Projects '29 Model A Roadster - First Hot Rod

Thanks to some colorful zip ties, the gas tank from an unknown piece of lawn equipment and $5 airplane seats, I could successfully say I had a driving roadster before I was 26. It does feel a bit like cheating just plopping the body on a frame that's ready to go, but I guess that may not be much different than a guy pulling something from a junkyard in the 40s & 50s.



The first test drive to a church about 1/4 mile around the corner was a success. The body still needs a tremendous amount of work and the ground clearance needs to be corrected to not look like a plane could fly under it, but it's good enough to scoot around the neighborhood for now. Next stop was the Memphis Rodders Reunion.

 

Awesome! Looks great!

Why does your grill shell seem to be sitting up so high?

 

It was humbling to park my heap around cars of this caliber, but it was such an incredible experience to share a room with people that have recently become local hero's to me. A lot of the older guys really got a kick out my roadster. Hearing their stories of finding bone stock cars that looked like mine back in the day and hearing how they built them is a motivation like no other.

 

It's a 30/31 radiator so it's too tall for the car. It is on the list of items to address because it bothers me to look at, but it was good and came with the frame so function over form at the moment.

 

Cause the grill shell is a 30-31. Don't sweat some cone-head clowns whining because it ain't original.Museums are full of stock examples.My 29 has a '31 shell.
You'll enjoy building it your way more than restoration 100% corect

 

The next adventure this car led me on was to an auction to pick up an assortment of early ford parts. I was lucky enough to score a basically complete '32 model b engine and transmission, 3 other model b blocks with one having a counterweighted crank, some banger and flathead cams and cranks, a 21 stud block, '32 flathead transmission and an assortment of other miscellaneous parts.

The new plan is to build the model b and run that in the roadster.

 

I make and sell folding windshield posts for your car, check in HAMB Parts.

 

Those look killer, definitely will.

 

I got the model b on a stand for the slow rebuild of that. It will get wrapped up and slowly done on the side, but the main focus will still be dialing in the roadster.



There really is some truth to the statement of "they don't make them like they used to". After about 30 minutes of grinding rivets and half of the car is completely apart to address the subrails. I guess years of being packed full of 15lbs of dirt wasn't the best thing for them. The idea is to get it media blasted and reuse the cross channels in a set of new subrails.










I also found out the car was assembled in Louisville, KY. I'm a nerd for random history like this.

 

I had my '29 at Bonneville and there was a rowdy campsite by where I was staying at the bend in the road.
I rolled up to the site to admire the fellows retired record setting, GMC powered roadster.
He came over and very clearly stated how he liked a '28-29 with a '28-29 rad shell...so much that 'he was going to buy the nicest '32 he could find and go about putting a '28-29 shell and radiator in it' "just to piss people off"
Enjoy all aspects of your car and make your own memories....
Subscribed....

 

Ya shouda suggested he put a model T grill on it if ugly and arcane is the look ur going for, maybe some brass headlights.

 

Thank you, I intend on enjoying every bit of it.

As much of an eyesore as it would be to me seeing a 32 with a 28-29 shell, I truly hope he did that. I love dumb stuff like that just for the sake of making a joke or getting a reaction out of people.

 

Your engine passed quality control on 02/27/29 start # 1113763 end #1120420 they built 6658 cars that day. There is some question on gastank dates they're not positive if it's the build date or like the engine the day it passed QC.
Your dates are close enough you should send them in - http://www.plucks329s.org/studies/studies_firewall.html

 

Where did you find the quality control dates? That's some cool detail, I'll definitely send that in to him.

 

http://www.plucks329s.org/pdf/studies/Model A Daily Motor Production Charts.pdf

 

Thank you, I should have spent more time looking around his site. He has really put together some great information from what I've seen so far.

 

Thank you, I definitely will. Funny enough, seeing your thread is part of what motivated me to start sharing mine on here.

 

After getting the subrails back from being media blasted, there was no question that replacing them was the next most logical step. I think they can still be saved so they'll get tucked away in the garage until the day comes that I decide to throw some hours at it. Worst case scenario, they'll make a great reference for a future car.





After measuring everything eighteen or more times, they are finally mocked up. I decided to replace one of the cross channels as well because the rear of it was badly pitted/rusted through.

I tacked everything in as it sits then flip it over to weld everything up.

 

I am not a welder by trade but after enough youtube videos, I can make stuff appear to stick together. The original cross channels didn't fit up perfectly to the new subrails but some gentle persuasion got everything sitting happy.



Starting to get the body back on was an exciting step. It still needs a lot of attention but I decided to wait until it was mated up to the subrails before doing any cutting on it.



Just like that, everything looks like it's back at home. I got the body shimmed so the doors close properly and the subrails will get a coat of some eastwood chassis black. Next up is going to be getting the gas tank addressed. New wheels and tires will happen before any real driving happens, but a functioning gas tank is better than a plastic jug hanging under the dash.

 

Since it all looked like it was back together, that seemed like the perfect time to take it apart. There is a local AC coil shop that also cleans tanks. They were able to knock mine out pretty quickly and in the mean time, I got my subrails painted. It was also a good time to go ahead and remove the old windshield. That will be getting chopped but a pair of sunglasses will do the job for now.



With the tank back in, I was able to fire it up and back it out into the little bit of sun that was able to creep through. The only thing that could make this better to me is seeing this sitting on Bonneville salt or at one of the old dry lakes.



On the topic of racing, I was able to snag this book from 1949. I love old literature like this even though I can find all of the info online, if not on here. There's just something special to me about having physical copies of things like this.

 

It looks like you are off to a great start and have a car that you can continue to build/improve while also getting some use from it. Well done.
I am subscribed and looking forward to following along.

 

Thank you, that is the plan. It's a lot more fun and motivating to continue when you can drive the car in some capacity while working on it.

 

This is where we get really dumb all for the sake of fun. The ECTA holds a land speed race in Blytheville, AR at an old airstrip. My friends and I decided to go spectate, which led to the decision to take my roadster and another friends '34 3 window out there. I easily give in to peer pressure so when we got the opportunity to actually make a run with our cars, I first said no. Then they said it would be fun, so of course I said yes.



I believe this is why we will never win the lottery though, all of our luck is used in situations like this. The car really was not ready and the tires probably went bad some time in the 70's. However, if nothing goes wrong then it couldn't have been that bad of a decision right?

It passed "tech" and was given their lowest max speed tag. This gave us all a good laugh.



To sit in the staging lanes with cars that were going 200mph+ was a seriously cool experience with plenty of opportunity for jokes.




My friend got this picture after I fired it up and pulled up to the starting line. This picture still draws some kind of emotion out of me. To go from being absolutely clueless about what this car even was a year and 3 months prior and now "racing" it with my friends is an experience like no other. It reminds of the line from Two-Lane Blacktop, "That’ll give you a set of emotions that’ll stay with you. Know what I mean? Those satisfactions are permanent."


From the story I was told, you would have thought I went 300mph when they announced my speed because of how excited my friends were at the starting line. I know it has more in it but it's all for fun anyways.


It was a one and done run which turns out to have been the smart choice. I took the car around the neighborhood the next day and the tire blew out going about 10mph.


Better wheels are tires are to come but here are a couple more pictures that my friends got. The '34 ended up doing 99mph in the 1/2 mile. Flathead powered of course.

 

I'm going to try to keep this clicking along to get it up to present day. Since I blew out a rear tire, the next logical thing was obviously to lower the car. It was going to be down until new tires came in and my new to me wheels were back from getting powder coated, so it seemed to make sense. I have to give credit to another friend of mine who came up with the idea of using his press to reverse the springs ourself. I loved it and it seemed authentic to what some kid on a budget would do back in the 50s. While I was loading up my car to haul it over to his house, he got to work making the tool for it.

Before we started in the press, we measured out every 2" to give us a consistent place to press it. We marked 2" away from the center bolt hole on both sides to avoid damaging it. We also outlined the spring on the table so we knew where it started.


Starting on one end of the spring and moving to the opposite end, we started pressing. The "tool" was made purely out of his scrap pile. It consisted of some metal tubing tacked to his press and some round stock welded to the bottom of the tubing. The round stock is what pressed onto the spring and what we lined up on our marks. Under the spring, he welded some round stock on top of a c channel. This worked really well but if we do it again, we'll gusset the c channel. This one started to open up over time.



We would start by lowering the press until it contacted the spring. Once we felt initial resistance, we lifted the handle back to the top for a full stroke and pumped the press 15 times on each mark. Since this was our first time ever trying this, we took it slow and stopped halfway to check. We marked top and bottom of the spring but realized only marking the top was really needed. This did help give a good visual of the arc against our mark on the table though.


Pun intended, we pressed on and fine tuned it. This didn't give a show quality reverse eye spring, but that isn't what I wanted. I like parts that you can see where modified or hand crafted. Not sloppy work, but something with a personality.


This was the end result and I'm still more than happy with it. It isn't perfect but we did it ourself and that is perfect to me.


This is a before picture. We threw on the 40 ford wheel just to roll it around and play with future ideas. I like the white walls but I needed a hubcap to really sell me on it.


Here is after. I knew I needed to make some adjustments on the mechanical brakes but that was for another day.


Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of us doing the rear spring, which was much more interesting due to the shape of it. We were running out of time and trying to be careful not rush it, but we had to call it for the day and tackle it later. I came back one evening after work and we knocked it out. This was the result with just enough daylight for pictures. The roadster is now 3" lower in the front and 3" lower in the back.



It was creeping around in the back of some previous pictures but my buddy backed his '30 coupe out so we could get a picture of them next to each other.

 

Very kool ride and I dig how your doing it

 

Thank you, it has been way too much fun learning about pre and post-war cars and trying to keep this to that time period.

 

I'm heading out on vacation this week but I got my hands on a pair of '33-'34 wheels and a pair of '35 wheels a while back. Since the '17s were nearly free, I'll see how much I like them on the rear. I got them powder coated from a friend and tried the trick of splitting a bike inner tube to use as a rim strip.





I got a set of center caps in a batch of random stuff at an auction as well to finish them out.

 

remember to squirrel that stock block and frame away they're your regi....as now there are no #s left that match your registration on the vehicle...maybe stamp a couple small plates and put one on the firewall and one on the "new" frame