1931 Ford Model A
Added 3/28/08
I have a friend at work, Bill, that has his own shop and he has been working on and building cars (interiors, fabrication, hotrod construction, you name it) for a very long time. I told Bill about the ridiculous estimate I got for my planned new interior and he told me that if I was interested, he'd take on the job (with my help - which I was happy to provide) for a much better price. One thing led to another and in addition to the interior, Bill and I are installing a new radius rod style rear suspension, a hood top (that I received for free from a friend in Shreveport last year) and the icing on the cake will be a rebuilt transmission.
Here's the highlights of what's being done to the little coupe this time (remember, this is all very therapeutic for me):
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New interior - old interior didn't line up with new seat location and was falling apart.
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New rear suspension - old suspension was cobbled together very cheaply with weak parts and I had already broken a weld on a suspension link. I also knew that the rear axle was about an inch off center so it wasn't even installed straight. All the rubber bushings were shot too. Due to poor alignment of the rear-end geometry, when I hit big bumps, the car tried to head for the weeds. When I stomp hard on the brakes, the car gets sideways on me (always kicks the rear of the car to the right).
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New hood top - now I can go hoodless or with a top section installed.
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Rebuilt transmission - If I put the car in neutral at highway speeds (don't ask) I have to wait 30+ seconds for the thing to reconnect with the rest of the drive train when I put it back in gear. It's only 38 years old, and I'm betting it's never been touched.
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New rear brake lines - see description in the pictures below.
I'll be taking photographs of the progress and posting them below. I'll send out updates and new stuff gets added.
Lets begin.
New panels fabbed up just waiting on the new fabric. Bill talked me into
installing pouches on the doors to hold my "stuff".
You can see the "Dynamat" installation on the right.
This is the drivers side "kick" panel between the door and the firewall.
You can see my pretty new "Painless" brand wiring fuse block.
Passenger side kick panel. That long silver stick on the left is my new
32" long shifter. It has an aviator skull shift knob on top.
Bill and I removed all the nuts and bolts holding the rear axle on and this is
what it looks like after it's rolled out from beneath the car.
Just look at those thin and flimsy brackets. The car only had 2 leaf
springs, and they were cut in half! The only thing that supported
the weight of the car was the pair of air shocks that were installed back here.
You can see the bottom of the shock mounts halfway
between the pumpkin and the wheels. The top of the shocks both canted in
at about a 20 degree angle toward the center of the car.
It's no wonder the car leaned so horribly when I went around corners.
I discovered why the car always got sideways on me when I got on the brakes
hard. Look at the aluminum brake line at the center
of this picture on top of the axle. This is going to the left wheel.
You can see the brake line was smashed closed so I had been driving
around with only 3 working brakes. The right rear wheel liked to lockup
with hard braking and since the left rear wheel was spinning
freely, the rear of the car always kicked out to the right.
One crimp to the left rear wheel wasn't enough, here is another smashed section
of brake line.
This is my partner in crime, Bill.
Now the fun begins, Bill is going to teach me how to wield a cutting torch so we
can remove all the crappy old suspension hardware.
Bill is explaining the finer points of how your flame should look before you try
to cut.
That's me having a blast cutting parts off my car. Bill chastised me and
told me I better watch where my torch was aimed.
Torches are fun! Of course I had to follow this up with about 30 minutes
with the grinder to make things pretty looking when we were done.
That's what the rear axle looks like after Bill and I were finished grinding all
the old welds off.
This is the other side.
Here are the pretty new adjustable coil over QA-1 rear shocks. These match
the front shocks I installed last spring.
This is one of the new radius rods. You can see how much beefier the
bracket is that welds to the rear axle. The old brackets
we removed maybe touched 3 linear inches of the axle where they were welded on
(that's why it was so easy for me to bust one off
driving around). These new brackets will completely surround over half of
the circumference of the axle and have a weld bead on
both sides. Much more secure. The old suspension had absolutely NO
way to adjust it. It's geometry was wherever it got welded on.
The new radius rods and panhard bar (on the left in this picture) all have
adjustable knuckles on the ends. This will be a nice feature
that will help fine tune the rear-end geometry once we get it all welded on.
This is the other radius rod. The tabs for the panhard bar are on the left
side of the blue box. Speedway
Motors is one of my favorite
on-line suppliers of hotrod parts.