1934 ford hot rod truck.

So I’ve got a chassis with a front bit, a back bit, and some bits down the sides. Next bit is a bit in the middle.

These chassis have a centre ‘X’, that is formed by those previously mentioned inner rail boxing plates taking a dive across to the centre of the chassis, being joined together by a few extra bits behind the gearbox that acts as the gearbox mount, then going back out to the rails again before the rear kickup. This provides lots of diagonal bracing and makes for a pretty stiff but compliant chassis, as all bracing is centred around the torque origin of the gearbox.

Originals are nearly always hacked up, usually to allow different gearboxes, but a friend has a mildly rusty and only mildly damaged one out of a pilot up on his farm, so I went and got that.

The two round bits are the rear gearbox mounts, so it’s front down there. The pedal assembly also mounts to the front section, and the rear end of the front wishbone mounts to the bottom of it, but not much else is attached, it’s all just bracing.

I went and got it sandblasted before I did much of anything with it.


That’s roughly how it fits. You can see the wishbone mount there in the middle, basically half a ball socket.
You can see it’s not quite symmetrical, it should be though. That’s the bit of damage I referred to, one rear leg was bent.

Here I’ve trimmed it down and bent it about a bit, and am using the gearbox and pedal assembly to determine position, along with some measurements taken off the motor.


You can see here how the gearbox mounts work.


And here how the pedal assembly mounts.


Again this it was all quite complicated as I was working in two planes, and to imaginary reference points.
It was also at this point I cocked up, but it took me a good while to recognise it.

Thinking the X member was in the right place, i made a jig to centre it around the gearbox mounts, and welded it in at the front, tweaked the bent back legs to where they should be, and welded those too.


That will come back to cause me loads of problems later...

If this was a car flipper show, the plot twist would be it was welded to the wrong chassis, and then it would turn out that the original owner of that chassis was your lost brother/mother.

Was the front also out of shape?

Dwaine!
Need I say more?

Converting the front end to 32-34 spec was comparatively simple. Well I managed not to get it wrong anyway 😬

35-up wishbones have the spring mounts extended off the front like this. They take a bigger wider spring, and the crossmember is moved forward in the chassis compared to earlier cars as the spring is no longer at (about) axle centreline.


These get cut off and smoothed out. I won’t be splitting the wishbone at this point as i need it in one piece for registration purposes. If you don’t know what the means I’ll explain later.


The actual I-beam is the same part from 1932 to 1936. The perch pin holes (the f-k off bolts that attach the beam to the wishbones) are the same spacing, so you can take a 35-36 beam and wishbones and backdate it to 32-34 style spring-over setup easily. The wishbone isn’t the same length but for a build like this it doesn’t really matter.

Later perch pins don’t have spring perches on them (confusing I know) so you have to remove them and swap for earlier ones. They’re always seized so this usually involves some hot spanner action.


After I’d done that I assembled
The cut down wishbone and beam back up with some 28-34 style perch pins (that actually have spring perches!), some aftermarket repro shackles, and a 28-34 front spring. The spring is just a stock one for now, it’ll get a reverse eye one at a later date for more lowering.


Then I used a ratchet strap to compress the spring as much as possible so I could get it under the chassis and fitted to the crossmember, as the chassis table was in the way a bit. It was tight but it went in.






This bit has all gone ok and I’m pretty happy with how it fits and works.

Can you TIG aluminium to stainless? Or will you end up brazing it?

That will certainly look pretty cool.

Will you link them together at tank level or just join them before the pump?

It'll be interesting to see how you deal with fuel levels without treating it like a secondary tank.

More tings I have bought. This is between 2 and 3 years of parts collecting. A lot of people don’t believe i take so long preparing for building a car, but I really do. I generally start off buying things that will physically fit the build and the aesthetic I’m going for, and then once I’ve got so far, typically more than half of what I need, I’ll write a specific list of what I have and what parts I then need to fill the gaps and make everything work together.

So first, a steering wheel. 42-48 ford passenger car. I wanted to run some sort of stock steering wheel, but nothing too gaudy. Most hotrods end up with ‘40 ford ones, mostly because they repro them.
I wanted something with a very plain spoke design but some restrained bling to the centre.
I like these ones with the prizimatic back painted gold detail. So when a pretty nice one popped up I had it.




Pedal assembly. This is 42-48, they use the same mount as 39-41. (hydraulic brakes only came out in ‘39 on fords so prior to that the pedal assembly didn’t have a master cylinder mount). The actual pedals are a different shape to easlier cars, but if they have to be modded in any way there’s no point using the much more expensive 39/40 ones. As my car is channelled they will have to be messed with a bit.
I already had most of the brakes setup from stuff I’d bought for the ‘38s, like backplates and most of the internals, so I know I’d be wanting to run a stock-ish pedal setup.

I’m also running the late type clutch isolation linkage, which has a floating bar and an extra bracket on the frame rail rather than the pedal acting directly on the clutch arm. That’s what the other piece in the middle is. It’ll make more sense once fitted.


I’ve been collecting lights too. I’ve got a mint pair of guide 682J headlamps for starters. These are THE hot rod headlamp. They were an accessory part from the 40s/50s, and use 7” sealed beam units, so are easy to convert to H4 or whatever with cheap modern units. These lights command quite premium nowadays but to me they’re an essential ingredient of the look.


I’ve also got a couple of different pairs of funky rear lights as you can see. I might use them or I might use something else, I’m not sure yet. The metal number plate backer was leftover from another build but is a nice thing for a truck so I put it in the pile.

In the ‘smalls’ cupboard I’ve got some new trackrod ends, the right throttle pedal and linkage, a good usable drag link, refurbed front hubs, a box of brake internals and various other bits and bobs to make things work together. It would be a chunk of cash to buy it all in one hit, but one bit as a time as they come up and it’s hardly noticed.


I’ve also picked up some front tube shock mounts for the beam, some shorty shocks and some repro F1 style shock mounts. The latter have to be modified to fit once the rest is assembled. I’ve also got some rear 48 deluxe tube shock brackets but I don’t have a picture to hand.


A new old stock alloy timing gear came up cheap so I bought that too. Flatheads have a fibre one that can strip so you replace them if you’ve got it in bits.


A guy on one of the forums also did a batch of lazercut header flanges for flatheads, so I snagged some of those too.




So I then flogged my stock cast manifolds as I knew I wouldn’t be using them, to put some pennies back into the pot.

Then I’m back onto bigger purchases, both physically and financially....

Wow, a long time in the planning, and some very specific parts to hunt for. Amazing luck on the wheels, but I guess a lifetime of knowledge let's you make the most of those situations. Rods more than anything else I think do require the 'right' parts to work, not an easy task for sure.

That’s very much my thinking now. I’ve built cars out of ‘all the wrong bits’ in the past and made em look half decent, but it really is much easier to work with the ‘right’ stuff, if a bit more expensive. But then what does all that time you spend making stuff ‘right’ cost?

More jam than Hartleys
This thread just gets better and better.