1928 Ford Model A Sedan- Drag it til the wheels fall off…

Rear body mounts. These needed redoing for various reasons, but mostly because the floor design has entirely changed over the years and the existing one makes no sense anymore.

The old mount was this curved piece of box section I made many years ago. You can see when the old floor and fuel tank frame tied into it, and it made more sense then.


I’d sort of designed the mounts ages ago, I’d done some CAD for them anyway. So I cut that lot out, then made some filler pieces to give them strength. They’re the usual curves and holes like everything else on the car.


The old mount was removed and some very fiddly grinding up was done to get the C-pillars removed of all old weld etc. as the new ones were going on in the same place.



The rear crossmember was drilled-


Then tapped for some unf bolts.


Fast forward a bit and everything is squared up, bolted down and welded in.




I much prefer the look of these, as mentioned they tie in with other areas of the car better, and serve to reconcile the C-pillar area a little where it’s essentially had 2 foot chopped off it, and bring it down to the rear crossmember.
They’re also much, much more solid that the old setup. I can jack the car up by the body rail now which I never could before.


Plus, they look pretty cool…

Seeing as the back end of the body was now much more solid due to the new mounts, I decided to do some more work on it to improve things further.

I neatened up the axle notches then edged them with some 16x3 flat to stiffen the rear quarters/arches up again because I’d cut so much out of them. It’s just bent to shape and welded on to then edge once I’d trimmed it up neatly.


These still require some finishing in places, but I’ll need the body off for that.



The lower body rail had to be repaired on the other side as they weren’t cut to the same size. This was done way back by a previous owner, as was the replacing of the inner arches.


The reason for doing this was I wanted to get the rear lights mounted and I needed the remaining inner wings to be stiffened up first.
I’d figured out previously how I wanted to do them, and made up a load of bits to do so.

Some figuring out and marking out.


A master.


Some holes.


And then repeated a few times.


They then tuck into the corner here, the hole in the middle lining up with one of the now redundant rear wingline holes.


The mounting holes were drilled through.


And the bolt up into the second set of plates, that have nuts welded on.


Stage one complete.


These are the rear lights I’m using. They’re 1936 Ford, or more accurately United Pacific reproductions of them. They’re really nice quality, I’m consistently impressed by United pacific stuff. Glass lenses, cork gaskets and stainless rims. As you can see these ones also have blue dots fitted.


The brackets on them are fabbed by someone else (the lights were bought s/h) but are really quite well done, so I will partially reuse them.


The old baseplates were cut off the the stems cleaned up.


Then, with a lot of fiddling about and measuring, they were glued together.






Dead happy with the position of those, they tuck away nicely in that little corner.

They look spot on Dez. Are you going to run a discrete high level brake light to try and protect against the general standard of drivers attention out on the roads?

Hi Dez,
if Your time allows can You please update that list on page 1 of Your fleet thread? Thx

Had to look since I had a vague memory of another old ford in Your hands, but it wasn't a rat rod which is absolutely not my cup of tea - although it is still interesting to follow Your work and craftmanship (I like that word).

It’s been discussed. I do have an idea that could work and not look curse word, but it’ll have to wait til spending on other areas has been curtailed somewhat!

So seeing as I was working round the back end, I had a go at this bit next.

It’s the old spare wheel carrier, chopped down into a license plate mount. I’d done a basic version of this 15 years ago, but it was a bit heavy and clumpy looking against the rest now.

It used to have a mk1 mini number plate mount cut about to American plate size, with the corresponding light. Then this backplate behind it.
I decided i didn’t like that so I cut up the backplate til it looked right.


It was ground and filed up, some speed holes added, and a extra bit welded on top for the new number plate light I’d got squirreled away.



The old spare wheel mount was also lightened quite a lot as they’re a heavy old lump. They’re cast, but I’m not quite sure what of. It drills like cast iron but welds like steel. So I guess it’s somewhere between the two, be that strong iron or weak steel.




Note new dog giving the look of ‘what’s he f-king about at now’ 🤣

A broken bolt was extracted from the lower body rail to allow it to bolt up, and a new insert turned up and welded in for the other one that was missing.


So this bit bolts up ok.


I then trimmed the top of it back a little, and welded the plate mount on.

Here’s the finished (ish) product.




The number plate light is a tiny little sparto one. This is a really cool piece, old chromed diecast probably from the 50s and presumably intended for a motorcycle. One of those things that I saw and just went YES! that’s the one. I think it only cost a tenner as well.


I added this little conduit out of a bit of kunifer I bent up to hide the wire. It slots into the back of the light fitting then into a grommet in one of the holes in the mount. Really finishes it off though.



But, that’s another bit done. Some nice detail added without being fussy, 100% functional but also very cool with it.

I especially like that propper copper cable tube, nice little detail!

That interesting, what car is that on and is it OE fitment?

I suppose it could be either. Sparto did make some really nice units over the years, all pretty cool. Indeed ‘sparto light’ has pretty much come to mean this style of cast alloy fared-in motorcycle rear light.

I totally agree.

Back when lil John Buttera wrote for Hot Rod Magazine ( he did a couple of really cool builds, and wrote about them), he talked about that too.

He thought that anything you noticed right away, or grabbed your attention was a hiccup and needed to be gone.

( BTW, to me the entire Billet building style reached its pinnacle with his '32  3W.
When less talented people got involved, that buildstyle went stale for me right away...)

So I do tend to put the gingerbread stuff on ( original exposed hinges, latches, etc), but I try to do it in a way that doesnt direct your eye to one particular part...