Another build thread? Yep, my track-style T

[J. Robinson]

I waffled on what to do ever since I bought the body back in November; should I go with the bobtailed "lakes modified" theme or build a more traditional track roadster. Finally, a couple of weeks ago I decided to go the track roadster route. I e-mailed Dave Koorey and asked him to bring a turtle deck to the spring meet at Daytona. I went up to get it and, while there, I also found a sprint car nose just a few booths away. The following Tuesday, while we were on Spring Break (I'm a school teacher), I finally began construction.

I have built numerous street rod chassis over the last 40 years including at least a dozen T-bucket frames, but they have all been constructed from rectangular tubing. This time I am building the frame completely from round tubing. I am doing this partly because I wanted to do something different, and also partly because this car will be a sort of crossbreed of old track roadster style and more current sprint car technology with a little bit of old altered drag car influence thrown in. As we go along, it will become apparent that I rarely buy anything that I can fabricate myself. I grew up broke and had to learn to do things for myself because I couldn't afford to pay someone else to do it for me. Consequently, I have become a "Jack of all trades". Now I continue to build things because I enjoy doing it. I built my coupe from scratch completely by myself including fabricating the frame, building the walnut-maple-mahogany dash, and wiring; the only thing I didn't do myself was stitch the seat covers (bought them online). This car will be the same - I will build it completely myself and, hopefully, pass on some of the things I do to some of you.

I started by turning the body upside-down so I could get some dimensions off the bottom. Dave Koorey puts some recesses in the floor for his frames to fit into, so I needed to make my frame conform to the recesses. After some sketching on graph paper and determining what I needed, it was off to Lowe's to buy a bunch of black iron pipe in various sizes. Why black iron pipe? It's commonly available everywhere, it's made of mild steel, it has substantial wall thickness, and it welds beautifully. I'll get into some more detail later, but here are a couple of pics to get started. First the frame is upside down on the garage floor where I built it. Next is the frame, body, rearend, and front axle mocked up to check proportions.

[Itoldyouso]

Great idea doing the tube frame, and the mockup you have done looks right on. I have always liked the turtle deck ones too, and you see far fewer of them.


You also aren't messing around and are making progress........that's it, I gotta get to the shop and do something myself or you will be driving yours and I will be watching you go by.

Looks great.


Don