Saturday, August 9, 2008
Struggle in the union
Monday, May 26, 2008
Progress continues
At last I have it all tied together, and acting like a real car!
More on the final steps to get the body ready for its long process at the paint shop.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Doors of opportunity
You can see here the end result in the photo at the left. Another point I like to bring up is the difference between the 1934 and the 1933 Fords. The 1934 Ford has the vertical web in the window opening of the door. The 1933 didn't come with the vent window option. The way it worked in 1934 is that the window actually traveled towards the back of the car before going down which gives you a vent window. What this means is that the window risers are different between the years, as well as the shape of the glass.
The next part was the mess that looked like the roof. The problem was that the car had been sitting outdoors in the woods for over 30 years. The metal had been reduced to that "corn bread" look that was really thin and extremely hard to weld. My solution to this was to weld in a filler panel over where the original hole was, but add an additional layer of steel. The crown along the back edge of the roof has a very distictive shape, and the 1940 Ford sedan happens to have this shape if you turn it around backwards and weld it on the roof. I just happened to have not one but two 1940 Ford sedans that I had salvaged for parts.
Here is the finshed product. I welded on to the roof section, and the heated the metal beside the weld one inch at a time. With a dolly supporting the roof from underneath, it was possible to bump the weld seam so that it was actually lower that the roof surface. This minimizes the filler needed to smooth it out, and makes a better finished product.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Bananas are for monkeys
You can also see how I welded the quater panels into the B pillar to create the solid new rear quarters. The doors were now put on the hinges and closed for the first time. Talk about a "barn door" kind of fit! AGHHH! I had done another '34 back in the early 1990's and really could never overcome this problem on the car. I had to cheat at the end and actually cut the sub rails in front of the B pillar and create a step down towards the front of the car. This lifted the door up, but it still was never right. See photo below:
My mistake was to weld the B pillar to the subrail too early, and therefore "paint myself in a corner" with nowhere to go.
Now with the door in, and the cowl bolted down, it was just a matter of pushing the tail of the car down, and lifting the bottom of the door up. With a little pushing and pulling I was able to get a perfect fit. Once the fit was established, I tack welded the rear inner fender panels to the subrails, welded backets to the B pillars and welded them to the sub rails, and waalaa! Perfect alignment - sort of... After several trys I realized that you have to overshoot the target some, as the body weight is applied, the door wants to sag. But that is the thing about building cars out of junk. You have to be willing to do and re-do and re-do again until its right. Sometimes it will stress the patience and ego, but in the end you have a really nice car.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sheet metal repair continues
More on that drama on the next post.....
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Construction Continues 1934 ford 5W
The next major project was to get a foundation that the body could be secured to and built up from. I bought a pair of new reproduction frame rails and the Chassis Engineering X member and took the diamensionals from a frame drawing and proceeded to build my frame. The frame rails were secured to metal saw horses that I built. Center was established from a wire strung from one horse to another, and used as a center reference I began to position the rails and cross members.
Here you see two cars in comparison, with the one on the left being severely channeled and the one on the right in the factory position. I wanted my car to be low, but not as much as the blue car; just enough to hide the frame and with a slight rake. This is accomplished by taking the new sub rails that I puchased and welding one on top of the other. This gives a factory look with all the bumps and ridges that should be there, but sits much lower than normal. Below you can see the installed subrails that sit on the frame.
It was now time to take my new cowl and integrate it into the roof section and to the subrails. This was very time consuming as the metal was rusty, and rusty metal desintigrates instead of welds. You can see from the photo above where I welded new cowl bottoms and welded small patches in to make the section strong. The most difficult part of the project is getting the doors to fit in the body correctly and line up. When the floor is out of the body the body wants to sit and open up like a banana peel. The task is to gather it up again and place it in the factory postion. More on that process next post.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
1934 Ford 5 window coupe project begins
But where do you start? What needs to be done first? As with any project its really just a series of small projects done one after another. If you look at it in that way, it keeps you focused and help prevent the feeling of being overwhelmed with the project. First thing I did was to take inventory of what I had, and what I needed. The frame was garbage, as where the doors and decklid. The tops of the quarter panels was usable, and the roof could be salvaged.
The rear window had been cut out with a torch, so another rear window section would need to be found. The front cowl was badly butchered, so another one of those would have to be located.
Looked daunting, but I did find a guy in florida that not only had a cowl section but three coupe doors, with one drive side and two passenger sides. I bought the doors and cowl for $800. along with some front end parts so I was starting to make real progress. As far as the quarter panels, I had my good friend Donnie Smart, who is an excellent metal man actually hand roll a left and right quarter panel. The quarters also included the inner fender panels, and was easily welded into the body section by cutting the belt line in the center and welding in the panels