Thread: Fyi bebops body

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I guess the coupe body is more rigid than the Bebops '29 roadster. I am pleased with my Bebops roadster but it is not perfect. Actually I have been buying odds and ends from a restorer shop and find most all of the dimensions of the Bebops 'glass are just like the original steel on the outside. I had the doors and deck lid hung by Bebops and the doors really fit nice but the deck lid is a little uneven at the bottom and they hacked off the rain gutter for the rumble mount in an uneven way on the inside, it will probably leak in the rain so I will need a hole in the floor to let water out! As far as the thickness goes it is close to 1/4" in a lot of places and this showed up for the front fender braces. There is no way the stock fender braces will bolt inside the outer lip of the front fenders and Bebops folks told me to just cut off the ends of the braces and just use the headlight bar bolts with the braces. That is a result of the thickness of the front fenders but since the original stock steel fenders did vibrate I am glad to have a lot of meat in the front fenders. Another thing I might pass along is that while the 1" square tubing framework is really strong and very good in the cowl area, the rear quarter panels did shimmy easily until I added a 1/4" x 4" steel plate across the bottom rear of the rumble area. I really did this to protect my rumble seat gas tank in the rear but when I bolted in the steel plate it made the whole rear of the body like a ROCK! See the attached picture. Another thing is that I am using a Brookville frame and wanted bumpers, expecially in the rear to protect the gas tank, and so asked Brookville how to attach the rear bumper. The Brookville bumper mounts are held only by two puny 5/16" bolts to the rear of the frame, fragile in my view for a heavy bumper, but I found that I could cut off a stock set of stock rear fender braces (not cheap!) where they do not fit into the Brookville tube frame and bolt the inverted cut off pieces to the bumper braces and the sides of the frame with hefty 1/2" bolts through the tube frame (pictures available on request). Now the rear bumper is like a ROCK as well (I tend to overbuild!) so that my 230 pounds can get up on the bumper step plate to the fender step plate and into the rumble seat (carefully) and nothing moves but the spring suspension on the coilovers under the frame. I offered this trick to the tech guy at Brookville but he thought the puny 5/16" bolts would hold the bumper, but for how long? The uneven gap at the bottom of the closed rear deck is sufficiently noticeable that I am thinking of adding a rear luggage rack just to cover up the bottom of the rear deck and I have added a strip of door-edge plastic to reduce the gap a little relative to water running off the deck. The clear type door-edge at least allows the paint color to show through but I think a chrome/stainless luggage rack will distract the observers eyes from the deck gap. I am starting to understand the wiring so if I can just get it finished this summer maybe I can test the car in the rain. As far as outgassing goes, I let the body sit outdoors for almost a year before painting and still got some bubbles which the paint shop said they will touch up when I bring the car in to paint the wheels?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder