Ace-Garageguy

Bought an almost identical car many many years ago for $500 from a little used-car lot in north Ga. It was sitting WAY in the back, hadn't run in a long time. Dragged it home, had it running in a couple hours. Sure wish I'd kept that one.

To quote Harry: When a society has "standards," it's a better society IMO. Call me old-fashioned... and maybe I am. But when we had standards, we were better off. Shopping when I was a kid... ...and now.

Recently published results of an important study conducted at a Saudi university indicate that a new generation of vastly more efficient photovoltaic solar cells may be on the horizon. In simple terms, a refinement in manufacturing of a common material used for the cells seems to yield a product that produces much more electricity for a given surface area. Solar cell efficiency hit a 'wall' about 17 years ago, and hasn't improved much in the intervening time. Researchers worldwide have been looking at other materials to use to get improved performance, but this study indicates that a new way of making the old standard may very well be the answer. What this means for everyone is that, rather than solar-electric being more of an adjunct to conventional electrical power production as it is today, it may now have the potential...fairly soon...to become a primary energy source, both for automotive and household / industrial use. http://phys.org/news/2016-04-solar-cell-mystery-greatly-efficiency.html

Frankly, I'm baffled at the whole "dress clothes are uncomfortable" idea. Over the years, I've worked in capacities and environments where I needed to wear a suit, a good suit as opposed to some baggy POS off the rack at Sears, and I enjoyed it. Dressing like you respect yourself and your associates enough make an effort to ditch the tees with advertising, team numbers or "I'm with stupid--->" BS (and the doofy shorts that go with them) gives you a sense of presence in the moment, a sense of purpose and position, and always made me feel like getting serious about what we were there to do. Frankly, I'm tired of the sloppy, lazy approach to everything these days, an almost universal lack of effort that's so eloquently reflected in the dress standards of the common folk. You just don't go to dinner or to a funeral or to court looking like you're dressed to mow the lawn. Or maybe you do.

Yeah, pretty tasty.

If the Novus is working, I'd probably keep on with that. Polish will take off less paint than sanding, so it's safer in general...as long as it's working.

Sharpie ink will usually come off of BARE plastic with isopropyl alcohol. That said, Sharpie markers use a solvent that suspends the colorant and carries it into anything even remotely porous, making it difficult or impossible to remove. The principle solvents are alcohols, but they also contain ethylene glycol monobutyl ether. Your "fresh" paint may not have sufficient chemical resistance to hold the Sharpie solvents out...which will have let the colorant actually penetrate the surface. I'd suggest...and if this was my own problem...trying a fine polish, even toothpaste. If that doesn't get it, try to gently colorsand the area where the mark is, using plenty of slightly soapy water, and 1500 grit or finer, MUCH finer if possible. If it's a solid color or clear and it hasn't penetrated too deeply, it should buff right back up after you get the mark off. If it's a metallic, you're probably screwed, but try it anyway. WARNING WARNING DANGER DANGER: DO NOT USE THINNER (though you might try mineral spirits or something like "Goof Off" IF your paint is completely dry, BUT BY ALL MEANS, TEST IT ON A HIDDEN AREA FIRST).

Excellent example of a perfect older rod...the Doane Spencer car, built in 1947, is an icon for sure. The perfect relationship of all of the major front end masses to each other, made possible with the suspension setup you mentioned (without resorting to a deeply-dropped axle) is apparent in this shot. (In Spex84's photo above, notice the notches in the frame rails necessary to clear the spring, similar to the notches on my model shots farther up. Same idea.) The "spring behind" setup can also be achieved with hairpins on a tubular axle like this... This "spring behind" setup for a beam-axle uses hairpins like the Spencer car too, and the spring hangers are part of the batwings that bolt to the axle, rather than being welded to the modified original radius rods. A "batwing"... You can use a spring-behind setup with a suicide-style frame perch too if you want to go REALLY low and long. There are an almost infinite number of variations possible , and once you understand what works in the real world, you have a lot more options available to yourself to build realistic models that look right. Want more info on dropped axles for hot-rods? Read this... http://www.hotrod.com/how-to/additional-how-to/0808rci-beam-tube-axles/

In the case of the Miller shown above, it DOES look like the upper and lower spring leaf packs themselves also provide the side-to-side limits for axle movement. Of course there's an outer universal joint to allow for steering, but in the photo below, it appears there's also an inner UJ to allow for the drive axles to 'flex' relative to the gear case. This would necessitate some kind of sliding joint on the drive-axle itself, to avoid binding...and it appears that the 'step' visible on the drive axle may be the sliding, splined joint. And of course, having a sliding splined joint on the drive axles would make them incapable of limiting side-to-side movement. So...it must be the spring-packs themselves preventing lateral movement in this case, and they must have been very carefully designed to do this job as well as suspending the car's weight.

Man, that Miller is a beautiful thing. It may be old, but it sure is pretty. It looks to me like the drive-axles do the job of limiting side-to-side movement that a Panhard bar would normally be called on to perform when running quarter-elliptics. I sure would like to see inside that drive-housing, to find out how the gears were able to move with suspension travel. Harry Miller was a staggeringly gifted and prolific innovator and engineer. You can bet the front suspension he built worked very well indeed. Still, you have to remember this was a purpose-built racing car, intended to run on a relatively smooth surface, and turn (not too sharply) in mostly one direction. Not easy to get right, but not as difficult an environment to have to cope with as a vehicle on the streets and roads.

Skip, I agree with every word you wrote.

Comcast. I hate Comcast. I have no alternative at this address other than AT&T, and I hate them worse.

I don't know...I've put a LOT of stuff in a LOT of places where everyone else said "it just won't fit". 'Til I get a '32 and a 289 in the shop and have at it, I'll make no positive-fer shur-absolutely statements.

Dennis, I honestly don't know. I've never done a smallblock Ford swap in a '32 myself, so I just can't give a definitive answer as to whether it will fit with zero firewall mods. Every one I've ever seen HAS had the firewall hacked somewhat, but a lot of the Chebby-powered cars I've seen have too. George Poteet's Windsor-powered '32 5-window comes to mind as one car that wouldn't have had the firewall cut if it was possible to get the smallblock Ford shoehorned in there without it, and Poteet's firewall IS cut. I'll go out on a limb and say I THINK you might be able to get a short-pump 289 / 302 etc. in a '32 without cutting the firewall if you ran an electric pusher fan forward of the radiator...which kinda ruins the whole effect in my opinion.

My last ex was kinda the same way about me. By the time she was interested again, I'd returned to building model cars...after a lapse of about 40 years. No drama, no STDs caught secondhand from Raul-the-pool-boy or Franz-the-yoga-instructor or Danny-the-golf-pro; only the occasional frustration of knowing how I want something to look, but not knowing exactly how to get there. And the little cars are always around, patiently waiting for me to have time for them. Plus, they never spend hours on end shrilly comparing me to the neighborhood husbands...none of whom could build a model OR a real car if their lives depended on it.

Short pumps for smallblock Fords, standard rotation, for V-belt pulleys, have been available for the 40 years I've been building cars. Typically about 2" shorter than stock. Last time I used one was a 289 swap in an E-type Jag. Here's one from Speedway. http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Snow-White-Small-Block-Ford-Shorty-Water-Pump-2-Groove-Pulley,58832.html Here's one from Ford Racing, 1.5" shorter... http://www.summitracing.com/parts/fms-m-8501-e351s/overview/make/ford

Great idea. Basically the same thing as the real ones, but smaller. You can use rubber cement to adhere the paper too, or the spray adhesive made for this job...available in auto-body-supply stores.

PS. The Chebby-engined rat you posted above at least has all the necessary links to control axle movement, so it would be perfectly acceptable for a model, where you don't need to know the exact geometry, but want to look like something that could at least be driven with some confidence.

The "semi-elliptical" setup is under the rear ends of the vast majority of cars and trucks with solid axles on leaf springs. It was under the front of quite a few production cars and trucks as well. It's also the common setup under the front ends of "gassers". It's simple, cheap, works predictably. You WILL see some gassers running semi-elliptical springs in front also running Panhard bars for better predictability and stability at high speed. the 1/4 ellipric setup CAN be made to work pretty well, and sometimes its great. The Stone-Woods-Cook Willys used 1/4 elliptics in the rear, with LONG ladder bars, and the resulting geometry let the car hook up a lot better than many of it's stiffer-sprung competitors. In general, 1/4-elliptical in the front has a lot of links and pivots moving in a lot of hard-to-predict paths, and the axle moving around on all those pivot points usually makes a car squirrely indeed. Again, it CAN be made to work, but few rod-builders bother with the necessary math to get it right.

Nope. Those are 1/4 elliptics. The reference pix on the internet are wrong. Imagine that. SEMI means half. A semi-elleptic setup looks like this... BOTH ENDS of the half-of-an-ellipse spring are ATTACHED TO THE CHASSIS. This is a 1/4 setup. ONLY ONE END of the 1/4-of-an-ellipse spring is attached to the chassis...

There are multiple variations of transverse torsion-bar setups, like the trailing-arm version below, and there are longitudinal torsion-bar setups as well.

Exactly. Just notice the end of the link from the T-bar sits ON the axle, free to slide. If it's attached to the axle, even with a rod-end bearing or balljoint, it will bind as the differing lengths of the hairpins and the t-bar links swing-radii fight each other. The setup shown also needs a Panhard bar (visible in your lower photo) as there's nothing else to positively locate the axle side-to-side.

1/4 elliptics as shown above and SEMI-elliptics are two entirely different animals. Semi-elliptics don't need a Panhard bar, as both end of the springs are located to the chassis to resist sway. By the way...I know a little more than the average internet cruiser about suspension design. If you recall, I build REAL cars with this stuff under them, and it HAS to work. There ARE serious geometry issues with any dropped solid-axle setup that involves "splitting the wishbones" and all that entails on older cars, and most other mods bring in undesirable secondary issues too...but they're manageable. None of these old setups are going to handle and stop as cleanly and predictably as an old 911 Porsche, but most of them HAVE been used under real race-cars, driven hard and fast, and will function pretty well if engineered and set-up correctly.

PS. Some guys in the wayback also used torsion bars. Done right, they look a lot better than coils and work well. I'm on the way out the door to the real shop, but I'll see if I can find any period shots of a good torsion-bar setup later. Just keep in mind you can pretty much put a front crossmember anywhere you want it in realty, and you can fabricate something to fit your needs exactly from steel stock, so whatever proportions and stance you envision for your model can be made to work, within reason. Also remember that relocating the crossmember and axle always opens up other issues like clearance between the rad shell and the axle, height and placement of the radiator itself, etc. etc.

The first two ways are what you'd really see on a period rod most often. I've seen the 1/4 elliptic setup on some old '40s-'50s lakes racers too, but to make it work at all, it NEEDS a cross link (Panhard bar) to keep the axle from squirming around relative to the chassis. Relocating the front crossmember, or swapping it in for another one, is/was frequently seen. The relationship between the front axle centerline and the grille shell is tricky to get right. There's a 'sweet spot' that usually looks best, so do a lot of mockups and measuring to determine stance and proportions (trying to keep in mind what's possible with what there is to work with) and then build your suspension to give you the stance you're after. One old practice on the real ones was to swap in a model-A front crossmember; it didn't have as much height, so would lower the car (I think about an inch or 2). You can achieve much the same thing by filing what's there, or fabbing something out of styrene . I turned the existing one upside down for this build on the same chassis you're asking about, but lower flanges need to be made for it (and the upper ones need to be cut off) and as you see, the frame needs to be notched to clear the axle (this is the dropped unit from the OLD-TOOL Revell model-A kits). I also had to notch the bottom of the grille-shell to get it visually right (to me) relative to the axle. Same basic idea, but this time I used an Ala Kart front crossmember. Same effect, still had to notch the frame (which you'll see on many real ones. Speaking of notching frames...today, you don't see it as often as you did in the old days, simply because NEW axles dropped as much as 4" or more are available, so you can go pretty low with just the axle.The old dropped-axles were reworked from original parts, and a 2" drop was about the limit available, so to get lower, you had to bring the axle closer to the frame rails...hence clearance notches. Suicide front-end mounts are fine in the real world as long as they're thought-out well and welded correctly, made from the right stuff. They pose additional problems relative to grille and radiator mountings and as no two builds are going to be the same, each one requires fiddling to get things looking right and being close to something that would actually work in reality. Best engineering practice is to use a round tube front crossmember, which resists twisting under load better than a square or rectangular one (the well-built period cars had round tubes). For the perch, I usually use styrene channel.