Thread: Followed Me Home, '33 Build

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Originally Posted by rspears

As the old saying states, "Necessity is the mother of invention", and some add that ingenuity must be the father...

So True! So True!

At Springfield, talking to the guys from N&N and looking at the cars I decided that I really wanted to go back to a hood top for the '33. When I got home I called Duane, he put one in the queue for me, but had one already done so I made a run to AR Friday 6/4 to pick it up, and to attend a HS reunion on the way home Saturday. When I got home Sunday, having previously set the body, grille and splash aprons back in place I set the hood on and was dismayed to find it 3" short! I called Duane on Monday and we chatted about having to lay the grille back, which for me meant having to shift the bottom forward to stay out of the pulleys with the fan. Soooo, I set the engine back in place, and started the chase for clearance. Bottom line, the hood is going to work fine, and the grille will look a lot better laid back three inches at the top - a more aggressive line. In order to get the three inches at the top and stay out of the pulleys I trimmed 7/16" from the motor mounts and relieved the tranny mount a little to slide the engine back, slid the bottom of the radiator forward and let it lay back and inverted the fan shroud to drop the puller fan lower relative to the water pump pulley. I cut out the radiator mounts and made some new ones to kick down and out, welding them in place thinking I could use the splash apron to "adjust" the final resting position of the grille - a bad assumption. I kept fighting the hood, which was now playing a part in positioning the radiator/grille instead of simply setting in place on them, and things just were not right - every time I pressed down the back edge the front popped out and the radiator layed back into the pulleys. After messing with it for several days, including re-mounting doors to do another trim on the headers for door clearance I stepped back and started measuring alignments and taking a new tack on mounting the radiator, which is the top mount point for the grille.
A few mis-steps and re-do's but I think I about have the hood fitting licked in the big picture. Like I said, I made a mistake of trying to use the splash aprons to "adjust" the final radiator angle and that did not work - they are simply fillers to hold the grille shell, and need to be used that way. Unfortunately I did a bit of trimming on the aprons in the process, which I should not have done, but I would have been extending them more anyway as it turned out. I came to realize that my radiator mount angle was off with my new mounts, which was causing me some big headaches, but more of an issue was that it sat a bit off-square with the body by about 3/8" when aligned "as received" and I had maintained that mis-alignment with the new mounts. Once I got that figured out things started falling into place. I cut out the new radiator brackets, made another set and tacked them into place followed by the grille and hood - still off a little so I ground away the front tacks and angled them up a tad more and clamped a piece of angle beneath for final fitment. The hood layed in place nicely with no stress, and my fan to pulley clearance was a bit over 1/2" - cool beans!! I bolted the splash aprons to the frame, shifted the grille forward a bit for AC condenser connection clearance and found a nominal 1.5" gap between splash apron and grille. I took some thin aluminum siding flashing and pop riveted it in as a backer plate, waxed it and the grille shell, and glassed the gap using bondo gel resin and six or seven layers of woven cloth - should be plenty strong, but I may add a top and bottom metal brace inside where it is hidden just for grins. Here's the "look" with the radiator and grille layed back a bit, and the hood top in place, and a couple of the very rough gel resin fiberglass fill of the gap. Today I will take the splash aprons and grille loose to pop the extended aprons off of the grille to trim the front edge to the cut line on the back side, and will do a bit of conturing to see if I need another layer or two of cloth in the thick places. I think it will be a pretty good profile once it is done. Oh yeah, with the grill pushed forward the SS "V" spreader bar would not even come close to fitting, so I boxed the front of the rails, too. Still need to do the rounded cap on the front edge and weld the bottom side when I flip the chassis, but they will look better than the open rails. One more piece for the "..why did I order this??" shelf...