How to Cut Doors in Model T

I've been busy working away on the T, the details will follow shortly. What's more important is that I found this scan of an old issue of Hot Rod Magazine detailing how to add an opening door to a fibreglass body. With the work I'm undertaking at the moment, I have realised the great need for a door, climbing in and out of the car is very difficult for me, and it's not going to be getting any easier until I cut a door in the bucket.

Hot Rod Magazine Dec. 1966

Riding Shotgun

After collecting my freshly repaired manifold Rob captured a little bit of the journey back to his place, it's a pretty cool little recording so I thought I'd share it with you.

Pump Conclusion and Weekend Cruising

I found the seat riser I'd made a little too high for my liking, I felt like I was sitting on the car instead of in it, I didn't feel safe at all, I liked the angle for my leg position, but hated it for the excess pain it gave me in my back, so Friday's job entailed altering the angle and dropping the height, it didn't take long at all, but, it has made a huge difference to the over all comfort.
After my last post I went out for the weekend cruising down to some buddies' workshop to hang out for the day and then off to a show the next. When I was running down to the shop the T did puke  a bit of coolant again, I can only assume it was levelling/burping as this did not happen the next day nor has it occurred since.

Frinton Flyer / Gonzo Customs' awesome pedal and electric cycles

I picked up Rob of Gonzo Kustom fame, and cruised on over to a guy who was going to repair the intake he said he'd be able to tig weld it for me. I was going to attempt the repair myself, but decided against it in case I made a mess of the job and it ended up being more expensive to have someone undo my work and repair it properly. Then we blasted some back roads down to hang with Marc and Rob at the Frinton Flyer shop, much fun, laughs and innuendos were had by all. These guys build some insane pedal and electric bikes, the likes of which most of you would never have seen before, they are truly stunning, should you be in the market for anything custom and bicycle these dudes are some of the best in the business. I also had the pleasure of meeting Danny of Maddanny Pinstriping, who was laying down some stripes on one of their new builds, he's an all round great guy and one hell of an artist, I'm certain I'll be enlisting his services once I have an idea of what's going on with the paint on the T. At end of play, we headed back to collect the manifold, which was repaired astonishingly well at an even better price, dropped Rob back of at his place stole a coffee, bought one of his kick ass trucker hats and blasted home.

Gonzo Bars Trucker Hats

My freshly repaired intake, a huge result with a tiny investment.

Sunday was another pretty early start, I had invited an old friend to come out to a car show with me, Spring Break 2015, so headed off to pick her up and cruise to the show. Sadly the drive was laborious, aside from the company of course, there were road works and average speed cameras almost the whole way there, luckily the weather was stunning with the sun beaming all day long. We arrived at the site, after a little searching figured out where we were supposed to be going.
I thought that the entry price was fairly reasonable at £7 per head, paid up and we were ushered in to the show arena, I'm not sure why, I can only guess it was in order to not offend me or something, the T is far from a show car, and even further from show quality, but I did as I was asked. We parked up and went for a hobble around checking out the cars, then headed for the stalls, of which there were about 6, I can't say I was overly impressed seeing as the trade stands were free of charge, I needed to have a seat, so grabbed what turned out to be one of the worst cups of coffee I have ever drunk in my life, had another look around and decided that there was little reason to stay, and headed home.
Although it is very early in the season, the show was pretty non event, sure by the time it came to leaving there were quite a lot of cars to see, but that was about it, next to no stalls, dreadful coffee and time to leave, it's pretty local so I'll probably go again, but I'll be hoping that it grows a fair amount next year.
But hell; the sun was shining, had some great company, saw some cool cars and got to go munch some miles in the T, I've got a new comfy seat base, no more worries of over heating, even got the obligatory hot rod sun burn, its not all bad... Now, where's that aloe vera gel?

My T at Spring Break 2015 courtesy of the lovely Heather

Water Pump Continued

While I was waiting for the pump to finally show up, I decided to fit my new headlamps, the old ones were incredibly cloudy and caused the "light" to be very poor

Before and after

I flushed out the cooling system a few times until everything ran clear, it took a fair while but that was to be expected having sat for 4 years with no antifreeze in it, I de-scaled the thermostat housing, made a new gasket and fitted a thermostat after I'd drilled the bleed hole in it.

Eventually the water pump arrived, as you'd expect it took mere moments to fit, popped the rad hoses back on, filled with coolant, burped the rad etc, I had a little time left so I managed to tweak the carb a bit and sort out the Idle speed/mixture. 

On the way to a local hot rod meet it puked coolant, self levelling I can only assume, but it appeared to be running a lot hotter than it had before I did the work. A little way further down the road it was high up on the gauge so I pulled over to let it cool, I did notice that wherever I placed my hands it wasn't really that hot. I refilled the rad with the coolant that had gotten spat out earlier just in case it wasn't levelling and it was an air lock, but soon after I set of it puked again. I just carried on up the road to the meet.

I had a nice conversation with one of the guys there about the troublesome journey and was beckoned to sit down with my friends have a nice coffee, burger and fries, followed by a coke to wash it down. We stepped outside and more conversations ensue about how none of it really made any sense other than the mild restriction of the newly fitted stat could be hindering the cooling and the little rad couldn't keep up. I set off and got home just fine, it was still showing a bit warmer than I'd have liked, but didn't smell bad and was running well, so I continued home. Once back at base I grabbed my laser thermometer and found the highest reading was just 85 Celsius, not too hot at all, I can only assume that the gauge is lying, that the sender and gauge aren't matched and the car has been running very cold since I've had it. 

This morning I decided to take a look at the remaining cooling components, first I found that the fan was attempting to work against the air flow, so would have been doing nothing but slowing the incoming air, so I reversed the polarity of the fan and made if flow the right way. One of the chaps at the meet suggested that I move the license plate to beneath the grille as opposed to behind it, which made perfect sense an couldn't hurt, so that has been done too.

With any luck this should be the end of the cooling issues, but we'll see there was a considerable amount of emulsification found under the oil cap when I changed the oil yesterday, this could be from it standing for so long, or could well be a lot more sinister. I can only hope that it's due to standing, otherwise it'll be time to source a new, bigger 4.6 litre engine.

Water Pump

Yesterday I decided to take a look at why the rod was idling too high. Once it warmed up I began to tweak the carb, something started squealing and I realised what I thought was a little sprinkling of rain was actually water droplets being flung off of the water pump pulley, I shut it down. I went back up the front to take a look and could see little evidence of a water leak, until I moved the pulley and a stream of water ran out from behind the pulley. On closer inspection there was what appeared to be a grease mark on the lower rad hose, that I wiped away to leave a clean spot, which must have been water. When draining the rad I found no antifreeze, just rusty old water. Clearly the previous owner hadn't used coolant, which had allowed the water in the system to eat away at the water pump bearings, and waterways by the looks of the water colour. I pulled the pump and the thermostat housing, suspecting that there was no stat in there, my suspicions were confirmed, the stat housing was just home to more dirty water.
I have a stat knocking about in the shed, which will be fitted today, after I drill some bleed holes in it, and give the cooling system a thorough flush ready to have the new water pump, which should arrive today, fitted, all filled up with water, drained again and replaced with a healthy dose of blue ethylene glycol antifreeze/coolant. While the coolant is draining I'll change the oil and filter as I assume that it is going to have the wrong grade and quality for the engine.

The Drag Header Deal

A little while back I managed to source myself some kick ass, used, open drag headers. Ever since the delivery dude showed up with them I've been longing to get them fitted, as usual pain, time constraints, priorities and sensibility got in the way and I still haven't got round to fitting them.

A few days ago I was hoping to manage a couple of hundred mile journey to Wheels Day, a "season starter" type event where many rodders shake down their new builds for the first time, and even more blow the cobwebs off of their cars, dip the oil and cruise on down.
It dawned on me that, should I make such a journey with open headers, I'd be near deaf by the time I got to the first gas stop, the joyous charm of headaches and the chime of tinnitus would be with me for hours. After a little consideration I left the headers in their box. It turns out that I never went to the show but the headers remain boxed regardless.
Back when I was riding motorcycles 24/7 I had a number of bikes with straight through exhausts, but due to UK law I always wore a helmet, which certainly muffled the rumble of open pipes. While I was reminiscing I recalled a type of baffle that I'd fitted to a number of customers bikes, that helped keep their neighbours a little happier.

I scoured the internet for some of these baffles and I managed to find a store in Germany that stocks the little beauties, they haven't changed a bit since I used them last. At two inches in diameter and four in length, they should help me to have the look I want without the headaches, tinnitus and police attention. All you have to do to fit them is drill a hole for the retaining bolt, de-burr it, slide them in and fit the retaining bolt, this also lends them to being removed pretty quickly for any RWBY, run what you brung, events that I may attend in the future.
I'm still waiting for them to be delivered, but seeing as it's Easter it could take some time. Once they're here, and fitted, those headers will be going straight on, and with any luck should sound just as good as they look.

Swap Meet Intake

Sure the title is a little misleading, but I couldn't find a way to say the carb, intake, seat box, saw, welder instalment, enjoy.

In the last post I told you about how Soph and I went to the NSRA Southern Swap where I picked up an Offy intake and the 390 Holley for the T Rod. I have come to realise why it was quite so cheap.
I set about rebuilding the carb and luckily only found one missing part, the accelerator pump needle valve, which by all accounts is very common. That's not a big deal, they're about 91p or so. The carb had clearly been apart and not worked for quite some time, the floats were completely out of whack and would have flooded instantly and there were tons of gaskets and seals missing etc.

If you ever have to rebuild a carb, something I like to do is to use four bolts and 8 nuts to make a simple and stable carb stand to make working on it a lot easier, you don't have any interference with the throttle mechanism and can open up the butterflies and not damage anything, I think I used M8 x 100mm bolts but could be wrong, you can see how it works in the pic above

The bigger issue came when I started to clean up the intake. I soaked it in degreaser and let it sit for a while thinking it would be better to get the chunks of gunk and dirt off of it before blasting, as I scrubbed away and started to clean up the mating surfaces it became apparent that what I had purchased was more of a paper weight than a performance part.

Please excuse the quality of the photos, I only had my laptop webcam to hand in the shed. I'm going to attempt to repair the crack with HTS-2000, a low temperature aluminium repair rod, not dissimilar to brazing for aluminium.  If, for whatever reason, it doesn't work then I'll have to pay a visit to an engineer friend and see if he can TIG weld it for me.

I've been pretty busy this last couple of weeks. I've also made up a new seat box. New probably isn't the operative word, what I have replaced was actually a very basic 2 x 1" wooden frame that served very little purpose. What I replaced it with on the other hand is a series of 11 mm OSB triangles 4" at the front tapering to nothing at the back, this should help alleviate the knee and lower back pain I was experiencing when driving the T Rod.

As with everything I started by measuring the width at the front edge for the seat to determine the width of the front of the riser, which is the part resting on the bench. I then cut out the triangles where the top length will be the depth of the seat, the height is the 4" that I want front to be raised by and the remaining dimension, the base, was pre determined by the other two measurements and the angle of the front board. To assemble the cut boards I used parts of the cut up old frame, glued pre-drilled and screwed together and left it to dry with a brace keeping the back end in the right place, that's the nasty bit of wood at the top of the picture with some right angle brackets on each end.

I left the basic frame to dry over night, it was getting late and I was getting very sore, so I decided to call it a day. The next evening I got back out into the shed and made the top, again from 11 mm OSB, a glued and screwed construction boxing all of the joints and adding a lot of rigidity to the seat box. What you cannot see is the additional 2 x 1" bracing I have cut to fit with matching angles at the upper front of the box and along the sides to add more rigidity and a sufficient enough structure for me to attach mounting brackets. I cut out the bases of the driver and passenger seats in case this works out as well as I hope. This will enable me to attach seat webbing to the base in the future so I have the option of re-upholstering the seats and replacing the current foams etc.

For a bit of added protection, and to disguise the little bit that pokes up above the carpet, I painted everything in a black metal paint, a no name Hammerite alternative, which is also suitable for use on wood, I simply applied a very thin base coat and an average top coat to ensure I had good adhesion to the board.

At the beginning of the seat box construction, after just a few cuts with my circular saw, I had a bit of a strop. I've been in need of a decent, by DIY standards at least, table saw for quite some time and decided to throw down my tools, check the net, place my reservation and head out to the tool store and pick up a saw that I have been lusting over for a good few months, the Evolution Fury5, with the added bonus of a £20 discount.

The Evolution Fury5 is a 255 mm table saw that not only cut wood but also up to 3 mm steel. The only real issue was that straight out of the box the saw was set up very badly, with over 7 mm of run out in the blade angle, it took me quite some time to square the blade, I ended up having to remove the grille on the bottom of the saw and undo 4 allen bolts that mount the saw, align the blade and attempt to keep it there whilst tightening the bolts. I had to leave one of the bolts out as when tightened, even slightly, it would move the blade out of line. Eventually I managed to get it all lined up right and it now cuts a two foot length of board with no run out at all. It is a shame that it wasn't this good straight away, but I'm happy that it works so well and made making the seat box a pleasure, and a damn sight easier than using my circular saw.

As we were heading to the tool store Soph and I were chatting about whether I should buy my new welder while we're there or leave it until it was needed, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to leave it for another day, not wanting to tie up cash in something I don't need just yet. I had decided that I'd just walk in, go to the counter and collect the saw that I'd reserved, not look around, just get in, get out and get back home to assemble it and get the seat box finished.

As I went through the door I had that "kid in a candy store" type feeling and went against my decision and had a look around, attempting to convince myself that I don't need loads of shiny new tools, I turned to Soph and said, "Nearly done, we just gotta go check out the cheap bit, always worth a look." The store has a section, at the back, set aside for returns, refurbs, ex-demo, ex-display tools, boxes etc. I'm glad I changed my mind. Sitting in the corner, on the bottom shelf, was a little Clarke 151EN Gas/Gas-less welder with a huge £80 discount, it'd been used in a demonstration at a trade show, or an in-store demo and was in excellent condition, having been fully tested just 12 days prior. I was devastated, I had only bought enough cash to purchase the table saw. As I was grizzling that I'd left my cash card back at home, Soph piped up that she had her purse in the car and was happy to loan me the cash to buy the little welder. Needles to say, I walked away a happy man. With welder and table saw in hand, well... carried by Soph and on a sack barrow by one of the guys that worked at the store, they loaded up the car and away we went.

I'm still finding it all a little too coincidental, how I had my sights set on just getting the saw and getting home, not buying a welder, waiting until later etc. Then going against everything I'd said and finding exactly what I wanted, at a much lower price, with no more money in my pocket, to be rescued by a friend with a money card, and come away with my new welder. I guess life's just like that some times, and that day, I won and in the end that's all that matters.