Thread: The Roofus Special

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The frame doesn't bother me; I don't think it's out of proportion at all. I think when you get the wheels on there to obscure the view, get the hood & sides on, and everything is painted it will look just fine. If you look at old Indy cars, some of them had pretty massive frames and they look OK. Nice work so far; keep it up.

Originally Posted by J. Robinson

The frame doesn't bother me; I don't think it's out of proportion at all. I think when you get the wheels on there to obscure the view, get the hood & sides on, and everything is painted it will look just fine. If you look at old Indy cars, some of them had pretty massive frames and they look OK. Nice work so far; keep it up.

You may be right. The fact that it is up on the table, it is a lot closer to my eyes....it just looks HUGE.

When the car is down on the ground, it should look more appropriate since this sucker will be pretty low (right at the scrub line).

I currently have two Ford style front leaf spring packs in my stash. One is what I think is a stock model A spring pack. The other was sold to me as a Posies spring pack from a 34 ford (it does have reversed eyes on the main leaf).

Anybody have any guesses as to how close the spring rates might be between the two? ...and what the rates might be?

Anybody have a guess as to how much the spring pack will compress from free state to being on the ground with a 575 lb motor behind the spring?

I am going to use the transverse spring to hold up the IFS set-up and don't really know where to put the spring crossmember.

Actually started installing the boxing plates. I really want these things tied to the inner tubes. I am making plug welds to secure the plates near the inner horizontal edges of the tubes.



Drilled holes two inches apart and ground away the paint



Clamped in place to transfer weld spot to the 1.5" tube



Welded

The alxe I "remembered" being a model A....isn't. I think it is a 1940 unit



I think the spring will be better for this application anyways. The wider spring will put the load out farther on the a-arms.

Now I need to figure out what the crossmember needs to look like. Anybody have any guesses as to how much this spring will compress in this car? ...jag engine with a bunch of set-back vs. stock 40 ford ....I don't have a clue.

Spring will be on top of the lower arms ...I couldn't mock that up.

Today, I feeling like putting the crossmember under the spring and securing it with just two BEEFY u-bolts.

I've seen pics of similar set ups on cars in the past. They didn't exactly give me a warm and fuzzy feeling from a safety point of view.

Has anybody seen one actually fail when the front of the car is held up by the u-bolts?

Hmmm.... I would have been tempted to split the wishbone and use that entire axle assembly; it would be typical for the time period of the style car... Anyway, you will probably only need about 6 leaves in that spring, possibly less. Your car will weigh only about half what the '40 weighed and your center of gravity is back further. I would start by removing every-other leaf. If it's too soft or stiff when you're done, you can add or delete more until you get the ride you want.

Originally Posted by J. Robinson

Hmmm.... I would have been tempted to split the wishbone and use that entire axle assembly; it would be typical for the time period of the style car... Anyway, you will probably only need about 6 leaves in that spring, possibly less. Your car will weigh only about half what the '40 weighed and your center of gravity is back further. I would start by removing every-other leaf. If it's too soft or stiff when you're done, you can add or delete more until you get the ride you want.

If it wouldn't have been for the knock-off wire wheels and cool looking disk brakes on the parts car, I would have gone straight axle a LONG time ago.

I was planning on setting it up right at the scrub line for that "stupid low" look. Nothing was going to hang below the frame rails. The car was going to be flat bottomed to be driveable down low. ...then last night I saw this car on Northwest Vintage Speedsters.

It has a really nice shape. I especially like the downward slope of the hood.

The car sits higher than I thought I wanted mine to sit. ...But it looks SO RIGHT! It looks like they dropped the motor down to have a lower hood line.

I think I may raise my car about 3-4 inches and lower the motor by the same amount.

Nicely proportioned car. I like it. Except for the finned aluminum drums, the front end looks like a radically dropped Model-A axle complete with mechanical brakes and un-split wishbone. Rear end looks like Model-A also, but I can't see the spring. I'd like to see the frame on that car to see how it's built. Anyway, if you approximate the shape of this car, you'll be on the right track.

That car looks like it's going to be a blast to drive. I had an 87 XJ6 and was suprised how much power it had for an inline six. You're doing a great job, Flipper.

I played with the front end some more. I thought I wanted a t-bucket type spring perch to mount the front srping and a seperate crossmember down low to mount the rack and pinion. I was planning on making a splash apron below the the spring crossmember to hide the rack.







The piece pictured was 2x4. It seeme too bulky so I grabbed a piece of 2x3 and trimmed it to fit between the frame rails. I didn't bother taking pics. It just looked wrong. The straight line going across the front of the car did not play well fith the swoop shapes.

So I scrounged around the various junk piles and pulled out a 4x4 transfercase crossmember out of a WW2 era Dodge ambulance (everybody has one of those right?). It kinda looked like a model T rear spring perch, but was way bigger. I cut a piece out of the middle and tried it on for size.

It is going to span between the lower a-arms and the spring will be mounted above the crossmember.

Here it is mocked up, centered under the spring.

I also tried it slid forward and rearward to see what grabbed me. (The gray piece in the pic is the 2x3 crossmember I tried. I tried it mound on top of the upper frame rails and also from the bottom side of the upper frame rails...it just looked wrong)

Forward




Rearward




I liked it best slid to the rear.

So now that I had an idea of how the spring was going to be attached, I neede to sort out where everything else was going to be.

The radiator is a pretty important piece...so I threw it into the mock-up.









Just adding the radiator made it look more like a car.

...But the radiator that far back just didn't look right.