1928 FORD MODEL A SEDAN- belly pan.

by that i mean i couldnt be doing with sanding and flatting paint on chassis rails, or filling imperfections to get a 'show finish'.
this thing has been built to be ragged, and will be treated as such, any paint is only there to protect it from the elements.

Spot on. Too many modified cars end up trailer queens, which seems pointless.
A few years ago I was helping a friend collect a car, and while belting along a dual carriageway, we got passed by a proper tatty noisy bucket rod, driven by a huge bearded muscly dude. He was going like his hair was on fire, and he left us standing, which was something in it's self.
I didn't think any more of it until I was reading a hot rod mag a week or two later, and in the middle of an article about drag results from an event was this guy's photo. The blurb read something like "mr big muscly dude had it right all round. He turned up with his manifold glowing, and tyres so hot he hardly needed to warm them up, blew everybody else off the track, beating anything he went up against and setting the fastest times of the day, then drove home much as he'd arrived and raced. In an age of trailer queens, it's good to see that some people still get the spirit of hotrodding." He's definitely doing it right, and so are you. Get on.

so, plodding on slowly. all the front end parts are now prepped for paint, masked up where needed and sat in the booth waiting.
i got the wishbones, backplates and beam blasted as they were the roughest bits, the rest i did by hand.

i finished off the steering arm. a lot of grinding here-




ive even gone as far as sorting through all the fastners and making sure everything is there. i did a few of the small but perversely satisfying jobs too-


the more astute of you may be wondering why given my timescale was wasnt just throwing as much stuff as possible back on the chassis. well, i was waiting for something to be delivered to allow be to do th last 'big' fab job.
it came yesterday-


you may or may not be able to guess what it is.
it was a little more expensive than the last lot i bought, but it is certified grade.

so, chassis back upside down, and taped up to prevent paint damage/give to something to mark out on-




a lot of marking out and figuring things out later, i have this-

Ooh! your going to belly pan it?

1.2

Was gun a do 1mm but bottled it after doing some 'scientific tests' (twatting them with a BFH and an axe) on offcuts to see what would happen if I hit something. It's a fair bit harder to split or pierce 1.2 as it goes.

Still, it'll only weigh 1/3 if what the previous steel floor did.

Just have to say how much I love the attention to detail - and the "extra" steps. Very Victorian when machines were to be things of beauty in their details and reflections of the achievements of the age. I love those kinds of details!

i also did some engine cleaning, whilst doing so i removed the valley cover to find a new camshaft and lifters as well-

i need to get it off the engine stand to remove the rear core plug to see what spec it is though, which i wont do until after its been painted.


but, the main event was turning a sheet of that ally into some appropriately awesome flooring.

first, a LOT of marking out.


then some cutting, followed by even more marking out for the swages. i laid the panel onto the chassis and drew round all the crossmembers, brackets etc. so no swages would run under them.


then, a lot of swages were laid. 39 to be exact. george was my wheel man for this, we got quite a rhythm going between us and knocked em out pretty quick once we got going. then i finsihed the ends of all of them with a scalloped punch.






then, the folds were done, nd i could do a final fettle of the shape to get it fitting nice-


then began the tedious task of bolting it down. theres jsut shy of 50 m6 buttonhead allens holding it on, all marked, punch, drilled and tapped by hand. i only got about halfway through this on saturday.




once id gone all the way round the edge, it was easist to flip it over to mark and drill the others into the crossmembers




that all done and all my 5mm drill bits and 6mm taps broken, i had to remove it one last time to put a finish on it. that is done using wd40 and scotchbrite for a 'brushed' effect, all hand finished so it doenst look machine done. your hands end up looking like this though. they still hurt today-


the finished panel-


and hopefully, thatt be the last time i see it this way up-




and finally, the bit you actually see. some of it anyways.






understandably, I'm pretty damn pleased with that.
although a few words and pics on here make it look easy, thats basically two days straight of pretty tough work.
but i think youll understand why i painted the chassis black now Paul Y

That is awesome.
It's going to look even more beautiful with some age and wear.

Oh yes, that looks amazing Dez.

Really nice work and all with your usual attention to detail this build just keeps getting better.
Dan