Thread: Followed Me Home II

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Picked up a sheet of 1/2" plywood to make a bulkhead to separate the trunk from the interior area. The cardboard pattern quickly told me that it had to be in two pieces.
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I decided to put a lap joint in the middle, thinking that I'd glue it in place but then realized that my lifting beam rides on that steel at the top of the body, so it really needs to be removable, at least for now, so I drilled & tapped some 1/4-20 holes and bolted it in place. That wooden battery was made long ago when I was trying to decide where it would land, but the real one is going to sit right there. Talking with Jim Robinson, the fuse block is likely going to be on the other side of the plywood panel, tucked behind the passenger seat. I've only got four or five circuits with a fair weather roadster. and once it's wired the only time the block gets attention is trying to trouble shoot a short. Seems like a good spot, at least for now.
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ShowMe puts in this nifty trunk release tucked up behind the dash on the driver's side with the cable running back to a VW style latch.
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While I was test fitting the drivers side panel I kept having to move this big loop of cable that was right behind the door, laying against the body and it made me wonder why it was there? Then I realized it was going to be like the Coke bottle hung from a string inside the Cadillac door - always rattling against the body and being an irritation. Probably wouldn't hear it in a roadster, but it was only there because it was easier to not cut the cable! Of course the latch had to come out to be able to get to the cable end, but it's now 3' shorter and lays flat on the floor.
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When I brought the body home one of the first things I noticed was that ShowMe had welded a pair of braces to the horizontal steel, right behind the top of the seats, running back then angled down to a pad that the rear body bolt passed through. My '33, from N&N had nothing like that and the more I looked the more I decided that brace was going to cause any rear impact to crush into the interior, leveraging the seat back (and me!) forward and down. I cut the braces out, and had formed a pair of 3/16"x1" flat steel to follow the floor, and today I drilled them, glued them to the body with Liquid Nails, and bolted them back into place to dry. They tie the two body bolts together, sandwiching the body to the frame, so for the body to come off it has to rip out the whole floor. Not that it won't happen, but I like that idea better than a plug the size of a fender washer and it kind of forms a "crumple zone", if fiberglass crumpled...
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Next is to pull the seats, unhook the steering column u-joint, remove the dash and unbolt the body to see the top of the chassis for the first time in 4 years I hauled this stuff home in March 2014, did a little that summer and a little more the next like swapping out the TH350 for a 700R4 (this one's an automatic because my wife wouldn't even TRY to drive the coupe), swapping out the rear gears to better fit the OD, adding a True-Trac, and painting the diff & rear swing arms. Spring 2016 was to be the time to get it done..... and then the nagging pain that my wife had kept to herself turned into cancer, inoperable and the size of a youth football, grown free form surrounding her gastric artery and now pressing on major organs, thus the pain. We chased treatments for a year, but lost her in May 2017 and the desire to "build" has been slow to rekindle, no excuses. Maybe 2020! Staying isolated may be an advantage!