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

Could a webbing strap under each spring and secured to the frame be used to take the weight and look like tank protection.
Dan

I wondered about this too, 10g is a pretty minor accident in which case the tank would weigh the equivalvent of around 500kg. Could you put a stainless cable (such as used for boat rigging) through the spring and secured to the chassis to give a more secure location but retain the look.

I wasn’t intending any slight, just curious. A ten gallon tank, on a spring, behind my head, isn’t something I fancy. I’ve no doubt at all that there’s going to be an elegant and concealed solution. I’m not expecting a forum equivalent of a face-palm and a “I never thought of that” comment from Dez, far from it, and I hope my post isn’t interpreted that way. 

I leave this thread unattended and it turns into the R-R overthinking championships 😉

The spring is strong. It’ll have safety bolts to stop it unhooking at well. The tank properly wedges in. You’d need to turn the car upside down to dislodge it even without the spring. It’s not going anywhere. Literally thousands of dragsters have done it this way over the years, all pulling many Gs and lots of them banging about wheelstanding. it’ll be fine.

Ive done a tiny bit more on the brackets themselves. First I turned a significant proportion of them into swarf-


You can see holes were laid out according to ‘rules’ I set on each piece so their relationship to each other has some structure, whist accounting for anything that gets in the way.

Then after rummaging through my various materials storage areas, I finally found some 25x3 flat to make the tank saddles. It needed a bit of a cleanup, then the centreline was marked and it was hammered to a curve something close to the tank OD.
It was then clamped into place and tacked bit by bit, making sure it was square to the bracket, and centred.
Then it got seamed up.


A bit of spatter removal and the top corners rounded and that’s about it.






It’s a good tight fit on the tank now, as the radius was cut 1/8” oversize to allow for the strip.


Think I wonna do the other edges with some 16x3 just to finish it off. It’s not like it needs the extra strength but I think it’ll look better for being a full I-beam profile.

So I’m gearing up for a biggy on this. I’m not that far away from breaking it all down again and sending the chassis off to be sandblasted then repainting it. To do that I need any chassis related welding finished.

-I’ve got the fuel tank mounts to finish off (I am gunna wrap the other edges in 16x3 flat, delivery of that on Monday). Once it’s here I can finish those.

-I’ve got the steering to redo. More on that later but it’s down to the wanting it to be drivable without the body situation, and the current column needing body support so needing to change it.

I’ve got the floor/seat/tunnel framing to redo. As I don’t have the old seats anymore the mounts for them are redundant. I’m going to be changing how I’m going to do the prop tunnel as well which will require some additions.

Other than that there’s some basic stuff like brake hose tabs and that’s it really.


So first, the floor framing. I unbolted the semi melted ally floor and let it drop down, then hacked off the old mounts and cleaned the rails up.


My floor framing is now going to run the other way, to form the angle between the flat floor and the U shaped prop tunnel. There will be some bits sideways across the bottom of the kickup, and some bits running up to the rear suspension/prop crossmember.
Something like this.






It’ll make more sense once it’s skinned in fresh ally.
But as I have a beefy prop loop at the rear, I need something at the front too in case the front joint lets go. Especially as my leg will be resting against it!

So, a compiled the dimensions over from the rear loop (6” wide so 3” radius) and drew them out on some 3mm






This will sit here, just over the transmission tailshaft.


It’s a bit plain Jane at the mo though, and we can’t be having that.
So a bit of strip (1” or 1.5”? I can’t remember) was welded to it going ‘tother way.




That looks good, ties in nicely with the angle iron and makes it look more proper. Still needs something else though.
Holes. That’s what it needs.


That’ll do. Best make some little fancy gussets to finish it off though.


And some bigger ones for the back corners where the framing kicks up to the crossmember.




They’ll get some holes later but that’s that bit sorted in my head for now. Everything will be finish welded when it comes apart.

Stage two. Let’s Chuck it up and in there and see how it fits.

I chopped the old brackets off and ground up the framework as best I could. There still a couple bits to hit but I need it upside down with no motor in so they can wait.

I then propped the box up on an axle stand and various blocks to size it up.




Some high end blueprints were created to make sure the box output shaft was in the right place and the steering wheel sat central to the seat.


From this i ascertained I would need to chop the original mounting flange off the box and move it inboard, so it lines up with the mounting hoop.
So I did that. The raised bit on the left is where the original flange was, the other bit is a lump on the casting that needed to be ground down to let the new flange go where it needed to. You can also just about see I trimmed the reinforcement rib at the bottom too.


Before I cut it off I took the output shaft out the box and drew round the flange onto some 10mm plate. After some cutting, hole sawing and drilling, I have this. Here I’m finalising the final shape using the cut off tabs off the box.


I then copied that onto more 10mm plate, put a bigger hole in the middle for clearance (for both the flared end of the shaft and forthcoming weld) plus added a bit at the front edge to position the box correctly. This will be the bracket that welds to the chassis that the box bolts to.






Final shaping, and in the orientation that they will fit.


I had to trim a little off this gusset for the bracket to sit where I needed it to. Pen line is where I cut.


Then I had to split the first bracket so it would slip over the box.


Then I tacked the second bracket to the chassis, with the location based off my
Previous drawing.


One thing to note here is the bracket sits square to the centreline of the car, not to the taper of the chassis rails. This is because want the column to sit square as well.


The next step is to bolt everything together again. The bracket design means when I bolt the split bracket up to the unsplit one, it sandwiches the box pretty tightly and holds it all fairly well in line.


Next I needed to make sure the column was the right angle compared to the dash/tank that isn’t a tank any more, and square to the vehicle centreline and centred on the seat.

So I set up a plumbline off the top of the column to allow me to measure more accurately.


And used an axle stand to set the height.


I could then measure across to centreline to get it set square. The transmission has a convenient casting line to measure to. The magical number is 11”, half the 6” prop tunnel plus half the 16” seat base. The way the chassis and body taper down at the front is ignored as it doesn’t effect anything.

Loving the thought and attention to detail - as always with a Dez build

Nick

Thanks everyone. I’m glad to be ticking things off to get it back together again.

Next job was to weld the new flange to the box in its new position. It was tacked into place with everything bolted up on the car, then removed and finish welded on the bench.
As you may have guessed with me welding it, I’d already tested the box is steel and not iron. The colour of the sparks from grinding it is enough to know, as is how it ‘feels’ to grind with some experience.

So the flange was buzzed on, moving around the circumference and side to side on it to even the heat out as much as possible.




You can see here after welding I stripped the output shaft out and gave everything a light clean and a regrease. (Weld with shaft in to prevent distortion as much as possible). The box has nipped up slightly (I was expecting it after my experiences doing one in the past) but it’s only a very marginal amount and nothing a light hone of the bushings won’t sort before final assembly and paint.

You can also see the position of the flange is now pretty much between the two bushings. You can also see how absolutely massive everything on this thing is. The output shaft is 1-3/8” diameter. The old box is 1”!


The chassis side bracket was also seamed up.


With that lot sorted and the welds despattered and given a minor tidy, it could be bolted back on. It’s REALLY solid now. I have no issue pulling myself up out of the car on it without anything flexing. Hardly surprising with 10mm thick brackets I guess!

So the next issue to make this a working setup is the pitman arm. The issue here is it has master splines so it can only go on it one position in its original application.


I need it to sit in a different position, which involves hand filing out the master spline. It wouldn’t be so bad but this had 4 of the buggers at 90 degrees to each other!
A thorough but tedious test of my filing skills later, I have this.


And I can slot the arm on in the required position. Well actually I couldn’t as it’s totally the wrong shape, but some gratuitous hot spanner action will soon sort that. This is only wheeled out for special occasions, as it’s rather pricey these days!


A while later and I’ve made it the best shape I can given it’s original shape. It has a fairly sharp outwards bend at the top for clearance, then a long gentle curve in an attempt to shorten its length as much as possible. It started off at 7” long when straight, I was aiming for 5” to match the old one, and I managed to get it down to 5-1/2” effective length which I’m happy with.


A polish up to descale once it had cooled, and I can trim the cowl side panel a little and bolt it up. I knew I’d need a bit of a cutaway on the side panel for it to work, but this can look pretty cool so I didn’t mind.




That wobbly top right corner will be filled in to even the shape, but I’ll do that when I make the infill panel.

But here is the swing of the arm-




All good.
Next I pulled apart the old rod end parts and cleaned them up. These things look odd but are actually really clever. The built in super heavy spring pretensions the joint but also acts a sort of steering damper, in that it slightly absorbs heavy hits.

None got properly burnt so they’re all reusable. I was hoping the ball on the pitman would be the same size, but it’s not, it’s larger. Heavier duty truck spec stuff I guess. I think I’ll end up having to change the one on the arm to a bolt on type. You can get replacement weld-in ones but there doesn’t seem much point when I already have the bolt in one.





Here is the finished bracketry. The original bolts use split pins so I will do the same. Safety innit.


New column just sits under the dash but doesn’t touch it or mount to it at all.


I was going to repair this steering wheel, the centre has been badly drilled out so will need an instert making, but I’ll probably just buy another tbh. I did buy a ready made tapered inset of a guy on another forum who turned out to be a proper dick, posted it to an address I didn’t give him that was wrong them blamed me for it, and if I then have to make another it’ll just annoy me every time I see it. I need a smallish diameter, this is 15.5” and fits well. I’m sticking with the simple 3 spoke cast alloy design as I don’t think it needs anything flashier.
It’ll also stay black to work with the monochromatic thing I’ve got going on.


And a more overall view.


Only really that ball stud to sort out and the steering wheel to sort and that’s the steering entirely finished chassis wise. The bodywork around it will happen later.

All good questions.
The only bits that will be mounted to the body that would need to be retained with the chassis to keep it drivable are the ignition switch, speedo, and rear lights/numberplate.

The ignition switch I can put on a multi plug and have a second one that mounts to the chassis. Or just mount it to the chassis instead, but then I’m left with a very obvious redundant hole in the dash.

The speedo I can just unscrew the cable and have another, or forget about that bit...

Rear lights and number plate will also be multi-plugged, and I can have a second set that plug in and mount to the chassis somewhere instead.

For mounting the body I reckon 6 bolts is easily sufficient. A pillars, B pillars, C pillars. In easy to undo locations. They could even be wing nuts, and the C pillar body mount locations would work as rear light mounts with some thought. I’ve planned ahead with all other plumbing and wiring, so it will all go through bits that stop with the chassis, like the engine/trans sandwich plate, or the floor. It’s really quite easy to plan for if you know early on you intend to do it. The only bit I haven’t accounted for yet is the throttle, but it should be easy with a cable.

This only leaves the pitman arm being threaded through the cowl side panel as you say. I can either split the side panel and have it so the lower half is removable to allow the body to lift off, or I have to pop the arm off which id like to avoid if possible. The exact mechanics of which I haven’t decided on yet.