MTFCA Forum

I have the front half of what I believe is a speedster body. At the booth edge it has about a 3/4 inch lip toward the inside with holes spaced along it. To mount it to a plywood base would I build a framework for it and attach this lip to the bottom of the framework and then attatch that framework to a 3/4 plywood bottom. Would that flat base then have metal brackets attaching it to the frame or wood runners bolted to the base and the runners mounted to the original frame brackets.
the cowl fits a T firewall fairly close.

Hi Dennis,
This really is one of those pictures are worth a thousand words situations.
Craig.

In the model T era, plywood was rarely ever used for speedster flooring. It was not widely available (if at all?) in thick enough or large enough pieces.
Methods of construction varied from one builder to another, but what I have seen a few of still in original bodies was nice long grain wooden boards with few knots. Boards varied in thickness again from one builder to the next, but were usually between a 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Width of boards could be anywhere from about 4 inches to 6 inches wide. The original surviving wood on the bot-tail roadster I restored over thirty years ago was about 5/8 inch thick, and mostly about five inches wide. Main sills ran front to rear, with cross pieces side to side. There were many other speedsters done differently. The sills and cross piece flooring sat flat onto the frame and bolted directly through to the frame and frame brackets. On that boat-tail, the rear crossmember was raised above the frame rails to lower the back about two inches (body metal was cut out for that). For that reason, the main sills were not a single continuous board the full length of the body.

My ABC speedster body was done in a similar way. I still use the main sills that are about 1" thick. I used some plywood in the restoration but there was none originally. There are a lot of photos at https://mtfctulsa.com/ABC_Bodies/abc_project.htm