45 years of Custom Auto Chassis Eng.

[Oldcol]

Thanks Gents for your comments ,glad the Flatty diff thing is of interest....thought it might be good for blokes who've never had anything to do with early Ford stuff to see what's inside and help have a bit of an understanding of how Ford went about doing things back then....as always,differently to most everybody else in the automotive field......

[rog]

I dont really know a whole lot of what ford does since then either.. except when i was the shop boy at Mick Webb's in the eighties, I stripped alot of clevelands & windsors

[Oldcol]

WOW Col!

What a way to make an entrance!

Thank you so much for such an amazing insight into your workshop again and how things should be done. It's not just your awesome knowledge but how you use and share it also the care and passion of how you go about your business.
I find it rewarding and fascinating that you use the original tools used by the good fellows at the Blue Oval servo's when these cars were new.

That newly arrived coupe looks beautiful, she's going to be a peach when you have fixed her up. Is that track coupe a new replica or a resto? Looks fantastic and would certainly get a ton of stares wherever she goes

I love the ingenuity on the filler/breather, while custom it looks perfectly original and right at home sitting there.

Again, thanks mate. A fantastic read.

rowie

Cheers Rowie, that '36 is an original steel bodied car , originally from WA where it served time as a speedway racer . The present owner is Derek McLachlan and he's from just around the corner a bit. He's mostly into circuit racers and he uses this car for sprints..... ( sporty car speak for Drags ), Hillclimbs and it's even had a bit of a run at Phillip Island on the big track ,which he says was a hoot!..... I saw the car in November at the Rob Roy Hillclimbs.....




....which is a grouse day for anyone who's got the slightest interest in early motor sports. Lots of stuff there that gets right back into the early days of local motorsport when there were plenty of Flathed powered "specials"......and the separation between early rodding, racing and dirt track speedway was very blurred indeed. Surprising too how many hotrod guys turn up at these current events , along with some of the names from waay back when rodding was in it's infancy . Even met Peter Thomas who some might remember as having built one of the first rods here back in the very early '50s....a 'shortened '32 Roadster, now in the hands of the Katsanis boys.
Same guy with the '36,Derek, has another early V8 based car called the "Edelbrock Special" , originally put together by Hedley Thompson and run at Albert Park GP in '56......in an odd co-incidence , that same car was rescued from a trash pile by a very good pal of mine, the late Les Sargent of Mt Evelyn. When Les got it there was nothing much left but twisted remains of the chassis, a couple of pedals connected to an FJ master cylinder and a bit of aluminium sheet across the top of the cowl. He toiled away on it for years , got a few bits off me for it and had a heap of stuff cast up and machined from drawings, photo's and recollections of the car. His main interest was racing stuff as he'd grown up with Alan Hamilton ( which is how I met Alan) and also did his apprenticeship with Alan at Norm Hamilton's Porsche dealership in Richmond. Les eventually ran out of steam on the project so Derek bought it and has since completed it.....it looks magic ,should have got a pic when I was perving on the '36......it's running a stroked Flatmotor and 3 speed Ford box , first time out it ran a bearing.....so it's sitting waiting for the engine right now ......

[compact]

whats the diff?????....lol...nah seriously...thanks heaps col....never seen one apart

u would win best thread award handsdown

[Cruizin TV]

Great read as usual Col.

Thanks

that '36 is an original steel bodied car , originally from WA where it served time as a speedway racer .

Possibly the one Max Craggs was doing a few years back, if so I saw it at a vintage speedway association AGM where I did a quick story with Max probably about 8 years ago, Max is an old school panel beater by trade and was doing a fantastic job on it, if it's the same one that is.

[Maffra]

....later on I'll have the polisher dress off the buff marks so there's no chance of stress cracks developing down the track.....



...deep as those arms are, they're not dropped enough to clear the stock radius rods , so some amount of time was spent figuring out how to get the tierod ends and tierod to join both sides together. Eventually settled on some Cusso inner tierods that drop things down a whisker more , and then making up a short tierod from a longer '37 rod to join 'em up. Plan A was the '37 Willys t/r ends you can see on the trestle , but they didn't quite get there......

Hi Col, thanks for the great update, in particular the front end stuff . . . timely for me as I am about to launch into mine and you give some great guidance . . . one thing that really caught my eye is your use of the Cusso inner tierods . . . are Mainline tierods the same

Appreciate the effort and time you freely give to put these updates on . . .

Thanks and regards

[Big G]

Great update Col, it's great to see the engineering that went into the early fords, loved the diff bearings. One question, apart from the chiselling, what did you use to clean the crud off the front end parts????

[FRANK BASILE]

Good write up on the diff Col.
Convinces me more now that way back when mine blew up,and parts would have been more readily available . I would have had Buckley,s getting it all together properly.
Thank goodness I chucked the Holden in to replace it.

Frank.

[Oldcol]

Great update Col, it's great to see the engineering that went into the early fords, loved the diff bearings. One question, apart from the chiselling, what did you use to clean the crud off the front end parts????

G'day Glynn , just a selection of old woodchisels, plenty of elbow grease and the kero bath that's somewhere in the background of some of the pics.....

Maffra ,hi Dennis , the inner rod ends are a pair of NOS Sidevalve Cusso items , but I'm pretty sure the OHV units are similar....also Cussy and Mainline steering stuff is all the same. One thing I should mention is both the ends are r/h thread ,so you need to drop one side off to do the toe-in....but I figure you only need to do it once, so it's not too big a deal.......

[Oldcol]

Good write up on the diff Col.
Convinces me more now that way back when mine blew up,and parts would have been more readily available . I would have had Buckley,s getting it all together properly.
Thank goodness I chucked the Holden in to replace it.

Frank.

Hiya Frank , yes, parts are a real chore....most of the stuff is long obsolete ,even bearings are tough to find,especially the double ended pinion shell. Some repro stuff is available , but often the quality lets you down which is why I try to source as much G.O.S. ....( good old stuff ) ...as I can find. The other important thing with these rear ends is the condition of that outer wheel bearing boss/spigot ,or whatever you want to call it. If it's worn at all , the only way to repair it is to have the boss machined down in a big lathe and have a new hardened sleeve pressed on and then finished to size on a centerless grinder......pain in the bum to find anyone interested in doing it and kinda bucks up when you do . I've still got one of those sleeves in it's original Ford box , but luckily with this particular pair of housings the surfaces are in mint condition....gotta win sometimes!.....

[Gman]

There was a bloke who used to advertise in 'Restored Cars' that he would turn down the bearing surfaces and fit sleeves, for all Fords from 32 to 48. For whatever reason, he couldn't do 40 diffs, which didn't help me! I think from memory I got a diff from younger Col and some bearings from Wal Martin.

cheers

Graeme

[Oldcol]

G'day Graeme ,that was Frank Cursio in Clifton Hill...seems to have vanished about 10 years back. I had some '33 and '36 housings done by him but he couldn't do the '37 and up housings because of the spring hangers sticking out....too big for his lathe.

[rowie]

G'day Graeme ,that was Frank Cursio in Clifton Hill...seems to have vanished about 10 years back. I had some '33 and '36 housings done by him but he couldn't do the '37 and up housings because of the spring hangers sticking out....too big for his lathe.

And sadly a lot of the old machine shops with the bigger lathes have gone to God and so has their beautiful equipment! I did my time at the GATIC iron foundry in Brunswick, and boy did they have some beautiful big equipment that was always kept in mint condition, the biggest lathe I used was a vertical lathe with a 5 meter bed, and the longest lathe they had was a 6 meter bed with a 2 meter swing!

I believe that when they moved down to Lara they took most of the small to medium equipment with them and the rest was too big to transport and was smelted

[FRANK BASILE]

Sad when time marches on Rowie and this old equipment disappears. And the machine shops that use it. And importantly the old timers who were craftsmen.
That bushing tool that Col pictured . If it was sitting around on a table or on a bench at some clearing sale would have many not having a clue to it,s use. This might have it,s own story as to it,s origins.
Hard to believe that once in the Melb CBD [Lt Lonsdale street] There was a place,trying to remember the name " V Benn Engineering" or similar.
I plonked the worn internals of the steering box from the 32 down on the counter and the guy in a grubby grey dustcoat before I said anything looked up over his spectacles and said "34 Ford. Yeah I can bring this up to as good as new if thats what yah want young fella".
Coburg spring works was another place. They went by smell when heating and re setting springs. Blacksmiths.

Frank.

[Oldcol]

That bushing tool that Col pictured . If it was sitting around on a table or on a bench at some clearing sale would have many not having a clue to it,s use. This might have it,s own story as to it,s origins.

Frank.

G'day Frank , yep,it sorta has a small story...I found it in amongst a pile of industrial surplus (read junk ) that was in a factory over in Ferntree Gully that dealt in old bits and pieces.......luckily I knew what it was from years back when I used to borrow one from a mate's Father who was a Ford restorer . When I got it it was brand new and still packed in a heavy grease like coating , but it didn't have any of the sleeves or spacers......but it was simple enough to have them machined up and get them heat treated , which I did.

Told ya it was a small story......