Thread: Roadster Stuff

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Irelands Child (I'm assuming you are of Irish descent; I am only about 25% Irish, 50% German and 25% Swedish, but born in the U.S. of A.!), Thank you very much for the links. The guy at Metro Rubber was very helpful and I ordered a length of rubber from a Corvette fender welt which has a crosssection 9/16" thick x 7/8" wide with a 1/8" groove 3/8" deep out of sponge rubber. That width and the sponginess should entirely fill the hole around the column (hopefully) and give a factory appearance with the cut hidden at the bottom under the column. I was surprised I could order as little as a foot but I ordered 4' to try an addtional piece across the top of my homemade floorboard tunnel as a seal. I have tried to make my new floor pretty much like the stock Model A floor board. If that works I plan to order more for around my door jambs and the edge of the rumble seat area. The doors on the fiberglass body are reasonable replicas of stock doors but the door wells are quite different from stock with a thick lip around the edge and this rubber may work well there. I once had a "real" '29 roadster body so I am familiar with the stock shapes but it was rusted so badly that I gave up on it and sold the whole thing; basically it was more archaelology than auto repair! Another item of interest is a new column boot kit from Speedway which I ordered and should cover the paint scratches on the bottom of the column. The boot is made up of a universal tilt mount with a 4 1/2" diameter ring to clamp the faux leather boot, part Nos. 446-2401 and 446-2405 in the new No. 247 catalog as a new item.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Hi Don - yep Irish as well as Scottish, British and German which makes me a standard issue all-American. My wife hung me with that nom de guerre (plume?) after our 3rd or 4th trip to Ireland.

I'm glad that Metro worked out for you - they were more than obliging in looking up a shift boot part number for me and gave me a CD catalog for future reference. I will need some weather stripping soon.

I hadn't seen the column boot in my new catalog #247 just received yesterday - I'm going to order the boot alone as my column is too close to the firewall recess to use the floor mount. My floormount is a piece of 2" exhaust tubing with setscrews to retain the bottom of the column but the boot will finish off my carpeting and make the upholsterer happy that he only has to do an upper shifter boot as well as an e-brake boot (I have a console for the radio and A/C-heater) which needs a lower weather boot then the appearance boot above. It's not that I don't know better with a roadster, it's that I had the A/C as a leftover from the sedan debacle - and a lot of $$$ involved that wasn't mostly recoverable as parts .

Sounds like you started like I did - a resurrection project. I started with a '31slant windshield sedan that was like a tunnel with no light at the end. A guy made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and a week later a trailer pulled in front of my house and it went South. Dick Spadaro - Early Ford Reproductions, my local supplier, picked up my B'ville roadster for me at Carlisle, PA and it has been an open checkbook and a bent credit card ever since .

Revisiting some ancient stuff !!
I built my H pipe over the Christmas/New Year holiday time when my wife 'suggested' that I keep the noise and dirt pollution down a bit. Actually turned out fairly easy once I got the @#$% exhaust system apart (I tightened everything with an 18" bar)

What I have are a couple of 8" long spool pieces of 2.25 pipe with the exhaust pipe end belled and the muffler end to fit inside the muffler. I dug out a 180 degree mandral piece of 2", cut it to size with a 2 1/16 hole saw( couldn't find my 2.25) which with the normal hole saw wobble, was just right, and notched the end. I opened up a 2" hole in my 2.25 spool pieces and welded it up. For whatever reasons, the welds look like bird droppings - and the welder was spitting - so had a bit of clean up grinding to do. It will all be bolted back in place tomorrow (we both had the flu and stomach problems hung on for 3 weeks)

Dave very interesting, gives me some ideas. It looks like the crossover pipe has a slight U-shape. I have had some Christmas visitors and also some professional obligations relative to my previous academic career but the good weather rekindles stuff I was putting off until April or so.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

Dave very interesting, gives me some ideas. It looks like the crossover pipe has a slight U-shape. I have had some Christmas visitors and also some professional obligations relative to my previous academic career but the good weather rekindles stuff I was putting off until April or so.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don,
The pipe was cut from a Summit mandrel 'U' to go beneath the driveshaft as I have my exhaust tucked up as high as possible. I'll post an "as installed" photo soon - I need to pick up a piece of .500 stock and make a muffler hanger today. This needs to be welded directly to the muffler as I can't move the rear hanger.

Our good weather came to an end yesterday with cooler weather and a <.25 dusting of snow(we've had < 1.00 total so far this year, about 18" less than normal). I've not been too diligent with the car, with the flu and the holidays slowing things a bit, but am back to work at it this week.

My professional obligations, with the exception of a few phone calls ended as I walked out of my office for the last time 18 months ago. And I don't miss it. But still not sure that if someone made me an offer that I wouldn't do something similar, at least parttime, but not for GE.

And installed:
What a project it turned out to be -
Also shows my new Denny's HD driveshaft

Hi Dave,

This looks good! Did I miss any discussion of choice of mufflers?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

Hi Dave,

This looks good! Did I miss any discussion of choice of mufflers?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don
C9X (Jay) has some comments above - I'm using Flowmaster 50 series(p/n942452) for less interior resonance, hopefully, but would have probably chosen their smaller 409SS Hushpower's if I had waited a week or so a couple of years ago.