Thread: Followed Me Home, '33 Build

Tweet

Roger, congratulations are in order, it’s great to see you’re hard work has finally reached this milestone.

I recognize that smile , about 10 years ago on a Harley forum we had a nickname for it, we called it a ‘Perma-smile’ .

Mike

I got off track a bit, asking questions about fiberglass and interior approach in other threads, and seem to have neglected the build page Unfortunately the winter months were not that productive for me, but I have done some things to push the never ending project a little more towards "finish".

Firstly, thank you Jack, Dave, RestoRod, Barb and Mike for the kind words.

Jack, it is registered as a 2010 ASV (assembled specialty vehicle, I think?) but there is nothing tied to emissions, just the tax base as 2010 vs antique . Also, as a ASV it cannot run period plates and does not get the reduced registration rates of an antique, and they now enforce "antique" to be restored vehicles with only safety upgrades like juice brakes - no modern driveline, etc even though I have friends with glass street rods that have been running antique plates for 25 years!

Mike, the Perma-smile has dimmed a bit over the winter, but still comes back when I crank the engine and listen to the rumble I think it will be back the first time the seats are back in and I cruise down the gravel road to the blacktop! I put almost 900 miles on the beast before parking it for the winter weather, and then dove into trying to learn about interior work. As with other things, I tend to procrastinate and stutter step with things that I have not done before, and interior work is no exception but in the last few weeks I've made some progress. No material stretched yet, but most of the panels are essentially ready, minus a bit of sanding on the filler panels around the corners in back. I did find a local interior shop where the owner has no problem selling materials, and he has taken me back into the shop several times to show me how things work together, and to provide some tips on approach - a great guy with a '64 galaxy fastback that's going to be awesome when done.

BTW, the breather caps and PCV cured the oil drips It has been clean and dry for the whole winter and hopefully continues.

Like I mentioned to Mike52 in another post, the headliner panel that Duane (N&N) does for the '33/'34's is only a top panel that tucks into a finished front valance panel and does not wrap down beneath the back window and form the corners behind the doors like he does with the '32's (another reason I should have bought the Deuce!!) When I picked up the headliner panel from him his right hand man, Scot, gave me a paper pattern of the piece he made to wrap the back, support the headliner panel, and fill to the door wind lace. That was a huge time saver, but even with that I delayed weeks cutting into my FRP panel for fear of it being wrong I first made a pattern from matt board, duct taped it in place and tried to get comfortable with how things fit, and finally cut the FRP, which is an ugly beige dense plastic used for shower walls, sold at Lowe's box store. I'll post a picture of the patterns and panel for those that might be looking for approach ideas vs mounting the panel solid and building up the compound, convex curves to form a solid base to glue to. My headliner "floats", supported around the rim, and the support panels are held with heavy duty industrial velcro that I also found at Lowe's (Thank you, Dave, for that pointer). There's also a picture of the curved area in the corners that gave me headaches for quite a while, too, the 1x1 brace that goes across at the top and middle, and the 90* corner at the bottom.

It must have warmed up in Kansas for you to get back in the shop - puleaaase send us some. 22* this morning here.

Glad to see you are back and progressing instead of puttering like I'm doing.

And upholstery - looks like I have to make a few minor mods on mine - but not a big deal so am looking for your progress as I have little skills with that stuff

Originally Posted by IC2

It must have warmed up in Kansas for you to get back in the shop - puleaaase send us some. 22* this morning here.

Glad to see you are back and progressing instead of puttering like I'm doing.

And upholstery - looks like I have to make a few minor mods on mine - but not a big deal so am looking for your progress as I have little skills with that stuff

We're about 41F here today after 24F at daybreak. Yeah, the barn's a bit chilly but if I fire the tornado heater to take the edge off it's OK. I'm still a bit leery of stretching & gluing material, but my friend at G&J Upholstery sold me a gallon of his bulk glue to use in an old siphon spray gun, so it's just a matter of diving in We'll see how it works soon.

With a receiver in hand I had to find a place to mount it First considered the flat panel behind the seats, but it would be too hard to get to the controls, and using only the remote did not appeal to me. I looked at overhead consoles from Valley (Lynn's pointer), but elected to make a simple pod from fiberglass and mount it to the solid headliner panel, up against the valance panel centered up front. For this one I took a piece of 16ga flat stock and cut a mounting hole for the front panel, then formed a box from green floral foam and glassed it in using resin and bondo to mount the metal plate to the box. I made a pair of hardwood mounts and bolted them to the headliner. The shot of the pod on the headliner is laying flat on a work surface, but you get the idea how it fits The hole in the foreground is for a dome light assembly I picked up from Juliano's - a sweet unit that has dual circuits so it lights with the doors, or you can push each side individually for a map light feature.

You might recall that I put a pair of speakers in the headrests of each seat, and I planned to run the speakers in the corners as "rear" with the seat speakers as "front", but when I went to figure out the wiring I learned that the pre-amp in a receiver is not stable at 2 ohms load, which is what you get with two pairs of speakers wired in parallel; and that it will not push 8 ohms that you get in series Sooooo, the space that I had originally earmarked for the receiver, on the panel behind the seats, makes a good space for the amplifier that is required to drive six speakers. Here's a shot of the back with everything in place, minus speakers in the corner pods. I plan to put a map pocket below the amp, since there is zero storage room! Going to get the carpeting put in by G&J before I upholster the back panels and kick panels, to be sure they don't need trimming, but have to fab door thresholds first.

Wow Roger, it's really coming along. Nice work on the speaker mount, headliner and other components for the sound system. I like the velcro idea so much I might have to try that myself, when the time comes.

Lookin great!! On the short strokes now.

What other audio components are you going to use? (Head unit, amps, etc)?

Don Jr.

Here's a link to a thread where I got tons of help from Charlie Fisher, Don Dalton and Tracy @ Recovery Room on those filler panels in the corners.
http://www.clubhotrod.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47645
Of course, then Mike52 mentioned speaker pods, so I back tracked a bit and started modifying what I thought were finished panels
I bought a pair of 6" Kenwood speakers from Crutchfield - had it in mind to just buy speakers, but they had a great deal on a combo Receiver/Speaker package that gave me the two speakers for $10 over the Receiver cost so I sprung for the package
I cut a couple of rings from some 1" particle board (MDF would have been better), marked the panels and cut holes to fit in stages, leaving support top and bottom to inset the sides, but leave the rings protruding top and bottom. A test fit of the first ring, then glassed it in with a bit of cloth and resin. There's a shot of the back side, too, to show how the flat rings fit into the convex panels, which was another learning curve for an old dog!!

With the rings mounted I used some "Great Stuff" insulating foam (thank you Mike52 for that tip) to fill the bottom a bit, formed it smooth and finished it off with resin and bondo. One thing I learned, unlike the green floral foam, Great Stuff seems to absorb resin and shrinks about 30% unless it is sealed first with bondo. My first pod took a little more fill work because of that, but it worked OK. Also, the tape "form" proved to not be necessary if you lay the panel flat, and the foam dries much faster without that film covering it!! Once formed it was a matter of sanding for the desired conture, and getting them ready for foam and material. I mounted one speaker to see how they look, and I think that I can live with the look.