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Late prewar-style dry-lakes '29 Ford, Engine/gearbox Oct.7


Ace-Garageguy

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I started this one a long time ago, intending to build a pretty much state-of-the-art dry-lakes racer from just before Pearl Harbor. It's 4-cyl. Ford powered with a Riley overhead-valve conversion, a Columbia 2-speed rear end from a '40 Ford, Packard rear wire wheels and tires, a '37 Ford tubular front axle with longitudinal quarter-elliptic leaf springs, all hung from '32 rails. Welded-shut doors, a sheetmetal tonneau and a Miller race-car radiator shell finish off the look.

Frame started as an AMT '32 blobular part, so I cut off the molded axle and fabbed kicked up rear rails.

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Rear rail mods done, '40 crossmember installed to hang the Columbia, and the '37 front axle, 'bones and springs mocked up.

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Had to make a hood to mate the '29 cowl and the Miller radiator shell.....

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....so I made templates of both ends and filled in between....

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Also scratch-built a hard tonneau from .020" styrene to get a center seating position...

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Little car on its wheels....

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And today with the hood fitted better, the rear deck cut out, first coat of primer, and the hole in the tonneau finished...

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Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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  • 2 weeks later...

Revell Model A engine salvaged from a gluebomb. (Was put together with contact cement.) '39 Ford gearbox from a gluebomb Ala Kart. Have to scratch an adapter, and will be semi-scratching the head. Revell made a Riley 2-port (background) as did AMT, but nobody made a kit Riley 4-port, which was a lot faster.

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Coming along. Thinned the oil-pan rail a bit too.

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Are you still in need of Riley 4 Port reference pictures? I just realised I have a bunch of close-ups that I took at our local Antique Nationals this past June.

Man, that would be fantastic. I have a few, but most are of incomplete engines or only one side, or of questionable accuracy.

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  • 6 years later...
31 minutes ago, alexis said:

So, How is it coming?

I'm really curious about the 4 port Riley head.

Stalled due to research. Dennis Lacey sent me some great reference pix of a real head, but I went off down the rabbit hole of what would have been the absolute trickest carbs to have used back then. I settled on either Amals or SUs, which, as side-drafts, would have eliminated the 90o direction change in flow from using down-drafts. Easily worth a few HP. As a what-if, state-of-the-art car built by somebody with knowledge of European practice as well as American, these would be naturals. Anyway, that's where she stuck. I've been looking for the easiest-to-scratch-build, or some old ones that look like the stuff from the '50s I can copy.

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2 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Stalled due to research. Dennis Lacey sent me some great reference pix of a real head, but I went off down the rabbit hole of what would have been the absolute trickest carbs to have used back then. I settled on either Amals or SUs, which, as side-drafts, would have eliminated the 90o direction change in flow from using down-drafts. Easily worth a few HP. As a what-if, state-of-the-art car built by somebody with knowledge of European practice as well as American, these would be naturals. Anyway, that's where she stuck. I've been looking for the easiest-to-scratch-build, or some old ones that look like the stuff from the '50s I can copy.

If you have solid reference, maybe one of the 3D printing guys could make something?

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17 minutes ago, Mr. Metallic said:

If you have solid reference, maybe one of the 3D printing guys could make something?

I'm sure somebody could, but I'm an old-school scratchbuilder from wayback, and I have a miniature mill and lathe. I can make what I need, as soon as I decide exactly what that will be.

Both Amal and SU carbs were around well before the time this build represents, but getting info as to what specific carb was available in what bore and when has so far used up all the time I had available to research it, with no concrete results.

I'm kinda anal-retentive about making certain something COULD have been built during a particular time period, whether anything like it actually WAS...and I'll even fudge the accuracy of how I choose to model something, so long as I KNOW it's fudged.  :D

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  • 3 years later...
2 hours ago, stavanzer said:

Any Updates, BIll?

Thanks for your interest.

I got looking for real car reference photos showing the quite long '40 Ford rear radius rods, split like on the model, and found examples.

Then I started trying to nail down period photos of a front quarter-elliptic spring setup (which I already knew to have been used), with appropriate lateral location of the axle. The springs aren't sufficient, so something like a Panhard bar would be necessary.

And that's where the build stalled. I know how I'd do it today...but I wanted to find a similar in-period example. As stated, I know similar setups were tried, I've seen period shots, but hadn't found quite what I was looking for.

Without correct location, a solid-front-axle car can develop the dreaded "death wobble", and it's a serious consideration on a car built for top speed runs.

I try to keep my models real, and represent the way things should be done in full scale.

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