Finished painting the chassis pieces...

(Chrysler High Performance Red)

Nice, nice, and nice.

Very Nice. Great color for a speedster!

Does the color make it go faster?

No, but it does attract tickets!!!!

Tyrone:
the red must make it go faster ...we used to call that color " GO FAST RED !!!" ...when i was a kid we knew that painting the block and cyl. head red was just like supercharging an engine ...worked then , bet it still works now ...probably one of the forgotten "secrets of speed" ...i'll bet that car feels like it is going fast and the smiles confirm the fact ...always an optimist...gene french

Nice job of putting an "S" bend in the brake lever to bring it closer to the driver!

Yes, red is very fast. We've been issued two citations already and we haven't even left the driveway.

I think we found a nice color combination of natural wood for the spokes, seat rails, and pedal supports... contrasted with black for the tool box, column, engine and coils... then finishing everything else with red (firewall and deck trimmed with brass).

It will look even nicer with some cream or gold pinstriping!

Cream would compliment the spokes :-)

Yrs ago, I built a '17 roadster pick up and painted it Porsche (sp) red with red wheels and white tires. Built the bed out of oak and varnished it. Sharp little truck.

Some details...

Love your 2 piece firewall. Are the boards glued together? Coil box fit ok without modification?

Very nice, Wendell. Where'd you get the seat, or did you make it? I had to make one like that from scratch as I couldn't find one to purchase on my first speedster build.

Again, nice car. I like the simplicity of it all. Everything looks to have its place and not overly "trinktified"

Very, very nice car and something to be proud of.

Beautiful car. You can drive that one with pride. Wow!

The two piece firewall is boulted together. There's a cut out for the coil box so no mods needed...

The seat's shell was hand made by an old-timer with great skills... it was then upholstered with horse hair and leather. Bucket seats are nice for driving, but a bitch to get in and out of... this seat is a nice comprise.

(Message edited by windy on June 16, 2016)

Great looking speedster! I also liked your web site about your boats.

Respectfully submitted,

Hap l9l5 cut off

Wendell, I am working on finishing up my chassis and am looking to do a bare bones speedster just like yours. I really like how it turned out. Do you have any photos of how you did the wood? Mounting to frame, the floor/pieces going across, the firewall, is that wood mounted to a standard ford firewall? I'm especially interested in the seat/gas tank set up. Are those rootlieb seats and tank? How's the raised wood piece set up for them? sorry for the many questions but this is essentially what I'm looking to do with my chassis. One last thing: love the upholstery work on the seats, how did you do that?

Very nice work, you should be prowd!

Rod
PS
I like speedsters.
http://www.customfurniture.net/index_files/Page1185.htm

Beautiful!!! Great job!

In police parlance that color is known as "Arrest me red"

If there is a group of cars all speeding, and there is a red one in the bunch, guess who gets the ticket?.

just sayin'

brasscarguy

Wendell, you have done a beautiful job! If those front tyres and your spare are Australian made Olympic originals, you will have a hard time wearing them out.
Allan from down under.

Matthew, here are some construction photos.

more...

She's purdy

Wendell, thanks very much. That was exactly what I was looking for! I appreciate you taking the time to post those up.

Wendell - What Matthew (and others) just said! WOW! Talk about paying attention to detail! Please feel free to post any more detail photos that you feel would help show how beautifully your speedster was designed, built, assembled and detailed! Words cannot express my appreciation for your work,......it is nothing short of "MAGNIFICENT"!!!

I guess the only problem I can see is that your speedster is just much too perfect to actually drive! I mean,.....that flawless red finish on the floorboards! You just better not climb into that gorgeous speedster with your shoes on!!! ( ;^)

This thread and your excellent photos is about the most interesting and just plain "fun" thread I've had the pleasure of enjoying on the Forum in a long time,.....thanks so much for sharing with us,......harold ( ;^)

P.S. I hope you are considering submitting (with lots of your beautiful photos) a detailed article for the Vintage Ford, so that you can share with not only us Forum folks, but with many others that are not into the Forum, or even computers!

Have to add one more thing,....very interesting method of mounting lower end of steering column and clever use of aluminum cylindrical spacer and spacer block rather than hardwood! Simple but effective machine work,....brilliant!!!

(....pretty clever way of photographing those details too!!!)

Nice construction Wendell - only point I'd like to make is that Ford never designed the exhaust pipe to be "clamped" onto the muffler - it needs to be a "slip-joint" due to the flexibility of the chassis and the length of the pipe prior to entering into the muffler - YMMV.

Steve - Would the clamped joint be okay if Wendell used some sort of slightly flexible hanger or mounting at (or near) the rear of the muffler instead of the stock method of bolting the rear of the muffler to the frame? It's hard to tell from the one photo, but it looks like he might have used a flexible "hanger" at or near the rear cross member,.....???

Steve - Would the clamped joint be okay if Wendell used some sort of slightly flexible hanger or mounting at (or near) the rear of the muffler instead of the stock method of bolting the rear of the muffler to the frame? It's hard to tell from the one photo, but it looks like he might have used a flexible "hanger" at or near the rear cross member,.....???

Ooops! Did it again! Got distracted and "double posted"! Sorry,.....

I believe so as long as it can flex.

Thanks for the response Steve,....good to know. I know that the "purists" would cringe at the thought of deviating from"original", but for "driver" grade cars like mine, I never cared much for the original "slip joint" arrangement. I guess it's okay on a new pipe & muffler, but as we know, exhaust systems (unless stainless) eventually rust, and rust usually doesn't "equate" with "slip"! I suppose back in the "T" era, what with all of the poor roads and chuck holes and such, there would be enough "frame flex", and, hence enough muffler/pipe joint slip to keep the slip joint working, but nowadays, especially for a year-round driver on better roads, maybe not so much "frame flex" to keep the joint free! But, as always, rust happens! (.....snow-melting salt nowadays doesn't help either!) Sorry for the "thread drift" Wendell,.....harold

Thanks, Steve. The clamp has been removed and the exhaust hangs secure without it.

Harold, the studded spacer is a block of stainless and the angled bushings are brass. I made the stainless piece so I could make use of the original holes.

Wendell - I made an "assumption" or two in studying the photos, and my thoughts regarding the lower end of the steering column was that in securing the column in the non-stock position where you wanted it was done in such a way as to avoid drilling any additional holes which would compromise frame rail strength. Whether that was actually your thought or not, that whole "assembly" is really an innovative piece of work and a great example of "paying attention to detail"!

As long as I'm just sort of "rambling" here,....another "thought" or two that your photos have generated in my ever-aging feeble brain:

I love the look of your speedster, and it's a great example of the fact that it's really not necessary to go to the trouble and expense of "lowering" the chassis to produce a really great looking speedster! I am of the opinion that while there were certainly speedsters built "back in the day" with dropped front axles, lowering brackets, etc, etc,......I really think that most of them were built with the stock chassis configuration, just as they had left the factory. If for no other reason than the fact that all of that lowering cost money, I think most of the guys that had the "urge" to have a speedster they could race, concentrated mostly in merely stripping down a Model T as much as possible, mainly just to get rid of unnecessary weight! Anyway, all that to say that I think your speedster is very typical of how most of them were originally built, except for one thing,.....nobody, and I mean NOBODY, paid attention to detail like you did Wendell! (..it really IS too pretty to drive),....ha, ha,.....harold

Thanks for the kind words, Harold.

We did lower it some (about two inches). We bent the rear spring, and used the front spring and spindles from a 1926-27 (this is a 22).

I agree that higher riding speedsters look more authentic.

Mom.

Sorry about that. I meant to write "Wow!" All my drool on the screen blurred the words. Absolutely gorgeous and job well done!

Wendell, Thanks for posting, that is one nice build. I really admire your woodworking skills. I have a couple of questions if I may? How did you finish the inside of the holes of the plywood on the firewall? Is the plywood 1"? What is the width of the seats at the base before they were covered? Thanks

Excellent job. Beautiful attention to detail. Love the seats!

Very nice. That's all I can think of to say ..... Nice photos too ....

Dan, the firewall pieces are 3/4" ribbon stripe mahogany from Boulter Plywood in MA. The edges are painted with RUST-OLEUM's oil based enamel Gloss Leather Brown. The finish is varnish Interlux Schooner 96. After three sealer coats of varnish the brown paint is applied to the edges. Then all is finished with eight more coats (the final finish is about 5 coats thick, as the first several are lost when sanding to fill the grain.

The seat front is 40" (widest point).

Here are some photos of the firewall finish. The fist photo shows the brown edge paint after 3 coats of varnish and 2 coats of brown. The second photo shows the clock back protruding into the front firewall piece and the last photo shows a walnut insert for the choke pull.

A word of caution and an observation:

We removed the exhaust clamp, as Steve T. had recommended, and found that after several heat cycles the muffler and pipe almost forced themselves apart.

Our muffler and pipe had very sharp new edges. As they worked against each other longitudinally, they "ratcheted" apart. The ratcheting effect was so strong that it bent the exhaust hanger bracket.

I suspect the old method of a clamp-less exhauset system was less about "frame flex" and more about longitudinal pipe expansion.

We removed the muffler and chamfered both it and the pipe. They now happy slip against one another with the aid of Anti-Seize.

The photo shows the joints expansion between hot and cold... quite a bit.