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

[Dez]

Jun 19, 2020 5:01:00 GMT PhilA said:

An assembled one for inspiration(?!), just got this one running at the weekend for my neighbor. Must've been a sign.

Glad you've decided to get back to yours though.

Phil

A little standard for my tastes, but that’s one of the good things about As. They’re so many of em about in all styles from mild to wild. ‘The universal car’ and all that....

[Dez]

Jun 19, 2020 10:22:43 GMT mungo said:

Don't bother with the roll bar ...tell'em it's only geared do 95mph .... shhhh
love the car by the way .

Unfortunately if your car is *obviously* gunna be too fast To run without rollover protection then can say you can’t run at all. And if you break out you don’t get a time/speed and are sidelined.

Jun 19, 2020 11:40:54 GMT jonomisfit said:

How important is aero?

Can you make the cage bolt onto the outside of the body, like hill rally landrover?

Already been vitoed by VHRA as ‘not in keeping’ with the look/spirit of the event.

Jun 19, 2020 12:51:58 GMT thomge said:

As an owner of a Model A pick-up I really like this.

Regarding the cage, what are you doing for a roof insert? If this were removable, could you drop the cage down into the car to allow fitting/removal?

Roof insert will probably be swaged/riveted ally. I’m designing the body to essentially be ‘quick detach’ though, basically only half a dozen or so bolts and some wiring connectors. So it would be lift off body, bolt on cage, drop body back on. As it’s so chopped and channelled access to a lot of of stuff is fairly rubbish so the body being easily removable makes a lot of sense.

[Dez]

So, some more notes on what I’ve been doing.

This stuff I cut out to make the cage fit. Added lightness. It’s the floor framing that went up the rear kickup area, and the support frame for the previous fuel tank and battery.


I knew I needed to order a load of stuff to make the shifter on the T-10 gearbox work, so I measured up for that. The gearbox is a 1964.5-‘65 mustang one, only made for a very short period with the dual drilled bellhousing that allows it to bolt to a Y-block 3 speed bellhousing, so quite a desirable item. The shifter is a hurst competition-plus, but it’s had a few lives so the mount and linkages were all hacked up. It’s possibly-maybe survived with only a mild burning, if not a rebuild kit will sort it. But I need to attach it to the ‘box far enough back that I can reach it which means custom bracketry, and custom linkages.
This was mk1 I made ages ago that sit it too low so didn’t work, but was the right shape in key areas so useful to work with.


I looked at how the factory mounted them in various applications that needed the shifter to be mounted right down the tailshaft, and the simple answer was basically an exhaust clamp. Sounds stupid by why re-invent the wheel when there already a cheap, easily available thing that’s basically designed for clamping a flat thing to a round thing.
So I added an extension to the bottom of the bracket to bolt up to said exhaust bracket.


Fitted, it looks like this-


The shifter is now high enough for the rods to clear the crossmember.


Here you can see how it steps across to bring the shifter in tighter to the tailshaft, but the exhaust clamp spaces it out so it still clear the seal housing.




Pretty pleased with that, so now I can remake the front half of the bracket to suit, which picks up on some bolt holes further up the tailshaft housing to mount it.

[stealthstylz]

WTF is a roll hoop or cage gonna help with on a roadster running on sand, apart from stop the car really really quickly so the driver with snapped neck can be extracted faster?

[georgeb]

And another great Dez thread. Bookmarked!

[PhilA]

Jun 19, 2020 19:02:22 GMT Dez said:

A little standard for my tastes, but that’s one of the good things about As. They’re so many of em about in all styles from mild to wild. ‘The universal car’ and all that....

It was rather tongue-in-cheek, yes!

Phil

[Dez]

Jun 20, 2020 0:01:54 GMT stealthstylz said:

WTF is a roll hoop or cage gonna help with on a roadster running on sand, apart from stop the car really really quickly so the driver with snapped neck can be extracted faster?

That’s been said multiple times.
Tbh, my view is it’s what happens when you have to get official bodies involved to make an event happen. What you want to do gets compromised and watered down to fit other peoples standards.
The first couple of years were not like this as it was under the radar a bit.
To run a motorsport event in the UK you have to have a licence. To get that licence you have to adhere to the H&S rules of one of the governing bodies (and there’s only 2 iirc). Even if those H&S rules don’t fit your event or the cars Running at it, which is exactly the situation here.
The rules are written based on tarmac racing, As no one else races on sand, and the safely features are designed to work onhard surfaces.
Ok the ‘rules’ don’t effect a good proportion of the cars as all the banger powered and most of the flathead v8 stuff doesn’t go fast enough. But personally I want a hot rod that goes fast so it’s got a ‘late’ (1957) OHV in it with twice the power of a flatty.
The VHRA want to run ‘period’ Events, but basically aren’t allowed to because of the rules. On one hand all cars have to look like they were built in the 50s, crossplies and beam axle and no modern bits Etc., but then on the other they have to have obviously modern looking safety equipment fitted or they’re not allowed to run.
It’s all a bit convoluted and stupid, but what it comes down to is there’s nowhere else where you get to hoon down a beach at the wrong side of a ton in a hot rod without people getting in the way, so some concessions have to be made I guess. It’s just making those concessions not look curse word that’s the issue.

[stealthstylz]

Oh yeah, it's understandable really as its a clash against progression. I think a lot of why nostalgia racing has boomed is people believe motor sport has become sanitised, but the people who put the rules in place that have sanitised things and the same people who watched their mates and other drivers get killed or seriously injured that gave them the drive to improve safety in the first place.

[colnerov]

Hi, The cage or hoop might not help in the initial crash but if the roadster comes to rest belly up with the driver stuck underneath and no way to get out. Instead he would have a 'hole' to exit by dint of it held off the sand, quite important if it's also on fire. It exercises and stretches your ingenuity.

Excellent build by the way.

Colin

[Deleted]

Get a tagger to make the cage look like bamboo!

[Dez]

Ignoring the safely stuff for a while, here some other things I’ve been doing.

I’ve drawn out the replacement rear axle bracketry needed and got my tame lazercutter on it. Turns out that BSc in automotive engineering was good for something 😂


I wanted to change the rear axle spring bracketry slightly this time round, so that was a beermat design done on the fly whilst measuring the old stuff and the new bits, and some whittling out of 10mm by hand.




They actually go like this, with a piece of tube welded to each one, then them welded at each end of the axle. I’ve already bought a bit of 1”x1/8” CDS for that.



Getting those welded up and the spring attached will probably be the next job seeing as I’ve got the bits to do it, once a new magnetic angle finder turns up anyway as I’ve broken mine.

[Dez]

The next thing, is it looks like it’s back to being RHD again.

This is particularly because of the asymmetry of the gearbox, and partially because of the ergonomics of fitting a C-B-A pedal setup into the corresponding gaps left.

If you look at this pic with a centreline down down the casting line on the gearbox, then look where the heads of the two evenly spaced mounting bolts are, on the RHS the casing stops just before the bolt width wise, whereas on the LHS the casing and selector housing are well past it even before the linkages are taken into account.


The difference in available space is just over 3 inches, which doesn’t sound a lot but when the chassis is only about 32” wide externally at this point, it’s 10% of the available width of the car.

This is the pedals dropped in on the RHS. I have a straight shot on the clutch and brakes, and the pedal can mount on top of the chassis rail, giving ample room.


As evidenced here, even with boots on-


And for the throttle pedal-


There will be a heel rest that brings the ‘floor’ level up to the height of the top of the chassis rails, with the master cyls sitting below.

On the other side there is no hope. Clutch and brake would have to be heavily cranked and the throttle pedal would still be into the gearbox linkages-


So I’ll be mounting the ‘new’ steering box on the same side it seems.

[Dez]

Creeping forward at the glacial pace of the UK mail system, I now have a shiner and less bent one of these to tart up that bit-


And I have a new one of these to set the angle of the dangle on the rear axle bracketry.


I also have this-


Which will go here after minor tickle-age with the lathe, to allow me to finish the new steering column setup. It’s the right ID just needs a bit off the OD to fit inside the tooob. There’s more bits on the way to complement that as well, but as you’d expect they’re not here yet.



So it the meantime I’ve been mentally ticking off the difficult bits and the things needed to make them less difficult. There’s various things on the way to sort various issues, but one thing that has been taxing my brain is how to make the firewall area work.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed the gearbox is fully inside the car. As in actually in the interior, there is no tunnel. This is because due to large amounts of chop and channel, plus the chassis being Z-ed both ends, there isn’t really room for one. Especially when you’re sixfootfour with size elevens.
There will be a prop tunnel (and prop loop) between the seats, but forward of that I need to keep it open for maximum space. The belly pan runs straight under it all to keep the inside inside and the outside outside, until it gets to the bellhousing, where the lower flywheel cover sticks through. I also have the trimmed back (lol, I cut 75% out and threw it away) remnants of the stock A firewall salvaged off one of these front ends.
It fits quite tight to the bellhousing as this pics attest. It’s only 1/2” below the upper firewall/gas tank front panel.






This is a bit forward of where my pedals and steering and stuff are, so doesn’t get in the way of any of that lot. But I do need something to keep the draughts and weather out on the firewall, as that’s one area that tends to collect such things and blast them straight into your face if there’s even the slightest of gaps.

So what I’m going to attempt to do is called a shuffle joint. What this is will become more apparent as it’s creation goes on, but it’s basically two overlapping panels that can move against each other if necessary. It should provide some sealing to the cabin, and still allow the body to slip straight off without issue.

The first part of this is a extension panel that is sandwiched between the motor and bellhousing. It’s nothing substantial, only 1mm steel, but it forms the motor side of the two overlapping panels. Handily I had a spare bellhousing the same as the one on the car laying round which I can use as a template.


So I drew round it on some steel-


Then I roughly extrapolated the crank centreline, and used that origin to add a bit all the way round, the added some more in the corners, and trimmed some off the top.


Cut out and with the mounting holes added, it looks like this.


That can now be used as a pattern to make the other half of the shuffle joint, before being fitted up between engine and gearbox.

[melle]

I had one of those inclinometers and I binned it because it was a piece of utter curse word. A free app did the trick for me (my phone doesn't have a mag base though).

[Dez]

Jun 24, 2020 21:04:28 GMT melle said:

I had one of those inclinometers and I binned it because it was a piece of utter curse word. A free app did the trick for me (my phone doesn't have a mag base though).

It’s better than the other one I had 😂
tbh it doesn’t need to be super accurate. It’s only to set the pinion angle at about 3 degrees before I weld the brackets on. It checks out square both ways using a level so it’ll do the job.

[Dez]

I welded the rear spring mounts together and onto the axle.
First I tuned down a couple of bits of the CDS tube to spring width (2-1/4”).


A final tidy of the brackets and they were tacked, squared and then fully welded, then the ID reamed out as it was a fraction under the required 3/4”.


Some maths happened-


The axle was then stripped of brakes, shafts and backplates, to allow accurate measuring from the end casings. The brackets were then welded on at 49” centres, with the brackets level but the pinion nose angle up 3 degrees.




You’ll see this puts them very far out, only just before the bearing housings.

The shafts and brakes were then reassembled and bolted down properly, before fully welding. Never weld on a bare axle casing.




These pics show why the brackets are the shape they are. To allow the shackles to swing as they need to without clearance issues.




For anyone who has ever worked with a model A spring, the thought of fitting one with bring out a cold sweat. They’re basically death, made of spring steel.

The biggest issue is they are under HUGE pretension. You have to spread the main leaf about six inches just to get it on. Then the rest of the leafs add even more pretension, as you will see....

This is the main leaf. It’s also basically how not to fit one. But I’m a mildy trained idiot and I lost my spring spreader in the fire, so this is how it got done.

Basically two angle iron skids and a ratchet strap. So with that sketchy moment over, I gave the spring a once over to remove any wear and notches. It is 90 years old after all.

This is typically what you find on such a spring. Some pitting, and a wear notch from the leaf above. This needs smoothing out or the ride won’t be smooth as the leaf hits the notch.


Some flap wheeling later and you have this.
Repeat for each leaf (10 leaf spring pack) both sides, and it’s a fair bit of grinding. All edges are also smoothed as part of the process.
It’s an important step though to having something that rides decent.
You’re not looking for perfection (as you can see) or you’d never build a hot rod using genuine old parts. Just good enough to go again.


So then with that done you engage in stage 2 of spring sketchyness. Here it is with everything stacked up untensioned . You can see there’s some fairly major gaps, and the big bit of hi-ten all-thread though all the leafs.


You then have to wind it down together so it’s a uniform spring pack. With it clunking and pinging and giving you the impression it can kill you at any moment (it easily could with the amount of stored energy in it).
You eventually end up pouring in sweat (and not just cos it’s boiling) but with this-




Then these are added to the two leafs with holes in to keep everything aligned. Judging by the wear on the leaf these were obviously missing in its past life.


And that’s a fairly major (and now majorly heavy) assemblage almost ready to be fitted. I’ve also had a message from my lazercutter saying my stuff is ready too, so I can fit the axle bracketry next.

[Dez]

More acquisitions. And more aircraft parts.
First I bought these. They may not end up on this build, but they were a pair so too good to pass up.


Best thing about these is I have the provenance of them.
They are out of a De Haviland Comet, the worlds first jet airliner. But I even know which particular one, XK699 ‘Sagittarius’, the ex-gate guard at RAF Lyneham.
When boscome down aviation association moved its remains, they funded saving the nose section by selling off parts from the rear half that was scrapped due to excessive corrosion. I bought these off a volunteer for the trust who had bought them for himself.


They’re pretty funky looking things with the blue anodising, but that may mean they don’t really ‘go’ in this car. I’ll have to see.

Next I got some bits of tractor. I am in Suffolk after all 😂
Turns out the steering column on most early Massey Fergusons is the same thread as early fords, so they cheapest way to get a nice chrome nut and washer is to buy a tractor one. Ten quid and it comes with a column shroud as well, but I might not use that as it’s a bit big.




Only the steering wheel to finalise now, I have one I may use, if not it’ll probably be more tractor parts! Size is very much an issue though, I can’t fit a 18” one as I have knuckles, so I’ve got to find something suitable around 15”.

Last thing this time was some front tyres. I planned on buying new as I tend not to have much luck with second hand tyres, but these look very good, are recentish date stamps, come with tubes and where 1/3 of the new price. £70 delivered instead of £200+ delivery. I ended up with 5.25-16” which was what was on before, in an ideal world I’d probably have gone 5.50-16” but for the cost saving I’m not going to quibble about 1/4”.




They’re Avon HM tourist which I’ve found to be perfectly acceptable in use on other vehicles.

[generalstirlingprice]

Not my cup of tea, but I really am in awe of the design and engineering that has gone into this, seeing you prefer a LHD layout have you thought about using some sort of servo assisted clutch that's operated from the gear lever or maybe hand controls to free up space on the left hand footwell?

[Dez]

Jun 29, 2020 15:43:14 GMT generalstirlingprice said:

Not my cup of tea, but I really am in awe of the design and engineering that has gone into this, seeing you prefer a LHD layout have you thought about using some sort of servo assisted clutch that's operated from the gear lever or maybe hand controls to free up space on the left hand footwell?

Tbh I don’t want the controls to be anything other than ‘normal’. I have quite a few cars and like them all to be more or less the same in control input terms. I’ve had ones with funny setups before and it reduces the drivability. So it has to be normal CBA pedals.
I’m happy for the concession to that for it to be RHD.

[Dez]

I’ve been looking through some old pics and have found a bit of backstory for those who didn’t see my old build thread.
They’re just random photos but they show certain aspects of the car.

These are the custom sill panels I made way back when it still had ‘normal’ floors. The sills are still there but need reworking a little for me to be happy with them. What it does show is the 5” channel job. The bottom edge of the body is usually on top on the chassis rail!


This is what the rear suspension is like. It’s a Y-3 link, sort of like a triangulated 4-link except the top two diagonal links join together and only have one oversized joint at the front. Simple but effective.


The lower links are just straight and attach to the back of the rear chassis kickup, then it has period houdaille lever arm shocks. It has these on the front too.


So a mix of modern and ancient. Works well though and sits low.



Something for scale-


The front end is a suicide setup (spring mounted behind axle rather than over it) which stretches the wheelbase a lot, as well as the chassis being stretched in the engine Bay Area.


The wheelbase is a foot longer than a stock model A. The whole car is over two feet lower when you add up all the chopped and dropped bits.


The roof is chopped just under 6”. That’s the bits of pillars removed compared to the new screen height-



The motor is a 292ci Y-block ford out of a 1957 mercury. It has a Borg Warner t-10 4speed on the back of it out of a 64.5 mustang with a hurst competition plus shifter,,original ‘50s edelbrock big port 3x2 manifold with Holley 94s, ECZ-G big valve heads, a bit of an overbore and a mild cam. Later dual advance dizzy, high ratio rockers. All the right bits basically. I’ve got various fancy valve covers to chose from and I made up the stainless weed burners/zoomies as there’s no room for any other form of exhaust. You’d laugh if I told you what they’re made out of though!