Thread: 32 Ford Roadster Windshield Finger Pulls

Tweet

C9X,

That is a wealth of help. Yes my clamps are essentially the same as what you show although perhaps slightly smaller. I should have thought of Lexan since the same shop that cut the class for me does Lexan as well and it is of course much lighter. Thanks too for the picture of the Lexan rear quarter windows. Are they secured by the top bolt? That solves a major concept for me for cold weather driving and will allow me to purchase the less expensive LeBaron Bonney top you have recommended as well as retain visibility to the rear. I plan to drill two holes in the top of each door (fiberglass) and add a rubber grommet in the holes. Then I can fabricate Lexan windows with posts for the holes. The only tricky part will be to put a strip of velcro along the top and sew a strip in a flap hanging down from the top edge of the top. All considered, it would seem unlikely that a watertight setup can be achieved easily, but a wind break might allow the annual trip to the Skyline Drive on the Blue Ridge in the cooler Fall weather and earlier outings in the Spring along with the heater under the dash. The stuff that I do myself suffers from my lack of skill but I think I can get it together. I note in your pictures that your brackets hang down from the "ball socket so that if the nut comes off the WW will fall. I think I can mount the clamps so that the weight of the WW sits on the "ball socket" so if the nut comes off the WW will stay there, but that does depend on visibility to the top of the WW and whether the clamp obscures vision. Maybe you do have it set up so the WW has it's weight on the "ball", I can't quite see from the picture but anyway that is easy to do. You have one very neat machine there and I really appreciate seeing your pictures!
On the other matter about stopping the windshield from coming too far in, I agree that I do not recall such a lip on the '31 Fordor I had either so maybe the comment from the guy at Brookville is just his imagination? On my fiberglass dash the upper lip is narrow and it is in the '32 style shape rather than the true Model A shape so I have not figured out yet how to add the stops but for now it mught have to be a piece of 1" angle iron (my favorite material) with rounded corners and a metal screw into the fiberglass painted body color as a last resort. If I could figure out where to get some chrome or stainless angle iron that would be much better. I will look around for some stainless in the nearby Hanover Air Park. There must be some sort of aircraft stainless stuff that could be formed into a stop on each side of the dash. It is coming back to me now that on the '31 Fordor there was a swing-out bracket with a tightening knob attached to the windshield post on the inside? However the roadster stanchions are too thin for that sort of arrangement.

Thanks!
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder