29 A roadster - budget hot rod

[Dr. Cranky]

I really like this so far, great detailing on the engine. Keep it going, please.

[made007]

icant see the pics

[Ryan S.]

Fantastic build so far, I'll be following along like the others. Thanks for posting. That flatty is amazing!

[Alyn]

It's been a while for this one. Some of you may have seen the flathead for this build going into my 29 Ford pickup. It's gone for good, so another flathead will have to be built. Looks like the one from AMT's 34 Ford coupe will do. Got the halves glued together.

The doors on this roadster are going to be blocked by the exhaust, so there's no point in opening them. I did decide to open up the trunk however. You can see how thick the plastic is; roughly 1/16" which is 1 1/2" in scale. Pretty thick sheet metal! I decided to replace the plastic with brass to get the thickness down. The brass is almost 1/4 the thickness. The sheet brass was first bent over my X-acto knive handle. The the curve was adjusted several times until it matched the curve of the fenders. Finally, a flat file was used to knock down a few high spots at the corners.

The hinges are bent up from some 1/16" square brass rod. It's a little larger than I'd like (1/32" or 3/64"), but will have to do. For the actual hinge mechanism, each square rod was drilled on the end (body side) to accept some 1/32" brass rod. The rod slides into some 1/16" aluminum tube and is then soldered into the holes in the square hinges. The aluminum tube will eventually be epoxied to the underside of the body. Since solder doesn't adhere to aluminum, the brass can easily be soldered without affecting the action of the hinge. The net result is a tighter fitting hinge (less slop).

[Bernard Kron]

Glad to see this one back. Lovely fab work as usual. Boy, there's a spate of sheetmetal-itis going around on these roadsters. Good call though, it's the only way to get a realistic thickness on a panel.

The early flattie in the AMT '34 is actually ideal for a budget rod build. It even comes with a nice twin carb manifold and the block and head detailing is first rate.

Looking forward to seeing more on this build.

Edited October 26, 2009 by gbk1

[RodBurNeR]

after seeing Alyn's work in person and up close more than once, I can tell you that it's gonna be very nice done!

[Alyn]

Thanks for the good words, guys. Bernard, I'm definitely using the 34 Ford Flathead, but the heads are still up in the air. I want to use heads with the center outlets for the radiator tubes so I resin cast another set of the ones used on the previous flat head(in this thread). I'm having second thoughts because they are Edelbrock heads. For this build, stock heads would be my first choice. The 34 heads are stock, but they have the front outlets. Still looking; trying to decide.

For the intake, I resin cast the same 2-carb manifold used on the previous Flathead. In fact, ideally this motor will look very much like the other one with the exception of having the stock, non-finned heads.

Thanks again Bob. I'm hoping this one will live up to your expectations. I'm already thinking of a better way to have done the trunk hinges, but they'll stay as-is. BTW, it was good seeing you again in Bellevue.

Here's the rest of my current progress (not much). I added a lip around the trunk opening, and then trimmed it down to 1/32". The last pic shows a start on the floor panel, so obviously, I'll be scratch building the interior. I'm itching to scratch build some bomber seats like Bernard's, but on the other hand, a budget rod might still have the stock bench seat. Another decision ...

[Raul_Perez]

Looking good, Alyn!!

The brass deck lid is a nice touch.

I'm pretty sure that the stock head from the Revell '40 Ford coupe are center outlets. I may even have a spare set...I'll look when I get home.

Later,

[Alyn]

Thank you, Mr. Perez, and thank you for the offer on the heads. I hope you're right on the outlet location. The kit I'm using for the engine is the Revell 40 Ford Good Guys kit. It has stock heads, but they have a front outlet with the radiator hoses angling in a straight line up to an overhang coming off the back side of the radiator. I plan on a cut down 32 Ford grill shell, so I don't think this style will work out. The center outlet heads provide a little more flexibility on the hose routing.

None the less, if you have a set of the one's I need, I could use them to cast a master and then return then unharmed (theoretically).

cheers,

[Rudy]

Amazing quality work!!!! I am impressed sir!!! I really like the brass frame. WOW. Keep up the good work!

Rudy

[RodBurNeR]

Thanks again Bob. I'm hoping this one will live up to your expectations. I'm already thinking of a better way to have done the trunk hinges, but they'll stay as-is. BTW, it was good seeing you again in Bellevue.

Alyn, don't worry about my expectations.....you surpassed them already! The attention to detail you put in, well worth the watch! It was good to see you again too, I hope you can make my show in February again!

[Ragnar]

Nice early FlatHead, the distributer makes it 41 or earlier. The Chassis Looks great.

CHEERS!

[Geezerman]

Nice work !!!!

[Raul_Perez]

Thank you, Mr. Perez, and thank you for the offer on the heads. I hope you're right on the outlet location. The kit I'm using for the engine is the Revell 40 Ford Good Guys kit. It has stock heads, but they have a front outlet with the radiator hoses angling in a straight line up to an overhang coming off the back side of the radiator. I plan on a cut down 32 Ford grill shell, so I don't think this style will work out. The center outlet heads provide a little more flexibility on the hose routing.

None the less, if you have a set of the one's I need, I could use them to cast a master and then return then unharmed (theoretically).

cheers,

Alyn,

None of the stock heads I found have center outlets...Only the hotrod heads...

Sorry,

[Alyn]

I've spent the last couple of months working on a car for Cranky's Christmas Contest, so this 29 has unfortunately been neglected. I really like it though, so I'm glad to be able to get back on it.

For seating, in light of the budget theme, the stock bench has won out. It was part of a tub, so some slicing and dicing was in order. What remains fits quite well with the body inner structure in place. Speaking of inner structure, that's almost done as well. The inner structure of the 29 roadster is quite plain, but that's ok. When I do this sort of thing, I don't like to just start cutting and drilling holes, I try to find reference photos on the net to get some ideas. In the case of the 29, the roadster and coupe door panels are a bit different and using modelers editorial license, will be somewhat of a mix of both, leaning towards the coupe version which has more character. The rest of the body structure is simplistic as well, once again using a bit of imagineering to create the final product. Likewise with the truck lid; it's similar to some reference pics I've seen, but not exact. Available materials, skill level and visual impact come into play here.

Edited March 4, 2010 by Alyn

[Alyn]

and some more:

[vizio93]

Looking good Alyn !!! I can't believe that I missed this thread ! I Love the detail you put in that last engine. Makes it all worth it in the end.

[Bernard Kron]

This build's return is welcome as always. The interior work is in keeping with the rest of the build: clean, detailed, imaginative and convincing. Good idea to to keep it plain. It';s always tempting to elaborate but that wouldn't work with the tone of the build so far. Looking forward to more, more, more!

[Alyn]

Billy, if you liked that last flathead, you should like this one too. It's not going into this roadster, but is pretty close to what will. The only difference will be the headers. This one is part of the project that pulled me off this 29, but it's done now. With another flathead on deck you guys may have to start calling me Mr. Flattie, or as my wife says just "fattie"!

Bernard, I'm looking forward to see what you do with your "quick build" 50 Ford. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I have a special list of cars in my mind that always catch my interest. They are the ones that I built as a kid; somewhere around 10 to 20 cars. Anytime I see someone building one I gotta follow along and anytime I see one on a sale table, I gotta buy it; can't resist. I remember an AMT 49/50 Ford that came with a couple of different top options and could also be built as a convertible if memory serves me. These old shoe boxes look great built as a simple custom, and it looks like that's the direction you're going in.

Thanks for your interest and nice comments, guys.

latest flathead with stock heads:

[vizio93]

Heck yeah man I love that "flattie", what headers are you gonna use on the '29 then ?

[Alyn]

Heck yeah man I love that "flattie", what headers are you gonna use on the '29 then ?

The roadster will have three pipes blending into one. The single pipe (on each side) will go straight back to the front edge of the door and then angle up and continue back to just above the rear tire. An angle cut will finish it off. This car is loosely patterned after a small black and white photo of a hot rod built by my dad's friend back in the forties or early fifties. Not to many details are clear in the photo, so that gives me a little leeway in the design. When I get a chance, I'm going to scan the photo and include it in this thread.

[vizio93]

The roadster will have three pipes blending into one. The single pipe (on each side) will go straight back to the front edge of the door and then angle up and continue back to just above the rear tire. An angle cut will finish it off. This car is loosely patterned after a small black and white photo of a hot rod built by my dad's friend back in the forties or early fifties. Not to many details are clear in the photo, so that gives me a little leeway in the design. When I get a chance, I'm going to scan the photo and include it in this thread.

Sweet sounds cool !!!

[Alyn]

I'm back with my baby. Here's the photo I'm working from. As mentioned, this is a car that belonged to a friend of my Dad back in the 40's. You can see that his friend Rob didn't really add much to this car. He mostly took things off. She's cut down, channeled and stripped down to the bone. Looks like a deuce radiator shell and headlight pods have been added along with some custom built (and noisy) pipes.

I won't be trying to make an exact copy, just built in a similar vein. Low budget, basic hot rod roadster. It's hard to tell exactly what body he started with. The trunk seems to be awfully short, or bobbed somehow. The windshield frame looks to be cut down too. My windshield isn't chopped in the following pictures, but will be eventually, and I'll be going with a stock profile trunk.

The trunk inner structure and hinges are done, as is the body inner structure and floor. The inner structure looks quite simple and basic, but so it is in the 1:1.

[Alyn]

Here's a bit more. Pictures I've seen of 29 firewalls show a pinch seam running horizontally from side to side. This pic is a bit dark, but as you can see, there's a strip of brass embedded into a groove in the firewall. Kind of a simple thing, but it was just jumping out at me as I looked at research pics. I'll probably file it down a bit. In the second picture, you can see why using the rectangular brass was important for the frame rails. With the holes drilled, the hollow aspect of the rail looks as it should. You can see the outer rail wall as well as the inner. To take advantage of the work invested, the rails will get a coat of red paint rather than what I would assume to be black in the old photo. The black would just hide the details.

Here goes with Flathead number 3. The first two were stolen for other builds. This one is definitely staying with this car. I've already forgotten what kit it came out of, but the plastic is gray, typical of AMT. My Alumilite resin was getting too old to set up properly, so I picked up a different brand and cast the heads and manifold. Not being an expert at resin casting, just about anything will please me.

Edited March 4, 2010 by Alyn

[Ragnar]

This is one GREAT BUILD. You have done some outstanding Scratchbuilding!

CHEERS!