with akku there, as well as running into @czecheredflag
It was very much not a hot rod sort of event so it garnered quite a bit of attention.










I found my misfire though 😂


A week or so later there was a car show in a local town too. Again not the sort of place you’d except to see such a vehicle, it was mostly over restored british classics owned by old duffers sat in their deckchairs. But as you can see some interesting things did turn up.

[mylittletony]

lol at the MUFF plate - need to think up some ROFL jokes...

One question, do you have a plan for the roof, in particular the parts above the doors?

[adam73bgt]

So cool seeing this getting about and used

I ended up driving past Sturgate straight by accident recently after hitting a couple of closed road diversions on the way to seeing some family 😂 had no idea where I was then thought, hey I've seen this place on RR haha

[Dez]

Everybody loves a bit of muff 😬

The door top roof sections will go back on at some point. I have them both although one has a terrible gasless mig attempt at repair on the swage-




But, I picked this up at the northern swapmeet for a whole 5 quid. It’s for a coupe (even though seller said it was for a sedan…) so the profile is wrong but it’s rust free and the swage section can be swapped over with some surgery, and for that money it’s easier than making tooling.




Part of the reason I’ve not fitted them yet is it makes bashing and bending bits to adjust the door gaps harder with them in the way. Once the body has fully settled, the doors have all 3 hinges on, and I’ve repaired the latches fully I’ll get em back on.

[Dez]

Dec 14, 2023 10:47:09 GMT adam73bgt said:

So cool seeing this getting about and used

I ended up driving past Sturgate straight by accident recently after hitting a couple of closed road diversions on the way to seeing some family 😂 had no idea where I was then thought, hey I've seen this place on RR haha

It’s a funny place ain’t it? Just driving down a country road in the middle of nowhere then f-k I’m driving across the end of a runway!

I’m looking forward to going back there next year without a bad misfire and giving the A a kicking down the runway.

[SilverMachine]

thats come a long way since the fire tried to claim it, its defined itself as a hot rod! love it. am rather partial to the honda hrv in 3 door form too, quite handy things! bit hard to find now in good nick for decent money tho. back to the A, what did we actually get the Y block in? or was it mainly trucks and A series big vans?

[Dez]

Feb 18, 2024 20:21:25 GMT SilverMachine said:

thats come a long way since the fire tried to claim it, its defined itself as a hot rod! love it. am rather partial to the honda hrv in 3 door form too, quite handy things! bit hard to find now in good nick for decent money tho. back to the A, what did we actually get the Y block in? or was it mainly trucks and A series big vans?

Nothing UK market at all. It’s an American engine, came in ford and Mercury passenger cars from ‘53-‘62, as fords first OHV after the flathead. As product lines diverged it was used in the fairlanes, galaxies, Mercurys, edsels and thunderbirds. although the ones that are really of interest are the ‘56-57 engines. They also came in ford trucks and they ran up to ‘64.
Parts have to be cherry picked across the years and models to really make a hot rod worthy engine, the first couple of years were relatively small capacity with smaller valves and ports in the heads and only 2 barrel carbs. A ‘53 239ci is only a 140hp engine. Mine in this is 292ci with the best heads, biggest valves, high ratio rockers and a 4 barrel carb and is at least double the power output.
I do have a full house factory stroker 312ci motor tucked away as well that will probably eventually make it way in here.

[jimi]

Dec 15, 2023 18:08:13 GMT Dez said:

I’m looking forward to going back there next year without a bad misfire and giving the A a kicking down the runway.

When you do, please video it (with sound)

[braaap]

Feb 18, 2024 23:08:12 GMT Dez said:

I do have a full house factory stroker 312ci motor tucked away as well

Of course You do, no surprise here at all.

[Dez]

Ages since I updated this, but it still works and I still use it when the weather allows, which has seemed quite infrequent this year tbh.







Lat weekend I sat around waiting all morning for it to stop raining, then drove up to sturgate airfield, only about 12 miles from me, to get those runs I didn’t get last year. The previous two meets this year were both rained off so I was expecting it to be rammed, but it was fairly quiet tbh. Weather was touch and go which effected it I guess, and I did get drizzled on a bit, but I also got to give it a good thrashing.

I downloaded a gps timing app before I did, one that gets good reviews for its accuracy.

Signed on, lined up and waiting to go.


First run. Dry, track still pretty clean.
Thems respectable numbers tbh!

I struggled a lot with lack of traction, I was wheelspinning most of the 8th.

A few more runs-


Run 2 it was drizzling. It affected traction some more, but also visibility. I really couldn’t see where the flags were!

Run 3 it had dried up again and I think was probably my best as I was super slick on the changes but it didn’t record for some reason.

Run 4 was drizzling again and I was also experimenting with gear changes. I held second high instead of changing to 3rd to use the torque lower down the rev range, which I didn’t think works quite a well as I’m approaching the rev limit of this engine doing so.

Run 5 i fluffed a gear change.

Run 6 didn’t record as my wheel fell off after I’d crossed the line and it threw my phone out the holder 🤣

Turns out 90 year old wheels have issues with the abuse I dish out.
It probably wasn’t the outright power, I mean 275ish hp is certainly a lot more than 1935 dodge wheels were even intended to handle, but I think it was more the 40mph+ second gear power slides and donuts that pulled all 5 still done up wheel nuts straight through the face of the wheel. Oops.

This was after the organiser had got me a trolley jack and the biggest washer they had from the aircraft stores.


I limped it off the runway and borrowed a big hammer off scmick, to make it a bit more wheel shaped again, then drove it 1/2 a mile up the road following a local farmer (who was racing his grass track car there) for some more ‘farmer spec’ washers.


That was good enough to limp it home, albeit with a very wobbly wheel.

Good job I have a spare-


Only first gear skids for this one though, I know the limits now 😂

I broke the rear body mount when the rear body rail hit the floor, it’s just torn the rivets out so that’s an easy fix. It’s also grazed the bottom of the door, but it’s better to have stories about how the bottom of the door got scraped than how I spent a whole day polishing it 😉

[Dez]

A few pics of the car on the strip. No vids yet.

[ducklooker]

It really must get a huge amount of attention as it looks totally nuts.......
I esp like the way it appears "broken" at the bulkhead.
Such a cool machine.

[Dez]

It’s not actually a ‘broken chassis’ type build, the rails exist the firewall straight.
But the wishbones have quite a lot of caster so it sort of optical illusions to look like that. Means it drives good at speed though.

[slackerTHEpinstriper]

Outside the Leopard, legendary!!!