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

this is going to look great, Could you get the body off if you notched the panel around the Pittman arm forward in the same way as the axle link lower down?

It’ll end up with something along those lines. Yes it’ll be full gokart with no panels at all apart from the sandwich plate and the floor panel.

Splitting the lower cowl panel in half is the only way it’s really gonna work. I’m not a massive fan of dzus though.
As it stands to take the body off i unbolt the firewall, cowl top/dash and side panels, but it’s as much to reduce the weight as anything. Once the body is done I plan just to have a screw in lifting eye on the roof that I can use the gantry crane on, so weight should be less of an issue and I can probably lift it with all that attached providing I get the balance point right.

The mrs got me what I asked for of Christmas.
I’d found another cast alloy steering wheel that hasn’t had the centre chewed out, and was actually a fraction larger diameter, but not too big. It’s now 16” instead of 15”. I can’t for the more usual 18” wheel without rapping my knuckles on the door.


It’s got nice heavy finger dimples, and a nice patina. Overall it’s a nice looking thing.


It was already 3/4” taper fitting, but needed opening up just a fraction to slip on all the way. So I reamed it very slightly until it sat at the right depth. You have to be careful not to go too far so there still a little gap to the end of the column or the wheel won’t tighten up on the taper properly. A woodruff was then fitted along with the chrome nut and washer and that was that bit done.







I like how plain and simple the whole column setup is now. It would be very easy to go too OTT with it. I’m Proably not going to mount any switchgear to keep it looking clean.

With that bit done I moved onto finishing the pitman arm.
I needed to fit up the smaller ball end to it, which bolts in. This required some careful drilling, reaming and grinding to get it sitting right, the taper tightening up right, and the back flat for a nut to sit on it.

Here’s the stud with the smaller ball size to be fitted.


It’s got to sit about here.


Old one cut off. No going back now. Notice how I cut it and left a bit of the old boss on to up the material thickness to accept more of the taper.


As nothing on the arm is flat, square or level, I had to freehand the hole though the middle.




It was then drilled out to size and the taper reamed to accept the new joint. Again you have to be careful to not go too big or the taper won’t tighten up before the locknut bottoms out.


The back was then ground and filed flat for the locknut to sit on, and any sharp edges created were smoothed and rounded.




I cleaned up the thread on the steering box and the pitman arm nut a bit, then reassembled everything. The end of it is worn at a funny angle as on the original big truck it acts as a steering stop when the tyre rubs on it! I think I’ll replace the nut for a new one.
But that’s it, I have a full range of movement without anything hitting anything and a punt an even lock each way.




If I really swing on it hard against the stops it’s flexes the box a bit, which is to be expected, but I’ll add a secondary bracket onto the other side of the box once it’s apart again to counteract that. Overall I’m pretty happy with how it’s come out. Not much to do now before blasting and paint...

1 year on, have you done owt else fabrication-wise, been accumulating parts or just tripping over it?

Time to start slowly dragging this up to date, for my own project planning benefit more than anything.

The huge breaks in progress will be explained shortly.

Where I left off 2-1/2 years ago I’d just made the steering work. It appears the next thing I did was chop out the old sill panels and remake the framing for them. It really annoyed me they sat on some 1” box section above the chassis rails so I redid that in 3mm flat, same amount of metal but sits lower. This is also part of making the body easier to get on and off.





These then have a another bit of flat welded on to form a T-shaped section, that sits up against the chassis rail. Again same amount of metal
But more compact in its execution.


With those done, I turned my attention to seats. I’d been keeping half an eye out for something suitable for this for a good while. The space I have for the seat base is tight, and aesthetics are the primary consideration.
Although I’ve got a few cool genuine bomber/fighter plane seats, they’re all too wide as they’re designed to seat people in full winter flying gear, so wouldn’t work.

Whilst visiting another hot rodder/restorer friend who has way more junk than me, I spied these, in a big wartime truck of all things?! He lent me one to experiment with as the truck is a few restorations down the line yet.

And would you believe it? If you’re looking for the smallest seats apparently you should be looking in the largest vehicles 😂



Now I can’t have these seats as they’re rare, but I can copy them. They’re a bit rough in places anyway so will need some work.


Base is just a bit of wood with padding and a cover nailed on.


Seat back stripped of its covering and padding to see how it’s constructed.




Interestingly, they’re appear to be hand made, in that they’re not quite symmetrical or square.


So I did some blueprints, templates, and cut out some blanks.






The problem I ran into then was their actual construction. I need to make ip tooling for the trumpf to make a false wire edge, which I didn’t have time to do at the time, so this little side project was shelved.
This is what I need to make-


Which do this-


It’s something that requires time and trial/error, which back then I didnt have. I will be revisiting this bit soon though…

At this point in time, about two years ago, I was quite flush for combined reasons. I knew I was moving, and I finished 3 builds in short succession whilst also selling off a lot of stuff to reduce what I needed to drag up country with me. So I was buying as much stuff as I could to stash away to finish builds. I knew after moving I would have no real income for a while so this seemed like a good idea.
two years later, and it has paid off.

This order was from duksville I think, various early ford specific bits and bobs, plus some electrical stuff.


Some new Wilwood master cyls were stashed away for the pedal assembly too.


A fusebox and most of the other electrical gear to wire it up.


I also did a big rockauto order or two of all the brake system consumables, engine service stuff, lots of gaskets, all new propshaft parts, rear axle seals, etc. etc.
I figured if had it sat around I could do bits here and there even if I didn’t have any money to spend.

I also bought some rear lights and some of the bits I needed to do the shifter setup, amongst countless other small
Items.

I did get as far as making up a bracket for the fuse box and figure out some of the wiring runs and component placement. Nothing is conventional about where stuff is on this thing cos all the running gear is above the floor, and I can’t reach the dash from the drivers seat. The fusebox mounts next to the battery in the passenger footwell.




I also cut down this unknown grille guard is been saving forever for its soldered mesh, and tiger sealed it in the A grille shell.







I also figured out where the brake lines were going to run. I didn’t want to get tied into custom hoses, there’s two lengths available off the shelf and I could just make the longest ones work. So some tabs were made and welded on, hidden away as much as possible under the headlights.


I also welded in the fuel tank framework and fitted that.





At this point I really was trying to attach as much stuff as possible to the car, or box it up and catalogue it so nothing went missing during the impending move.

Yippie, some more reading stuff by Dez!



Wasn't some free old empty barrel available from somebody round You to cut it down for the back rests?

Wasn't some free old empty barrel available from somebody round You to cut it down for the back rests?[/quote]

Small cars seem to have weirdly big seats. Fiat 500 ones are not small.

These are actually closest in design and construction to some series 1 E-type ones I used to have. But I sold those for telephone numbers.

Some hard work on the workshop there, and car looks completely badass just parked!
James