Followed Me Home II

While all this concern about a stock style '32 tank is well intentioned, and the dangers conceivable, the number of potentially dangerous build features on a hot rod based on 80 year old technology is practically endless. No side beam protection, no roll over protection in a roadster, usually no collapsible steering column, and on and on.....

Each of those could be remediated, but to what end? The one guarantee of certain death is being born. I offer this old saw for consideration......................

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Originally Posted by NTFDAY

Roger your tank was probably designed to be in the trunk, but as a wise man once stated, "improvise, adapt, overcome" and that fits the bill here to a "T". The properties of polyethylene allows for a bit of flexibility that that you wouldn't find in abs or polycarbonate. My only concern is that, IMHO, I would construct some form of skid plate so that an errant rock couldn't damage the tank in the location you will have it placed in and leave you stranded. Just my 2cts. worth.

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Ken, the tank wasn't designed to be in the trunk. It's designed specifically to be hung from the frame rails, with the fiberglass cover riding on top of the rails to give the appearance of the OEM tank, and using steel brackets for extra support. Here's the link of the specific tank - 1932 Ford Poly Fuel Tank with Fiberglass Cover, and they also offer two metal tanks, made to OEM dimensions (and sold by supplier's like BeBop's, Yogi's, Speedway, etc), for those who want that approach - http://www.tanksinc.com/index.cfm/pa...=cat/cat81.htm
The picture shows the decorative cover on the tank, which covers up the design feature of a nominal 2"x12" hole/tunnel that runs vertically through the tank (you can see through, top to bottom) which forms an amazingly strong column support, plus virtually eliminates any side slosh in the tank; and the fact that the side tabs are in excess of 1/2" thick and solid. As for a rock, the tank is somewhere around 3/16" to 1/4" thick, so I'm not at all concerned with rocks, and would be more concerned if it were a sheet metal tank. I'll leave the skid plate on the Jeep. ;)

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Originally Posted by Bob Parmenter

While all this concern about a stock style '32 tank is well intentioned, and the dangers conceivable, the number of potentially dangerous build features on a hot rod based on 80 year old technology is practically endless. No side beam protection, no roll over protection in a roadster, usually no collapsible steering column, and on and on.....

Each of those could be remediated, but to what end? The one guarantee of certain death is being born. I offer this old saw for consideration......................

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So true, Unc'! Can you imagine a similar drawing of a Stroker McGurk's Deuce Roadster, with "options" to make it more compliant with all of the concerns of the day? :eek::LOL::LOL::LOL:

Thanks for all safety and convenience concerns, guys, but I'm feeling pretty good that Tanks, Inc covered the bases pretty good on this tank.

i prefer the tanks inc over anything else. due to spring shackles i could not use one in my 54 ford truck and settled for a tanks inc steel one. the poly tank is by far safer than any of them. it will crush without splitting open .

Wow 300 bucks is a lot for a tank! I'm now trying to remember what I paid for the Aluminum one between the rails($479.00 Yikes) on my 48 Ford from classic performance. Best not look back on what we've spent to date! :)

my tank was 215 . the poly tank was only 235 .

If these poly tanks were so dangerous, all these new cars and trucks wouldn't be manufactured them! Sorry Roger. :LOL: Do you have any time line for driving the new ride?

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Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe

....Do you have any time line for driving the new ride?

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Nope, I've been fighting a sinus/upper respiratory bug for over a week, and it's kept me sidelined. I'm really just kind of plugging away slowly, because the build process if the part I love the most, but I may get into body & paint as it warms, and if so would hope to have it on the road before summer's end.... Besides, SharpMark may be coming from NZ, wanting to drive it to Ottawa in September. ;):LOL::LOL::LOL:

I have always had to have the philosophy that when its your time its your time when riding in my roadster. If you worry about safety to much you usually will not end up driving a hot rod I think.
Kind of like the guy I know that died wrecking a car at 25 mph with an ambulance behind him, while the guy that wrecks and flips at 70 mph on a motorcycle lives to tell about it, it just don't make since sometimes, there are lots of hypothetical situations we just can't counter everything, so be careful and say your prayers at night and live life.....

Yeah, a hot rod and a diligent focus on all of the potential risks involved are pretty much divergent paths in my mind. If you're too worried about ultimate personal safety then you'll likely never get into the hot rod, and just think what you're missing!! Now that said, I'm a very safety conscious guy, with a focus on things like three point seat belts done right, attention to reasonable details for keeping body & frame together in an impact, etc, etc, but a hot rod is a beast that carries with it some level of risk, and one accepts the risk then he/she elects to ride or drive the hot rod.

Like Matthyj says, sometimes one must simply live life, and hopefully your prayers have paved the way for any problems that may spring up.....

Well good luck with it Roger. There's always something to keep ya busy and off projects any way. That's how it is for me most of the time lately.

Having caused Rodger to review the safety issues of an exposed '32 gas tank I can say that most Lab Chemists have suffered through OSHA regulations but on the other hand I have seen some three lab fires and know of other cases where calculated risks were exceeded. I will say I was subjected to the same questioning harassment when I was building my '29 roadster with a tank in the trunk. After worrying about this I reinforced the back of the trunk with a 1/4" inch plate 4" wide across the inner rear of the stainless trunk AND added a front stainless Model A bumper across the rear which fits into the "Model A look" theme. I agree with Bob and Matty that a rear collison from a locomotive or an 18 wheeler is beyond consideration and of course asteroid impact is not covered! The stock '32 did have a meager bumper behind the external tank and many rods have a tube bar between the rear frame rails. I guess it comes down to "calculated risk". A few months ago I parked my replica roadster near a very nice steel '32 Tudor with a SBC and excellent leather interior and was interested to see the stock tank but it did have an external bumper, although the stock '32 bumper is much weaker than the stout Model A bumper. Sooooo, to Rodger and others I say I did respond to the hazing comments of this Forum and protected my tank (stainless + 1/4" plate + bumper) as best I could but in the final analysis all of hot rodding is a calculated risk anyway and you do the best you can and take your chances.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

In the final analysis, my '34 is not as safe as a 2015 Escalade, but it's a degree of magnitude safer than a motorcycle . . . and I'm good with that.

On the safety issue it's all relative to what we do and where we are. Building fast powerful vehicles in itself is inately dangerous. Some precautions are well needed and can increase our lively hood, like a helmet while racing, bike riding or on a motorcyle, but others such as what has been discussed fall into the personal risk, benefit, precaution file where we all have different lines of thought.Below is a photo I took in front of my house of the cars across the street. I thought the smart car really looked small between the two vehicles it's parked. I texted the photo to my wife, and commented ,"when is a car too small? I'm guessing no matter how well engineered it may be, crumple zones are pointless if your car is only 8 feet long! :0
http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/c...pscysecofv.jpg
On a different not I am enjoying this thread and your build Roger, It keeps my interest up, while I wait for my own project to start again. Plus I'm learning a ton about the 32'

Those smart cars are all over Italy, dodging in and out of traffic like they were bullet proof - but then, they do that on motor scooters there also.

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Originally Posted by Henry Rifle

Those smart cars are all over Italy, dodging in and out of traffic like they were bullet proof - but then, they do that on motor scooters there also.

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Yep when we were in Florence, I remember trying to cross a street with scooters shooting thru the pedestrians at 35mph! The best part was driving on the A1 autoban(not sure what Italians call their hiways) where you'd go to pass a slow vehicle and pray you didn't get creamed from somebody doing 120 way behind you, when you started the pass in your cheap under powered Nissan Micro, but 1/1000 of an inch off your bumper when you safely made it back into the slow lane!:)
Sorry for the hijack Roger, but too fun not to share! ;)

Good engineering will go a long ways toward establishing safety in our vehicles. I have seen some pretty scary engineering at car shows over the years. So when I was building my coupe, I tried to identify inherent weaknesses and compensate for them as best I could. My gas tank, which is in the trunk, has a 5/8 inch plywood box glassed into the body on three sides that separates it from the passenger compartment, and I built a bar that is welded to the rear frame which is hidden by the rear fascia to keep a minor fender-bender hit in the rear from caving the body halfway into the trunk. But like Jack said, no hot rod is going to be as safe as a modern vehicle. We just have to do our best to make sure they are not un-safe.

The term "Smart Car" is one of the most obvious oxymorons coined to name a vehicle, ever! Those things should be restricted to parking lots and amusement parks.

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Originally Posted by stovens

The best part was driving on the A1 autoban(not sure what Italians call their hiways)

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It's the Autostrada del Sole (Highway of the Sun). It goes from Naples to Milan. I drove a part of it everyday to work at Naples International Airport. They're enforcing the speed limit (130 kph/81mph) more strictly - but they still have lots of accidents.

I have an old hot rod buddy that says the gas tank is there to warn your fellow friends in the rumble seat in an event of an accident. He had 32 model A's until his battle with cancer. He had to sell darn near all them off to pay his medical bills. But, he's still cruising the streets.

I've seen drag cars wreck at better than 200 mph and have never seen a fuel cell rupture or blow up. Made out of the same stuff. Great build Roger, hope your feeling better. We just had 14 inches of more snow, just got the last 12 inches melted off. Come on spring.

Attachment 63194Usually it is hard to compete with Bob's pictures but here is proof that if you cannot be hit in the rear by a meteorite you still might be hit in the left (hip) rear fender! I am just showing this to prove that Ms. Ann Hodges was indeed struck by a meteorite in 1954 as shown in Life Magazine. Obviously this is an extremely rare event but still possible. Come on Rodger let us see some more good photos of your '32 build. While you have all the right parts for a beautiful roadster I will really be impressed if you can put it together and wired by this summer. I recall that I had some health problems that led me to take almost 7 years to finish my '29 but I did finally get it on the road!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

In the continuing saga of lights, I decided to throw together a bracket for the single fog lamp that I had picked up from Speedway. Had a piece of 1.5"x1/2" C channel left from the deck rail, a piece of thin wall tubing, some 1/8" flat stock, and a fender washer for the raw materials

Attachment 63196

After a bit of measuring I ended up with this hodge podge, having decided to weld in a tab that would bolt to the under side of the frame rail, keeping the top side flush. With the way the joint fits a single 3/8" button head bolt will keep it solid. The flat part is hollow, with room to run the single power wire out of sight.

Attachment 63199

Bracket attached...

Attachment 63200

And light attached...
Attachment 63197

Attachment 63198

I think the spacing is about right, and if I decide I don't like the light the whole mess comes off with one bolt and one clipped wire, leaving a single button head bolt on the frame rail, or a hole to weld.

Interesting! I cannot say the picture does it justice. So I'll ask to reserve any judgment! :LOL::p:LOL:



But it's much better than a meteorite pic!

Nice work Roger. I bet you're loving this great weather we are duely needing!!!

Thinking I'll lop off about an inch and a half and tuck it in closer to the frame..... And yes, the weather has been fantastic this past week. Coming to one of my favorite times of the year - spring time when we get those cool nights and warming days heading into early summer, and early fall when the daytime temperatures start falling off, nights get cooler, and the leaves start turning. Gotta love the mid-west in the transition months between winter & summer....

The more I looked at it the less I liked the bracket so it's gone. Think I'll look for a tube mount to hang it off of the spreader bar, and see if that's better....

Try something that looks like the end of a Model A headlight bar........something tubular and tapered..........thematically work better with the look of the front suspension..............totally tubular man................

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Originally Posted by Bob Parmenter

......something tubular and tapered..........thematically work better with the look of the front suspension..............totally tubular man................

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Great idea, perhaps a scaled down version of the headlight mounts? Or at least mimics it.. and the tubular idea would aid in fuel mileage!:rolleyes::rolleyes:



sorry - couldn't help myself! :p

Just read this whole thing. Nice work Roger. This is quite an inspiration for me. I find it comical, some of the concerns over thread engagement and fuel tank theories. These guys are gonna hate my car!

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Originally Posted by chopsmitty

Just read this whole thing. Nice work Roger. This is quite an inspiration for me. I find it comical, some of the concerns over thread engagement and fuel tank theories. These guys are gonna hate my car!

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Thanks for the kind words. Gotta say you brought a smile to my face with this one....;)

Looking good Roger.

I tend to get hung up on details, and without really intending to I get stalled and basically all progress stops. I'd been fretting with the door fitment, worrying about just exactly how I needed to shim the body to "fix" it, and finally just fixed it! The gaps were close, and in fact too tight, so I adjusted to get them centered, then ran a tape line on the door edges and got after them with an angle grinder. In short order the doors are gapped, and they shut and latch right. :D

With that done it freed up my head to attack other tasks. Got the LOKAR shifter mounted and adjusted first:

Attachment 63235

Took me several tries on the NSS before I figured out to ignore the instructions and adjust it the way that made sense to me.... The transmission hump came as a separate piece, but of course after I thought I had already modified it to fit the 700R4 it didn't fit the shifter :( A bit more glass work and it was good to go:

Attachment 63237

Got the accelerator pedal mounted - not my choice, but the PO bought it so we use it. Who looks at a foot feed, anyway, right??

Attachment 63238

Got the throttle cable mounted, with a bit of massaging on the pedal to help it sit closer to the floor:

Attachment 63234

Started looking at the LOKAR floor mounted E-brake, but the seats are really tight together. Even though I already made some 1/8" plate pieces with seat mounting bolts to mount under the floor I think I'll move the buckets out about 1/2" out on each side to give just a bit of clearance in the middle. The seat back adjustment handles will be right up against the outer interior panel with the move.

Attachment 63236

Also abandoned the idea of using the stock '32 tail lights. I kept messing with them, trying to figure out just how I wanted to modify the OEM mounts to bring the lights in tighter and down lower, and finally decided I simply don't like the stock lights on a highboy. After a bit of looking I settled on the '39 style, but really liked the Technolstalgia LED units on the '33, especially the fast triple burst light for brakes, so I opted for their Mini-Zephyr lamps -

Attachment 63239

Gotta give Speedway Motors some props here. I'm in their #1 UPS Zone, so if I order by 3pm the package is on the BBT for the next day. On this order I clicked "Order" at 8pm, and it showed delivery the next day! Sure enough, it arrived 16 hours after I ordered! Talk about great service.

I also ordered a piece that I think will solve my fog light mounting problem, but that will have to wait until early next week as I need to go get a piece of aluminum or SS flat stock to see if it's going to work.

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Originally Posted by rspears

I tend to get hung up on details, and without really intending to I get stalled and basically all progress stops.

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LOL! You just described me and about a thousand others like us!!! It's never as bad as our mind makes it out to be once we just get on with it. LOL! This is what I call being anal..

Roger, How was dialing in the Lokar shifter(I have a nostalgia shifter in the Ford truck). Mine frustrated me so much because if I dialed it in for park and drive, it would want to jump in gear in neutral. If dialed in for neutral. it doesn't want to reverse right. Was driving me nuts, one of the big reasons I still don't have my truck back, is because my friend Randy has been having similar problems. It might just be the tightness of the gear distance on the shifter linkage on the C6 transmission, but it is anything but simple!
Nice progress on all front for you. Good work, and your not allow on the obsession to do it just right getting in the way of getting it done. I've been there every step on my project.

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Originally Posted by stovens

Roger, How was dialing in the Lokar shifter(I have a nostalgia shifter in the Ford truck). Mine frustrated me so much because if I dialed it in for park and drive, it would want to jump in gear in neutral. If dialed in for neutral. it doesn't want to reverse right. Was driving me nuts, one of the big reasons I still don't have my truck back, is because my friend Randy has been having similar problems. It might just be the tightness of the gear distance on the shifter linkage on the C6 transmission, but it is anything but simple!

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Steve, it sounds to me like your nostalgia shifter & the lever arm on the transmission shaft are not matched. The LOKAR comes with the shifter all assembled, other than the mounting brackets that attach to the tranny to form a base for the shifter, plus it has a new arm for the transmission shaft so that the linear distances of the two parts, shifter arm and transmission arm, match. Also, each is specific to the transmission they are mounted on - the shifter "kit" is ordered so that the shift spacing matches exactly to the transmission it's mounted on. If yours didn't come with a new tranny arm they "assume" that it's OEM, and it may have been changed at some point?

My problem was the neutral safety switch (NSS) adjustment. It comes with a nifty little aluminum plug that installs in place of the NSS as the right side support bracket is allowed to move to get everything centered, and is then tightened down. Mine was just a hair out, allowing the NSS to remain closed in Drive - not an acceptable feature. After a few attempts following the instructions I examined the parts, and realized that I simply needed to shift the right side bracket a smidgen to get everything where it needed to be. I think that the little aluminum plug had just a bit too much clearance for some reason. It's all good now, and I seem to have all gear positions clean.

I think it's just a hard fit for the c6. The shifter was for a c6, but you have to cut the threaded rod, and adjust angle when instaled to the tranny, your's sounds a lot more straight forward!

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Originally Posted by stovens

I think it's just a hard fit for the c6. The shifter was for a c6, but you have to cut the threaded rod, and adjust angle when instaled to the tranny, your's sounds a lot more straight forward!

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No, you have to do the same steps with LOKAR. The shifter can mount in any position on the mounting rails, depending on where you want the stick relative to the dash & seats. Once set the shifter arm is to be at/near the 4:30 clock position in PARK, and tranny arm also in PARK. Measure hole to hole, subtract 1.75" for the rod ends and cut the threaded rod to length. I needed to put a little dog-leg at the shifter end of the all thread rod to clear a "bump" on the tranny, but easy to do without heat. The key is that when you cycle through, and end up in PARK you should be able to pull a bolt out of either end of the rod and it fits back into the hole on the arm without any friction - both the shifter and the tranny are in their detent positions, and the rod fits between with ease. If you have it adjusted for that fit then every shifter position detent should correspond to a tranny detent. I do remember that they said if the shifter is mounted to the extreme forward position then the shifter arm needs to be moved to around the 4:00 position to work smoothly. All of that worked fine for me. It was only the NSS that caused a bit of frustration, and I managed to make that work with only a bit of free-styling.

Thanks for that tip! I will try that if Randy can't dial it in!

Steve, you've got me totally confused. When I Google "nostalgia shifter" it takes me directly to the LOKAR site - Lokar: Nostalgia Automatic Transmission Shifters Is your shifter something besides the LOKAR Nostalgia model for the C6 tranny? If that's what you have then these instructions show the pieces & parts that came with it, including a new tranny shift arm - Instructions here http://www.lokar.com/downloads/pdf-i...untShifter.pdf Also, LOKAR sells an adjustable shift arm for the C6, and in that instruction it points out that some OEM arms are welded to the transmission shaft, and if so they must be cut off using a cutoff wheel. You can't use the OEM lever arm with the LOKAR shifter, IMO.