28 Model A

[79azc10]

Looks great looking forward to see it completed

[Desperado454]

Originally Posted by 79azc10

Looks great looking forward to see it completed

Thanks man!

The medium arch spring from speedway is a little narrower and has a different arch than the stock crossmember so I made up this intermediate piece to fill in the gaps. I'll tack it place once everything is leveled and squared up.




I had my doubts that my office table and wood jig would hold up to the weight of the engine so i took it to the floor.




Plan is to get the engine and tranny mounts figured out next.

[Dieselwrencher]

It's looking great! Keep up the great work!

[Desperado454]

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

It's looking great! Keep up the great work!

Originally Posted by Desperado454

Plan is to get the engine and tranny mounts figured out next.

Figured it be much easier to carry out that plan with the body in place so i shifted focus. Proceeded to cut out the old subrails for the 4" channel and brace up the body. Think i'm ready to mount the engine now.

[Desperado454]

After I put the body on I maneuvered the car over to where i could use the chain host to position the motor. Figured out roughly where i wanted it and made up some mounts for it. Still need to finish welding them but they should work alright. Transmission mount ended up needing to be just a flat plate, might brace it a bit if need be. All in all it seems to fit pretty good.

[yahoos]

kickass!

[FnLow69]

Nice progress, motor mounts look good!

[Dieselwrencher]

Great work! That rear frame matches the wheel tub in the quarter nice! The engine fits pretty nice in there too. Nice engine mount work too!

[tinydb84]

Great work! Going to turbo this one too?

[Desperado454]

Originally Posted by yahoos

kickass!

Right on!

Originally Posted by FnLow69

Nice progress, motor mounts look good!

Thanks man!

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

Great work! That rear frame matches the wheel tub in the quarter nice! The engine fits pretty nice in there too. Nice engine mount work too!

Pretty happy how it all turned out. I tell ya, i was dead set on trying to finding an early hemi for a few months there. Not saying they're not out there, just tough to find one that's relatively cheap is all. Eventually decided to focus on the bbc i already had which is fine with me.

Originally Posted by tinydb84

Great work! Going to turbo this one too?

Thanks man! No turbos for this one, not right away anyways. This was kind of the plan, might still be. I've got a bit more done from this pic, i'll add more later.

[Dieselwrencher]

Originally Posted by Desperado454

Right on!


Thanks man!


Pretty happy how it all turned out. I tell ya, i was dead set on trying to finding an early hemi for a few months there. Not saying they're not out there, just tough to find one that's relatively cheap is all. Eventually decided to focus on the bbc i already had which is fine with me.

I'll be the first to say my choice to go with the early hemi has slowed my build down due to cost. I hope to get back on that project after I get my Longhorn running. Hopefully within the next month.

[Desperado454]

I've made some progress on this and took a bunch of pictures along the way. Uploaded some of the more noteworthy ones to photobucket and am just going to add a bunch to this post, they are probably going to jump around a little bit. I apologize as some of these are kinda blurry. I'll add some notes to them, that is if they are worthy.

Starting off with the ladder bars which I still need to add gussets to and finish welding

Cut these out with the plasma cutter


the ladder bar jig


bar fit to the front bushing mount


ready to weld


here's an overall pic of them on the car, it looks like i forgot to upload a pic of the front bushing mounts. that's basically as far as I am on these


shows the notch i had to make to clear the shifter


shortened a driveshaft, only pic i have of that project. It turned out pretty good


bought a chopped insert from speedway but it was garbage so i just used it as a mockup to chop the shell before sending it back for a better one


bunch of the bars were too short


roughly in place


mounting the shock brackets from speedway. had to bend them to make them work


these are the 2 threaded bungs i machined that they bolt to. they go all the way through the frame


mounted the headlights to the shock brackets


the sun was setting when i took this pic so it almost looks like they're wired up and working


pretty sure this car was a special coupe and along the way someone tried to make it into a standard coupe. it was solid but i'd say they missed the mark a little bit. I bought a roof wood kit and decided to cut it all off and start over.

some of the roughness


bunch of heavy steel bracing


roof off




i wanted it to look as much like a standard coupe as possible so i tried to recreate the belt line as best i could. this is an attempt to make a piece for the quarter window so it has the belt line and bolts to the body like it originally did


coming into shape


ran through the bead roller


i trimmed the rear sedan panel i had so it would fit the coupe. here it is coming along


i wanted to retain the bead line that runs up the back of the roof so i am fitting that back on here. having the roof wood was a big help to me as i could fit the metal to where the wood suggested it should go.


i had to make up another flange piece so that the quarter window would bolt to back window piece


inside shot


tacking it together




here's a couple pics with it almost finished. still need to fill in the perforated areas that run down the sides of the quarter windows, cant really see them here.




i have some more pics to add but i've had my fill of doing this for tonight. ill add some more tomorrow or the next day

[nds1968]

Thanks for posting, your doing an awesome job. I wouldn't even know where to begin...

[swamp rat]

Awesome work!

[Bomp]

Looking really good.
Following along

[tinydb84]

Looks great man. Love your work.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Very very cool build so far!!!

[Dieselwrencher]

Great metal work! Man, that grill was realy bad huh? The head lights look great too.

[Desperado454]

Originally Posted by nds1968

Thanks for posting, your doing an awesome job. I wouldn't even know where to begin...

Thanks man! It was daunting at first but once I had the body on a frame it became a little easier as I could pick out the smaller projects and try to focus on one at a time. That was the idea anyways, didn't always work out

Originally Posted by swamp rat

Awesome work!

Thanks man, I'm pretty happy how this thing is shaping up.

Originally Posted by Bomp

Looking really good.
Following along

Right on, always glad to see you're on board. Reminds me I gotta check out how your 66 is coming along, been a while since i last seen it

Originally Posted by tinydb84

Looks great man. Love your work.

Originally Posted by 67ChevyRedneck

Very very cool build so far!!!

Thanks guys, really appreciate it!

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

Great metal work! Man, that grill was realy bad huh? The head lights look great too.

Thanks! Grille was a bit of a bummer but it worked out good for chopping the shell down. Didn't feel too bad about blasting it with sparks or banging it around a bit. Speedway is pretty good with returns too, so it wasn't too much hassle

[Desperado454]

After I had the roof in decent shape I was staring to wonder if id actually fit comfortably in this thing since it's pretty small inside with the 4" channel and 4" chop. So the next logical step was to cut down and install the dashboard and figure out a seat. I'll say now that I got the idea to do the dashboard this way from this guys build on the HAMB: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/t...walter.275112/ . Very cool car, i can only hope mine turns out half as nice. There a picture of the dash earlier in this thread, here it is all cut up:



And all pieced together. I left the hole in the middle because i wanted to run a single din cd player, but afterwards I remembered that its 2016 and that there's other options for tunes. I'll likely fill the hole:



Here it is in the car, I thought i had a better picture than this, must still be on the phone. Ah well:



Those old bomber seats look pretty cool, but for practicality sake i decided to put a bench seat in. The plan was to pick up a caravan one and recover it since they seem to fit so well. Before I went that route though, i decided to pilfer the bench seat out of the 95 chevy truck that's parked out back and see if it was workable. Well other than being 14"(I think) too wide, it had potential so i stripped it down to the bare frame and narrowed it. Did the same to the foam and here it is in that state:



I'm glad i went this route because its comfy, folds forwards, and i managed to retain the sliders all the while keeping my ass fairly close to the floor. I did end up taking another 2" out of the bottom to clear the sides better. Fits good now. Here's one last pic for now of the overall car. I was trying to figure out the steering column and wheel position at this point, but the important thing to mention is that i indeed fit in the car quite comfortably.

[Desperado454]

The original plan for the steering column was to build just a basic straight column using a 3/4 shaft, some bearings and a piece of tube for the outer part. Milling the 3/4 shaft to fit the DD u-joint was as far as I got with that project:



The reason for abandoning that strategy was that I stumbled upon this column instead. Think its out of a mid 70's van, its somewhat convenient since it has the signal and hazard stuff in it but lacks the key and column lock. Its not as cool looking as a old time-y bare bones column, but it solved alot of problems for me so i ended up shortening it down to fit my needs. Here's the column before i started on it:



I scooped this wheel out of the trash as it was on its way to the dump, its actually in fairly decent shape. Don't judge.



I regret not taking any pictures of shortening the column, but I still have to take it apart again so I can finish it off. Ill get some pics when that time comes. Basically I just cut the lower shaft to the length i needed and milled .100 off of either side of the shaft to fit the DD u-joint. It took a little bit of playing around on the lathe with some scrap 3/4 bar stock to find the correct taper to machine the upper shaft to fit the wheel, but once i had a good fit i committed to cutting the upper shaft. Sill need to add a key once i figure out where it needs to be.

As a result of putting the steering box where i did and having to place the column where it needed to be, I ended up raising the gauge cluster to make room for the column. I think I raised it an inch, maybe an inch and a half. Here's a few pics of that, can see the column in the midst of being shortened as well. Was before I machined it to fit the wheel, fits pretty good now:







More to come

[Bomp]

Try as I might, I will never hit the Coool Factor like you on this build.

10 outta 10 you scored!

[swamp rat]

Great job slicing and dicing on the dash!

[tommys72]

Nice, I hadn't seen this build before. Glad I did now! Good work

[Dieselwrencher]

Awesome work on the dash! That seat worked out very nice from where I'm looking.