Thread: 1941 pro street willys

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anybody know where i can buy chassis rails and crossmembers for a 41 willys coupe along with the appropiate layout drawings. The well known chassis guys all have early ford kits but I haven't seen a willys pro street version
rj

icebreaker,

Are you trying to find original willys frame rails? I have seen a couple of origianl willys frames on e-bay. Or are you looking for aftermarket square tube rails?

There are a number of companies, mostley body manufactures, where you can buy a pro-street chassis, bare to roller, but none of them are cheap. Are you buildng your own chassis?
John

Yes- thats what I would like to do. I own a welding company and want to make a square tube frame. It doesn't havr to be original
thanks
RJ

I really don't want to be a bad guy and throw water on your fire but...

Since I have a glass 41 Willys with a pro street frame and a buddy has exactly the same body with a street frame similar to the original purchased at nearly the same time, I'll say this....If you are building a Willys use the pro street frame. It is so much stiffer and easier to mount the body. If you are going to use roll bars they are easy to mount and position. Mounting shocks, drive shaft loops transmissins and motors all go in nice and easy .The street stock frame is a nightmare in my opinion.

As far as plans and drawings...haha good luck. no manufacture is going to give you this stuff. It's alot of work to develop a frame and make drawings so it can be reproduced. Maybe, just maybe they will sell a set to you if you buy a 13k body. I'm well aware of the early Ford suff that is out there. These are well past obsolesence and have evolved from others passing out information. There are even exact repops available. Patents and copyrights etc have long since run out so they are free to be copied. There are new ones covering some of the new stuff. I'm a mechanical engineer and we trade drawings back and forth between customers and suppliers and machine builders to get the job done. But each carefully guards their designs with trade agreements. More often than not drawings are not available untill there is a purchase order, then only for the current order and after all trade agreements are signed.

To answer your question about building a universal Willys pro street frame. For the most part each body mfg has their own prostreet frame that fits their body and parts are not generally interchangeable as far as the frame is conserned. Some make and sell body mounts, motor mounts and other parts to fit their frame to body but if they fit someone else's it is pure luck. All fit the common Mustang front end however.

Almost all the aftermarket frames are 2x3 tube with some 2 x 4's too. Some use round tube. It's mostly what you feel comfortable with. If you were to take 6 bodies from the top manufactures and set them all up and adjust your frame to more or less fit all of them, it would fit none perfectly. Anybody that bought one would be on your case because it didn't fit their xyz body which would be none of the 6 originals..This is what hotrodders do. including me.
I bought my body with a prostreet frame from the same company and it fits great. Yes I have to make body mounts but they are my own preference. Motor mounts are exact. The frame is dead square. I didn't like the shock mounts so I made my own. I didn't like the parallel link as it doesn't promote the best traction so I added a true 4 link. I added roll bars some body stifining for the mounts, and a handfull of other modifications. This is all typical of what a hotrodder might do. I have my own TIG welder and know how to use it. Also other shop machines.

The Willys was not a very good car when it was new. Often replacement parts didn't fit and had to be reworked. The body was a mess. Today This is probably why some body parts don't exactly fit others bodies. People copied body parts in glass that may have been reworked or worse were original. A good example. One guy will say his hood fits perfect. I think most will have to rework the hoods. It's a joke. I was told it fits as good as new. It probably does haha 3/4 gap. Common for 1941. Ask around at the major rod builders.
I think this is why there are really not a lot of guys that build their own Willys in their home shop . They are a lot of work and some work is well beyond the average guy. Most wind up in rod shops to be built or finished as they can be a real pain. They are not a cheap kit car. The only original parts on mine are the headlight assemblies and they are repops and had to be reworked haha.

good luck.

I agree with Bentwings 100%. I bought my body from Heritage and then had to pay a goodly fee for a set of chassis plans that were "gauranteed" to fit their body. Trouble was they didn't, of course I didn't find that out until I had a complete rolling chassis ready when they delivered the body.
If you are dead set on building your own chassis buy the body and have it in hand before you start and then copy the bracing style you like from others.
Like it has been said before, expect to spend a TON on money on your Willys.
But that's just part of the building, you spend it because you want to.
John