A kind of "what I've been up to and will be up to for a while" build thread...

[70_Fastback]

With over whelming enquiries and requests, I have decided to document my current build here - even though it's not a mustang...

The following will document the progress, so far, and future progress.

The car is a 1928 Ford, 5-window, Model A, standard coupe that I acquired for free.
My Father-in-law came across this body while deer hunting on his buddies property, that he just bought. His friend said that I am more then welcome to get it, or it's going to the scrapper. These are the picture that my FIL text messaged me:

What you DON'T see in those pictures is the entire frame, with some brackets, etc, still buried in the ground. Needless to say, I came unprepared. To dig that is...

But I wasn't leaving without the coupe! We luckily found an old broken shovel in a nearby barn and was able to dig it free and eventually pull it out with the truck.

This is after we had it loaded and was on our way home:

This was back in March of 2012. I got it home and it then sat for about 2-1/2 years while I finished up home projects, etc.

 

[70_Fastback]

Fast forward a couple of years. Got the coupe into the shop and actually cleaned it up some to get a better feel of the condition. Cleaning it up helped visual matters a lot:

Over all, it was pretty solid, with the Right hand side being the worst off. But it's coming totally apart anyway to fix rust issues at the seams, etc.

 

[70_Fastback]

The moving forward plan is pretty simple... I'm using ASC '32 Ford rails - that will be fully boxed with a blown 331 Hemi.

Starting off with jigging these rails:

 

[70_Fastback]

Deconstruction of the body continued... Found some more rusty issues, etc. A few stress cracks. Nothing that can't be fixed...

I tend to get busy and "forget" to document steps... The entire body is taken apart, down to the individual panels that I will take and sandblast at some point.

The next point was to make a subrail jig based off of this original one. This one is too far gone to repair when I can buy new subrail sections and build my own new subrails.

 

[70_Fastback]

After the body was off, I squared the old sub-rails up the best I could and fashioned a small jig table with appropriate jig markers, etc. I tried to verify original subrail dimensions from the internet, etc and didn't have a bunch of luck though. So I forged ahead with my own taken measurements.

New rails are layed into place and clamped tight to draw them out:

Checking fitment with the stock Cowl/A pillar dimensions. It lined up really well:

Seems like a nice, correct, fit.

Surprisingly, the new rear cross member seemed to fit spot on as well.

 

[Fst Blk]

Really cool build. Definitely keep us posted.

Living the dream or running it down... Haven't figured out which yet.

 

[70_Fastback]

Installing the cross braces was a little more tedious that I thought. I fab'd the cross braces and attachment points exactly like Ford did on the originals...

Which involved pie cutting, stair stepping and rewelding the cross rails to follow the contours of the subrail stampings.

I elected to not do hand bucked rivets, but rosette welded to "resemble" rivets. When it's painted you will never know the difference. The subrails did get welded on the bottoms too for added strength.

Check for squareness..... check!

'


And for shits-n-giggles, I overlaid the orginal subrails to compare the two - to check my work and the accuracy of the repo rails...

And the (temporarily) finished subrails:

 

[70_Fastback]

Which leads me to this point...

For those that don't know, there are issues with fitting '28/'29 bodies to '32 rails... They don't just "fit". The subrails need to be modified. LUCKILY I have a brand new, solid subrail starting point... to cut up. Ugh.

Granted this is just chucked up there, you can easily see the issues... model A's are flat... '32's... not so much.

 

[70_Fastback]

After lots, and lots of research on how other people where fitting these, I came up, with what appears, to be an ORIGINAL idea on how to fit the subrails to the frame rails...

Quick under view shot showing the spacing:

So, I decided to just rejig the back rails and re-angle them to fit, up, INSIDE, of the subrails. Almost like a "channel" job.

But in order to get the body to drop down, first I had to bob the frame rails off on the rear roughly 16":

Next up was pie cutting and re-angling and welding up the rear of the rails to not swoop out so much.

You can see the outward swoop. these needed to be straight and parallel with the rear subrails:

Rear rail corrected and finished. I also added a small relief step to allow the subrail to sit down flat on the rails. Keep in mind these rails will be fully boxed as well.

Both sides are stepped: (hey, look - there is my model A body... on the floor!)

Now that the frame is ready to receive the subrails, the subs needed to be sliced and diced...
Basically I cut open the entire top of the rear rails like a tin can to allow them to drop over the frame rails

Here the subrail is "test" fitted to the frame:

And it fits.

Quick view of the step area showing the subrail fitting:

This inside portion will require a but more fab work to curve up and maintain the same drop lip.

Then came the fun part of reinforcing the rear subrail sections. The outside part was easy.

 

[70_Fastback]

Man, finally, between work and home crap, I get some time to wrap up the subrails. I had to finish the inside yet for the channeled area.

First step was to make the new inner floor structure lip. I decided to try my hand at hammer forming on a wooden buck to form the new piece:

First pass at the roughed out piece:

It actually turned out pretty damn good. Initial fit up was close, just needed a little tweaking and some trimming after the stretching.

As a refresher, this is what I'm altering:

Skip ahead a few hours and no pictures later...

Both sides are basically done. I didn't have any fine discs to metal finish it, so that will be later this week.

And to illustrate the kick up from a traditional model A subrail - which is totally flat:

 

[KBMWRS]

Skilz!!!! You got 'em

 

[70_Fastback]

And a little of this...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sgtjunior]

See, now that's what the F*** I'm talking about. Love to see the detailed craftsmanship of your "hobby" work. Like Mikey said, you got some skilz!

 

[msell66]

Holy crap J! Tell us...really...who's doing all the metal work. No way you're doing that

 

[70_Fastback]

Holy crap J! Tell us...really...who's doing all the metal work. No way you're doing that

Remember, it is Bonnie doing all of that meticulous work. I just sit back, drink beer and watch her work. And when I get hungry I will stop her and have her go make me a sammich and then get back to work. I fully recognize that she needs the occasional break also.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[tarafied1]

that's just sickening...

I mean it's Sick!

 

[RyanG85]

Awesome work! When did you get idea that this sort of build didn't want to be seen here??? Keep posting.

 

[70_Fastback]

Awesome work! When did you get idea that this sort of build didn't want to be seen here??? Keep posting.

Don't really have a good feel for the new owner.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[RyanG85]

I'm not sure any of do.... The rest of us are the same though.

 

[70_Fastback]

Good point.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk