Followed Me Home II

I'm just trying to understand how a short boxed frame like these will droop with no weight on them? How much does that roadster body weigh? Just asking because I sure don't know it all. I've had people tell me my frame on my K30 will flex horribly and I'm still waiting for it. It's boxed with 1/4" and I feel you'd have to be at the end of a 300' sled pull with the weight of the sled at your back door to get it to flex. :LOL:

Roger or anyone else, when I built my Corvette and did the front tilt. I used 1" round tubing for my inner structure and I wrapped the tubing with wax paper and then glassed over that to keep the 2 seperate. I got that trick from one of the greatest Corvette restorers around here. Whom, has sadly passed away. On cold days when the dew sets on the hood, you can see the factory bracing, but not my tubing. It worked on it pretty well.

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Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe

I'm just trying to understand how a short boxed frame like these will droop with no weight on them? How much does that roadster body weigh? Just asking because I sure don't know it all. I've had people tell me my frame on my K30 will flex horribly and I'm still waiting for it. It's boxed with 1/4" and I feel you'd have to be at the end of a 300' sled pull with the weight of the sled at your back door to get it to flex. :LOL:

Roger or anyone else, when I built my Corvette and did the front tilt. I used 1" round tubing for my inner structure and I wrapped the tubing with wax paper and then glassed over that to keep the 2 seperate. I got that trick from one of the greatest Corvette restorers around here. Whom, has sadly passed away. On cold days when the dew sets on the hood, you can see the factory bracing, but not my tubing. It worked on it pretty well.

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Ryan,
Me too on the droop. The roadster body weighs something less than 400 pounds - my neighbor & I moved it from trailer to dolly and we're both old guys.

I read the whole instruction from Wescott, and they clearly say that the supports on stands are used to check the frame for square & distortion. Once satisfied that the frame is straight they say to get it sitting on the suspension before bolting the body down and working on body alignment. I commented that mine has been sitting on the dolly for five years, may have "settled" some, and that I believe that I might have to shim a bit to get the door openings squared up. I still believe that to be true, but now that I've got he mounting holes opened up and had the body on the frame for the first time the next step is to paint the rear end and other loose parts, and get it sitting on the wheel & tires. At some point the body will go back on to mess with alignment, but I'll also be dropping in the engine & tranny so that I can start thinking about exhaust.

The wax paper trick sounds pretty slick! I'll try to remember that one, but may have to ask you again some day as memory fades.....

I've only had one fiberglass rod experience that I helped build. My old friend traded a ratty near junk 69 Corvette for enough parts and pieces to put together a 32 3 window roller. I can't remember the body brand, but it had been sitting on a pallet for years. We had to shim and trim that thing to get it looking decent when we tried to mount the body to the frame. That was almost 8 years ago. I so badly wanted to buy that car. :LOL:

Great news Roger!!! I was shuffling things in the little garage yesterday looking for the rest of the Cutlass parts and found the perfect gears for your new project!!!! You'll have to get some different axles but I've got a mint set of 5.13's on a lightened 40 spline spool!!!! Put a bit of a cage in that Deuce and you'd have a heck of a nice little bracket racer!!!!---and still the automatic tranny you promised to have in the next project!!!

You know me, always trying to help a guy out!!!!!!;););)

Gee Dave, I really appreciate the thought, but I don't think that the 5.13's are in the cards. ;):LOL: I ordered a set of 3.55's from Speedway yesterday about 2pm and I was surprised when the FedEx truck pulled down the drive this morning at 9am with two boxes! Great service, even if Lincoln is only about five hours away!

When I got ready to cut the slot for the brake pedal I decided to copy the feature that Duane used on the '33, making the threaded bung removable so that the slot can be smaller and the pedal can easily be removed and replaced in the future. The bung was on the gas pedal side of the arm, which didn't make sense to me for an automatic so I swapped it to the left side looking at the pedal. More clearance from the gas, and won't be cheating the steering column so much, either.

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Got it all done, mounted it on the pivot and decided to mount the pedal to the arm and the stinkin' bolt wouldn't fit.:mad: It threaded in about two turns easy, but stopped and wouldn't go farther. I decided maybe it was metric so I took the end piece off and headed to the hardware store. A 12mm metric slid through the hole, and a 14mm was obviously too big. A 1/2x20 would to two threads and stop. About then I noticed that the threads only went about 2/3 through the bung :confused: You can actually see it in this head-on shot!

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Finally decided to cut off the bung and weld on a piece of a threaded coupling but they didn't have one in NF so I swapped it to NC, bought a new bolt to match and headed back home. Turned into an all afternoon project, but the darned thing's mounted!!

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OOOo... one of "those" jobs! You know the ones, shoulda taken 1 - 2 hours tops..... then murphy steps in and there goes the day!:LOL::LOL:

Most everything I do should take a few minutes and stretches into a few hours! Neat and clean job on the brake pedal install! The 3.55's should give the car a nice launch, probably a lot more practical then my suggestion, too! Oh well, someday I might get practical too.....

3.55's behind a 700R4 have more "kick" than my'68 GTO with M20 Muncie and 4:11's in back. Good choice, Roger.

Nice work Roger!

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Originally Posted by Henry Rifle

3.55's behind a 700R4 have more "kick" than my'68 GTO with M20 Muncie and 4:11's in back. Good choice, Roger.

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It must be a HP to weight issue. I bet I could make that 4 speed give a better kick than that 700R4. :LOL:

So I'd called the PO of the project to let him know that the box labeled "Rear backing plates & drums" was missing the drums, and also that I believed that the poly fuel tank came with a filler nozzle & billet aluminum cap, as I had found the cork gasket and screws for it, but no nozzle. Neither is a big deal, but if they're sitting in his garage/basement then they're of no use to him. The good news, he called me yesterday and said that he'd found the drums in the basement, put there after he'd painted them; and he'd not only found the fuel nozzle but a anti-rollover vent and some mounting hardware for the tank, too. Bonus!! I picked up the lot yesterday on the way to another errand, and he told me he'd used "high temp paint on the drums, so they're good to go." :rolleyes:;):HMMM:

Today I went out and started gathering things that need to be painted chassis black. As I looked at the drums I noticed a spot where the gloss black had flaked to bare metal so I took a piece of duct tape, pressed it on firmly and ripped it off bringing all of the paint off with the tape :( I spent about an hour with a wire brush before I grabbed a wire wheel in a plug-in drill and got after them. I swear undoing the things the PO did that aren't right takes longer than doing them right from the start!!

Spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning out the front part of the barn that serves as the spray area, getting ready to prime & paint a bunch of little junk. Wanting to get the chassis stuff & wheels done so I can get it sitting on rubber, set the engine & tranny in place to see what I need to do to the tranny mount, and then set the body on to see what needs to be trimmed to clear the tranny bellhousing area.

Making good headway Roger! Great that you could get those parts too! I wonder if the guys at Por 15 make and brake drum paint that goes right on rust for better bond, but heat resistant! I know they make brake caliber paint, but I can't imagine they get nearly as hot as drums! I hate wire brushing rust!

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Originally Posted by stovens

Making good headway Roger! Great that you could get those parts too! I wonder if the guys at Por 15 make and brake drum paint that goes right on rust for better bond, but heat resistant! I know they make brake caliber paint, but I can't imagine they get nearly as hot as drums! I hate wire brushing rust!

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No rust here. Brand new drums painted with heat resistant paint on raw cast iron with zero prep, not even a wipe down with solvent to remove oils to stem rust in the box. They're clean, down to bare metal now and washed with lacquer thinner.

What a awesome project in any case, Roger.
Kurt

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Originally Posted by vara4

What a awesome project in any case, Roger.
Kurt

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Thanks Kurt. I'm going to have as much fun as I can doing the fab on this one. A roadster is gonna be soooo much easier. No heat, no AC, no power windows, no suicide door latches. ;)

Got the rear drums, front rotors, ladder bars, panhard bar & brake pushrod painted this morning, and as I'm typing this realized that I forgot to pull the pedal :o:(:LOL::LOL:

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I still have to get the differential re-painted black, but my guy didn't get the new gears in the third member Friday as he'd promised, and I want to do it all as a unit instead of masking everything so I'll do it Monday/Tuesday, and do the brake pedal them, too.;) Also have the tranny to do, but it's sprayed with a gray cast iron finish with no primer so I need to do an acetone wash on it, and maybe some grinding on rough spots first, and I may wait until I've done the test fit to see what the tranny cross member needs to mate to the 700R4.

It's all looking good Roger....... Is the body going to be black too...??

wow - just read thru all this thread again and very impressive!
theres some neat builds going on here at the moment and good to see everyone is posting pics and telling us the story
if everyone thought it was too much effort to take photos and post a story there wouldn't be much of a forum!!
i've been guilty of that and now realize that alot of our mistakes/murphy or idiot moments actually help other people,
so i have the camera in the workshop all the time
anyway-too much redwine burbling-thanks for the progress reports!

As always, thanks for the progress pics Mr.Spears. Your at the stage of the build that I always enjoy the most! And I think you do to...

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Originally Posted by parkwood

It's all looking good Roger....... Is the body going to be black too...??

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Thanks! No, the PO had already painted the chassis black so I've decided to keep it "old school", like the days when the fenders got pulled Friday night for racing the dry lakes over the weekend, then put back Sunday night to be respectable and not draw too much attention.....except I won't have fenders, won't try to be respectable, and it'll be vying for attention. I've settled on an oxblood/deep maroon interior color and had paint matched to that for the wheels. I've not picked the final color for the body yet, at least not to the point where I'll say it's gonna be "X" ;)

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Originally Posted by 34_40

As always, thanks for the progress pics Mr.Spears. Your at the stage of the build that I always enjoy the most! And I think you do to...

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Mike, you have me pegged! The problem with this part is trying to engage the vision far enough down the road that the features can be incorporated in a sensible sequence :LOL: I've ordered a windshield and top, figuring that in the Kansas sun a top is all but mandatory. Thanks to Don, Da34Guy, for providing me with the dimensions and location details for the two little brackets necessary to mount the top. I got them bent and in place a few days ago, while I was fretting with getting the barn cleaned out to paint. This is the first one, mounted temporarily before the bottom edge was smoothed out a bit. They can be left in place and painted body color to "disappear", or chromed. I think I'm leaning towards having them chromed, as I think that while chrome can get scratched paint will chip easier.

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Roger what do you use for exhaust fan and filter in your booth? You are doing a great job on this build!

Hank

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Originally Posted by desert dog

Roger what do you use for exhaust fan and filter in your booth? You are doing a great job on this build!
Hank

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Thanks, Hank! About a year ago I went "all in" on converting the front 15' of the barn into a temporary paint booth. I already had a gable mounted exhaust fan from Tractor Supply that pulls ~1200scfm, shown here.

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I considered moving it down low on the wall but decided that it wasn't worth the extra effort at this point. This is the fan from the inside.

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I decided to use the two garage doors for my air inlet, and I built a pair of 2x4 boxes to hold four 20x20x1 furnace filters each, biased to the outside to increase the exhaust function as much as I could. The two garage doors sit atop these two filter boxes, and I added a piece of 4 mil plastic across the top of the doors to seal the gap caused by the doors being slightly inboard at the top. The filters are cheap furnace filters that run $7.50 for three. I need eight for a total change, but the inboard filters get loaded quicker....

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The inside has a 2x4 stud wall covered in 4 mil plastic, with each side built to fold up to the outside, and the three shed roof extensions pulled up by a pulley system to hold them up and out of the way when the space is not used for painting.
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Once the painting's done the three roof panels lift, and the two wall sections fold flat against the outside barn walls, only taking about 3.5" of space on the side and a bit of overhead space sacrifice for the three shed roof panels. Setting it up to paint means cleaning out this section of the barn, extending the wall and washing down the walls, roof & ceiling with the pressure washer to get all the spider webs blown away. It gives me a 15'x30' open area to spray, which is plenty so far.

That is nice. thank you for the info. I was looking at portable booths, but had decided to go with plastic like You but was going to use portable fan on the ground, but I like yours better. Thanks for the pictures.

Hank

Make sure you use a fan with an induction (brushless) motor. Aerosolized paint can cause a dust explosion, and motors with brushes produce a lot of sparks.

Aren't you worried about the paint coloring the outside of the building. I had this happen to the roof on a shop long ago.

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Originally Posted by cffisher

Aren't you worried about the paint coloring the outside of the building. I had this happen to the roof on a shop long ago.

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So far the dust has washed off with the pressure washer, Charlie. Like the black overspray dust on the top panel of each door, a quick blast with the pressure washer and they're bright white again.

After getting the wheels painted, which is, by the way a most humbling experience:HMMM:, I've decided a "process improvement" is needed on the spray booth that will accomplish two things. First, the I found that with the fan louvers tending to push the exhausted paint laden air downward and the filters located beneath the garage doors on either side in addition to dust in the air my air filters are catching a lot of paint dust. Here's a filter after about an hour of spraying, all in.

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I had initially thought that I would convert the screen door in that folding wall into a "filter door", but then I realized that I can very easily simply cut down my existing filter banks to fit inside the folding wall sections, staple the plastic to the frame and cut away the plastic over the filter area. That way the fan will be sucking air through the barn, which will tend to drop out ambient dust & spores, and exhaust on the other side. The other bigger benefit is that I won't have to horse around the filter banks and seal around the openings any more. Not as good as a down draft, but good enough for a temporary spray booth!!

Here's the wheels done, shot indoors which puts a darker caste on them...

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and here's one outside in the sunshine.

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Not perfect by any means, but they'll do for now.;) Got 'em out baking in the sunshine today, so they'll be ready to accept some tires in the coming week.

I lost too much of my Saturday going to the new house under construction for one of my boys and his bride, so the differential still awaits it's new color. The new gears are all bolted in, and it's a good thing I changed them out because the 3.00's were pretty badly surface rusted from sitting in an unheated garage for five years, and my buddy tells me that the minor imperfections caused by surface rust will become stress concentrations in use, and lead to premature failure. I never knew that tidbit before!

Wheels came out real nice Roger. I like the color, big difference in the sunlight!

Great color choice Roger

Nice color choice on the wheels Roger, and nice painting setup!

i like the colour as well-any progress is still progress!!

Just stopped by and scanned through the build photos. Thanks for sharing. How close are you to being on the road or are you already? Never mind I saw it in one of the recent bad weekend photos...

I've been a bit hesitant to post much, as the atmosphere around here hasn't been the best lately, but I took a step today that might help someone else who's scratching their head about fitment. When Mike (34_40) was here last week we set the new Rootleib hood in place and the fit sucked. With the cowl to grill distance set and fixed the hood simply did not fit at all. We had a significant gap at the cowl, top tight, bottom out by over an inch which points to the grill being too high.

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This one shows that the gap is nominal 1.25"

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I sent a couple of pictures to Don (DA34GUY), as he's probably fit more deuce hoods than just about anyone around here, and he agreed with my assessment. The radiator and grill shell both seem to be OK, so the only thing to do is drop the mounts on the frame. The firewall to radiator braces, with their upward arc, also point to a problem with the radiator being high.

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Here's the mounting tabs.
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So I cut off the tabs, clamped some angle iron pieces to the frame to support the radiator, and started the drop. It's looking like the radiator is going to end up right at 1.25" lower in order to have the hood aligned. One key point is to look at the alignment of the body side molding to the hood side molding, and that they are in a nice, straight line.

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Tomorrow I will be back, fine tuning the location of the radiator mounting tabs to try to get the placement perfect for hood alignment, then weld them back in place and move on to steering u-joints.

The other thing that Mike and I discussed was that with the R&P the angles get bad fast between the rack shaft and the steering column. Mike mentioned that he had opted for a double u-joint at the mid-point, and I assured him that I thought my single would work, but after some measuring and rough in the center joint is more than a 35 degree angle, so I've ordered a double U, too. Thanks a lot, Mike!!:LOL::LOL:

Glad to have helped in any way.. one other thing on the double joint. You'll probably find the steering "speeds up" / "slows down" as you turn the steering wheel, don't forget the "phasing" and you'll maybe decide to double up the double u-joint to help that condition.

I don't find the condition offensive and only rarely notice it. But it is there.

Looks like ya got it figured out now Roger, yer on the right track.

Nice fix Roger. Your making some major progress. Keep posting, we will filter out and un-needed advice!

Roger, it's nice to see you posting progress on this one. Nice work repairing your hood. I think I'll have to step up to some double u joint joints for my steering shaft because I want to set my engine lower in the chassis. They sure aren't cheap. Oh wait, what is? :LOL:

Heck, that was a large gap to fill when you first started but you have managed to pull it all into a nice line. I was going to suggest packing the front of the body a wee bit so that the grille / radiaator didn't have to go down too much but you have gained the space you needed without doing that.
Mike, I'm not fimaliar with " speeding up, slowing down "of the steering when two flex joints are used, can you please explain the why and what fors behind that and how noticeable it can be ? I know the on some builds one can't avoid not using universals in the steering but honestly didn't realize that doing so can effect the steer " feel " of the car.

Whip, have you seen any of the threads regarding u-joints in driveshafts? Are you familiar with "phasing"?

If you have a joint out of phase the shafts have to "speed up" / "slow down" as they rotate, steering gear or driveshaft no matter, you can actually feel it in the car.

When you add a double joint into the mix you must be very careful with the phase cycle...

If you google U-Joint phasing, there are many good videos and write-ups..

This is one of the best graphic representations of the speed up/slow down issue with driveline u-joints - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDmz0tibVGM

I can see that it applies to steering u-joints too, but I believe that the impact of it is not really much of an issue in the steering geometry since the speed up/slow down would only be seen in a rapid multi-turn maneuver. It's a real problem with your driveline.