MTFCA Forum

As it turns out, there was so much dry rot and crumbling wood in my touring that I decided to pull the trigger on a full rewooding. The rear brackets and panels are in place and I’ve started down the passenger side. Instead of making everything from scratch, I purchased the body wood kit from Fordwood. Everything seems to be really well made but the pillars are turning out to be a challenge. I’m using Mel Miller’s plans as reference and reconciling those measurements against my sheet metal. One thing that is giving me headaches is cutting the notches in the top sill for the pillars. Miller’s plans call for the back face of the pillars to be cut vertical in reference to the main sill and only notching the top sill plate. The Fordswood pillars look to be cut at an angle and require notching both the top sill plate and the main sill. For you guys that have done this project with a Fordwood kit, what’s the best way to lay out and cut those notches? Would trimming the bottoms of the pillars so they are right angles to the sill plate be a bad idea? In afraid to go any further for now.

I bought a Fordwood kit for my 21 Touring and getting the right angle was a slow process for me. If I remember locating the location of the firewall FIRST is very important for getting the body in the right location to the sills. Once I did that and knew where the pillars would be I started slowly with one pillar to try to get the right angle you’re talking about. I took off a LITTLE at a time on the first one. It was trial and error process to be sure. GO SLOW! Once you get the first one the others will make more sense. You may have to do some tweaking of the wood you got from Fordwood. I do remember using a belt sander to get the sheet metal to lay in correctly on the sills. Remember the wood won’t just drop in so be ready to do some tweeking to get a good fit.

I used some tips from the late Leon Parker that helped. He told me in an email that while the kits generally fit it’s the bodies that may be a little different and weren't made exactly alike.

You can do it but TAKE YOUR TIME with the first pillar angle. That’s what I did and others may offer some advice in a different way.

That’s the approach I’m taking toward setting them. I’ve got the passenger side, front seat rear pillar mostly set. I think I need to take a little more out of the notch to get it to lay out just right with the body panel and rear door. Going slow is definitely the name of the game. I’m probably 2 1/2 hours on this pillar and I’m still not quite there. The way they have the bottom of the pillar notched to guide the angle seems a bit high, making the pillar sit a bit lower on the sill. I’m tempted to put a shim under it to raise it up. I think that will take care of the clearance issue in running into with the bottom of the door and sheet metal. Mine originally had a small strip of wood between the door corner blocks under the sheet metal. There isn’t rim for that as things stand.

As noted above every body could be slightly different. Pay close attention to the door openings. I have known of situations where the main tub was completed then one or more doors didn't fit the opening. Being too wide or too narrow requiring some disassembly to readjust the openings.

That’s a good tip jsaylor about the door openings. Check and recheck before doing a final section assembly. I used some longer dry wall screws to temporarily set a pillar in place for a quick check before going further with a final set up. If you can, place a side sheet metal
panel in place to check if the curvature of the sheet metal will match the pillar curvature. You want it to fit fairly tight but not so much where it presses against the pillar to cause a distortion. That’s where you may have to touch up the pillar slightly for a good wood to metal fit with a belt sander or wood file.
Concerning the doors I had to trim the door wood to make a good fit to the door skin. Also remember to check the completed door and make sure the door curvature will blend in nicely with the completed body panel. Use only one screw to temporality install a completed door. That way you can tilt the door in or out without having to redrill several screws or move a screw over a bit.

I found I needed a datum line when building bodies, especially our colonial bodies. I chose to work off a centre line clearly marked on the cross timbers of the body base. From this line I could measure the angles for the door pillars so that the angle was the same each side, always checking how far apart any pair was at the top.

I work from the firewall back on each side, matching the timberwork to the panels as I go. The panels are not fixed until the whole frame is assembled. That way you have a good indication of the lines down the side of the body.

I made a mistake with one of the B pillars on my wide n body roadster, angling the cut too sharply. I ended up making a separate wedge to correct this, only to find the car had a similar "correction" in the next upright. That made me feel a lot better.

Allan from down under.

Probably not relevant, but I bought my wood kit from Bob’s Antique Auto Parts whose supplier was Classic Wood Products from Greensboro, NC.

The sill notches were already cut.

I’m really starting to wish that I’d ordered from Classic Wood Products. I figured out tonight why I was having such a hard time getting the angles of the pillars to work with the line of my rear door. I had been following their instruction sheets and using the body panels to mark the locations of the pillars and then using the measurements of the pillars themselves to mark the dimensions of the cuts. I was getting really frustrated with the door not meeting the latch pillar where it should, so I started measuring my old sill top plates and comparing them to the Mel Miller drawings. My original sills match up exactly with the drawings. The sill plate that I received is fine up to the rear hinge pillar bracket, but then is 1/2” too narrow for the entire rest of the length. If I continue on, everything will be pushed inward a half inch on either side and my front seat frame won’t fit. I could try to fill the already cut notches with blocks and clad the outside of the sills with wood strips to get the width that I need. I kind of have a feeling that would probably be less of a headache than trying to get replacements sent. They’ve already not been great to deal with in getting answers or replacement parts as it is. I’ve already had to go back and forth with them to get the correct cowl pillars and rails sent for my year. And apparently I’m the first person in 50 years to ask why they didn’t get the lower sill blocks or the support blocks that go between the rear seat back and the rear panel. This project was already daunting enough, but this is a huge monkey wrench in the works.

This reminds me of my emails about Model T bodies that I had with the late Leon Parker. Leon Parker started making Model T Touring and Roadster wood blueprints and they got to be pretty popular. It’s to bad when he passed away and the drawings he had also disappeared.
That’s really to bad for the hobby and a loss. But that’s another story.

What I found out from him was that all Model T bodies weren’t all exactly the same. That’s where you have to make a few aggravating allowances with a wood kit you purchased that may have been from a same year body that wasn’t made by the same body builder like your paticular car. Ford used up to 5 different body builders for his cars. That’s whats aggravating. But I guess at the time Ford wasn’t building cookie cutter cars.

Same goes when buying reproduction body sheet metal too as I found out with the side panel I bought for my 21 Touring.

My car is in the cusp of the 24/25 model year. It’s got the all-wood cowl structure, but equal length door hinges. Ford was making their own bodies at that point. I really don’t feel like this is a variation in bodies. More like a manufacturing problem.

What I found with my Classic Wood Products kit is that the measurements matched Miller’s drawings.

Although my touring is registered as a 25, it is actually a 24. I had the metal pillar piece to make it a 25 but I had trapezoidal door henges, so the body became a 24 which actually was much easier.

Here’s a thread showing mine

http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/11 ... 1284406326

Will_Vanderburg wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 24, 2024 4:02 pm

Here’s a thread showing mine

http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/11 ... 1284406326

That’s what the cowl section on mine looks like