The 3" Hair Cut

After cruising it for a summer, we were enjoying the car but a traditional hot rod needs a hair cut, so as soon as the weather turned to rain, we started mapping out the chop. Deciding on the amount to chop was the hardest part. A Tudor sedan has a roof line that is 1" higher than a coupe. A coupe looks great with a 3" chop but with the longer roof lines of the sedan, I wasn't sure. After siting in a friends 31 Sedan with a 3" chop I made my decision. So with out any delay, the interior got gutted and braced so that when the roof was removed it didn't collapse into itself. A week of careful measurements and re-measuring and triple checking and it was time to take the saw to it. Check it out.
Here you can see some of the bracing to hold the body in place when the roof is removed.

 Measure twice- Cut once!

 All ready to start cutting

 It looks a little different with the roof clean off. We cut the top line first and completely removed the roof. Them we cut the second line and placed the roof back on the car. A few pie cuts here and there and by the end of the night, we had the roof and doors tacked back together and all in place.

 Then came the pain stacking hours of spot welding the entire thing back together. You have to take your time here and do one spot weld and then move to another spot on the car or you can get the metal to hot and warp it, which means more body work, and I don't like body work.

 Here my friend Shane is teaching my son how to hammer and dolly the body after it was all welded and ground down. Then it was time for body work and paint and my friends body shop.

We only painted the top part of the car that had been chopped. His color match turned out darn near perfect. From one picture to the next it looks easy but there were two full weekends of body work, primering and painting to get it to this point.

 Here is all together the first time it was back on the road again. There was a lot of work that I am not showing that was very time consuming, like chopping the windshield frame and installing all new wood inside the car. All the windows had to be remade smaller and I had them made in safety glass as the original windows were still plate glass, scary it you get in an accident.
As far as chops go, the model A is one of the easiest to accomplish as it is so square, but it was still a lot of work. The next time I chop one, I would like to try and wedge it.

Getting the A on the road for the summer

So with the fenders removed, car lowered and brakes upgraded. It was time to pick so wheels and tires. I decided to go with the early wide five wheels and luckily my friend was willing to sell me his rare wide five spider caps to go along with them. For tires I wanted to go with the traditional "big and little" look. This meant smaller tires in the front than the rear. So I decided on a 7.50X16 in the rear and a 6.00X16 up front. I knew I wanted reproduced Firestone tires from Coker. https://cokertire.com/ I was going to go with a black wall tire, but my son convinced me to opt for wide white walls, I think he made the right choice.
It is often thought that white wall tires were a sign of having money as they would be more expensive but it is the opposite. Rubber for tire in the day, was made from rubber trees which was naturally white. Having a black wall tire was actually more costly to make and therefore purchase.

The new tires arrived from Coker.

 The goal was to have the car on the road for the summer and what better break in road trip than Deuce Days 2013. Below is a picture of the disaster that my garage turned into as I pulled an all nighter to get it ready to get to the ferry.

 This shot was taken right before we loaded a duffel bag in the back along with the kids and headed for the ferry. It was also the first time I had driven it since rolling it in the garage 7 months ago.

 We made our ferry reservations by minutes due to a fueling issue that arose but managed to limb it to Victoria and fix it there. We then drove it like this for the summer. With big plans for the next winter hibernation in the garage.

Stay tuned. Next comes the Chop.

My students projects

I thought I might mix it up a bit in this next post and showcase a little bit of what the students of my Automotive Foundation class have been up. The last four weeks we have been studying brake systems. As the students have learned there is a lot more to doing a proper brake job than just installing new pads or shoes. The brakes on a vehicle are one of the most important safety features, failure of any of these components can lead to dangerous situations.
Installing new pads onto a rotor that is excessively grooved will cause reduced braking and heat dissipation until the flat surface of the new pad seats into the grooves of the old rotor. Not a very safe situation.
Here the job is being done right. He is installing a new set of brake pads on to the freshly machined rotors of his VW Golf. The smooth flat surface that was machined into the rotor creates the perfect finish for his new brake pads to bed into and properly seat.

Another student had brought in his Dodge Viper to repair the left rear tire that is slowly losing air pressure. Upon inspection he found a piece of metal protruding through the tire and required a plug/patch. He removed the tire from the extremely wide aftermarket wheel only to find that the tire had gone flat too many times on him and the inside of the tire sidewall was damaged beyond repair. Patching the hole and reusing this tire would have created a dangerous situation as the side wall of the tire could have blown out at any time. Not something you would want to happen to any ones vehicle, especially a car with this much horsepower.

 Here you can see the rim of the Viper on the tire machine after the tire was removed. It is not your everyday rim size, it is 20" in diameter and I believe around 12" wide. It took an hour to get the tire dismounted from the rim without doing any damage.

Brakes and a ride height adjustment

My next step was to get some real brakes into this thing. From factory, the Model A was equipped with mechanical brakes! The brake pedal was mounted to a lever that would push onto metal rods that would force the brake shoes into the brake drums and slow the car down. A friend of mine used to call them retarders as they only slowed you down and he didn't consider them brakes. LOL One trip around the block with the factory brakes and I new there was no way i was leaving those in this thing.
In 1939 Ford finally made the switch to hydraulic brakes. There were two different versions available, all Fords had a leading/trailing brake design. They work okay and are a good upgrade but the Lincolns of the same era had a Bendix designed duo-servo self energizing brake that could put out way more stopping force to the wheels. These are a much rarer option to find but there are a few companies that reproduce this style of brake for my application. So being that I am planing on running a much faster power plant in the old car soon, I decided to order a set of Lincoln Bendix brakes for the front and back of the car.

This just a pic of the backing plate mounted with the new brake line run to the rear and the wheel cylinder mounted.

 Being that the car never had hydraulic brakes, it never had a master cylinder for converting mechanical pressure to hydraulic pressure, so I had to get creative and find a way to mount a master from a 1940 Ford and hook it to the brake pedal. This shot is from underneath the car. I had to mount a push rod from the original brake pedal (it is designed to pull) to a lever to create a pushing motion on the master cylinder piston. There is very little room under that side of the frame so I mounted it to the cross member. It worked very well.

When it came time to choosing wheels for the car, I was going to go with the very traditional 1940 Ford solid wheels with hubcaps. But a friend of mine was selling a set of 1936 wide five wheels from his 1936 Cabriolet that he is building. They are a very different look so I bought them from him and then had to find some good brake drums. Have a look at the bolt pattern on that drum. The term "Wide five" comes from the bolt pattern that Ford used from 1936-1939. It is a five lug pattern with a 10.25" width between the lugs. Its huge. Unfortunately they are not reproduced and finding good useable drums was a bit of a hassle, but I scrounged the swap meets and eventually found some good ones and some extras I have stashed just incase. :)

 Once the brakes were set up, it was time for a height adjustment. I ordered some lowering springs for the front and the back from a company called "Posies" http://www.posiesrodsandcustoms.com/ They custom make lowering springs for most hot rods and customs. They had the main leaf eye reversed and they lowered the car a total of 3" after some adjustments.

Continuing with my Model A

So we will continue on with the hot rod transformation of my Model A. From factory the car was only equipped with one tail/brake light on the driver's side of the left rear fender. With the fenders removed I needed to put the tail light somewhere. I decided to make a mount to go where the original spare tire holder was on the rear of the car.
Starting with a flat peice of 22 gauge steel, I shaped it in the same triangular shape as the spare tire bracket. I welded a stud to the inside of the top mount and the bottom was bolted up using the factory bolts. Once I was happy with the fit, I cut the old tail light bracket and welded it to my new bracket. I still have the factory single tail light but it looks much better and covers where the spare tire bracket was that did not have great paint under it anyways.

2016 North West Deuce Days - Sunday July 23- The Big Show (Part 3)

Well, all good things must come to an end. After a long day of checking out some of the nicest cars around and walking a total of 14kms, we fired up the old banger and headed for our 6 o'clock ferry reservation. Below is a shot of my son as we wait in the line up to board.

This is what it looks like from the passenger seat of the car as we load up on the ferry to head home and get some needed rest from our little vacation.

2016 North West Deuce Days- Sunday July 23- The big show (part 2)

 The Morning after cleaning our cars was the best time to look around and snap some shots. It wasn't too long before the crowds started and taking a pic of a car became next to impossible without someone ending up in your shot. Between my son and I, we took over 200 pictures. Here are some of my favorites.
(Above) Two 32s that were brought up to the show by the Edelbrock family. Vics coupe and matching roadster. (Below) A shot of Vics yacht. Named "Victorious". This picture does the size and beauty of this boat no justice. He brings it for every event here.

 (Below) The 32 roadster below belongs to famed painter Darryl Hollenbeck. This car won the AMBER (America's Most Beautiful Roadster) award in 2015. It is a very prestigious award and not easy to win. It is an amazing car and he drove it up from his home in CA. Not too often you see an AMBER contender driving up the freeway let alone the winner.

 (Below) This 32 3 Window Coupe belongs to Bruce Meyers. He also drove this car all the way up here from Hollywood CA. It is a bare bones hot rod built in a true slat flat style. No side windows, a big shop to the roof with the windshield slanted way back. The interior consists of nothing more than two WWII bomber seats and belts, a steering wheel, shifter and a few gauges.

 (Below) This is a really neat 34 5 window coupe built locally in Coquitlam. Another example of the salt flat look. Powered by a great sounding V8 flathead.

(Below)  Here is a shot of the crowd by 11:00 am. The kid in front is my son, David.
They say that over 200 000 people go through the Langley Cruise-in. I bet this show attracts as many or more people. The streets were packed all day.

 (Below)I loved the color on this 32 3 window.

(Below) This 32 3 window was unreal. It was here from North Carolina. It had a seriously heavy chop to it. The rear window was only 1" tall. Powered by a hopped up Hemi, it sounded as good as it looked. We got a chance to chat with the guy that owned it for a while that morning. Very cool gentleman by the name of Tom Busch. He has two sons you may have herd of if you follow Nascar, Kyle and Kurt Busch.

 (Above) This 1930-31 (can't tell exactly what year it is due to the change from a model A grill to a 32 Grill. This was a popular modification to model A's when the engine was swapped out for a V8 from a 1932 or newer car to get the larger radiator in the car to cool the new power plant) This little roadster didn't have a V8, instead it is equipped with a heavily modified original Ford 4 cylinder engine (A Banger) Before the V8 was introduced in 1932, speed parts for the banger were everywhere. The flat head is named so due to the fact that the cylinder head is basicly a cap for the combustion chambers. The valves were located inside the engine block. This worked very well but was not efficient at allowing the engine to breath- and if an engine can't breath, it doesn't make horsepower. So aftermarket companies started to make overhead valve conversions for the little Ford  4 cyl. mill. This roadster is equipped with one of these conversions. I am not entirely sure as to the make of this particular conversion, there were a few different companies that made them, but I believe it is a Miller (the famed engine builder of the early Indy car engine) conversion. It also has been converted from one updraft carburetor to two downdraft carburetors. This is an excellent example of a pre-war hot rod.