1929 Willy's Whippet, Ford Model A, Mercury Flathead,Frame Fabrication, Body Channelling, Pinion Angle, Firewall Reversal

Setting up the front suspension.  I am going to make what is called a "suicide perch" for the front axle.  If it were to fail the frame hits the ground, hence suicide.

Just a shot of how I connected the rear suspension and the rear frame section that I made.  The wheelbase is longer than a Model A and on a Model A the rear spring is directly above the rear axle.

I cut the frame horns off the Model A Frame and removed the front stock cross member, both items that easily get you a couple hundred bucks on ebay.  Money toward the project!

Here I set the pinion angle at +3 degrees for suspension compression under acceleration.

Here I have the body channelled 6 inches over the frame.

You can see the first part of the front spring perch welded on.  I later add bracing to it.

A closer view of the semi-finished suicide spring perch.  I made it tall to get the car low to the ground.

I removed the firewall to reverse it and give me the engine bay clearance I need.  Reversing is just flipping it around.

Here the firewall is reversed and welded in.  The hole in the side of the cowl is for the cowl steering which I will show later.  I cut the tops of the doors off, welded the doors shut, removed the windshield sun visor, and chopped the windshield frame about 3-1/2 inches.

I have the driver side door top folded over, you can see the original height on the passenger door waiting to be done.

1927 Chevrolet Frame Fabrication, Engine, Transmission Placement, 1931 Chevy Coupe Build, Pinion Angle

We cut a few inches off the rear and moved the crossmember forward

So my friend Josh came to Oregon to help me for a week.  He is a welder and would make sure the frame was done correctly.

The rearend was from a Caddilac limo and had this triangulated four link design already built in so it worked great.

Making the sparks fly!

We set the engine in place and the cowl to make sure everything was going to fit.

Here the Ford Model A front crossmember is installed to lower the front end.  You can see that the frame is fully boxed now too.  Always make your body mounts before boxing the frame, I failed to do that on this car.

The motor mounts and the transmission crossmember are installed.  I bought Model A to Chevy 350 motor mounts and modified them to fit the wider frame of a 27' Chevy.  I got a 40' Ford axle off ebay, some 39' Ford spindles off ebay then the rest of the frontend parts from Speedway Motors.

We made some upper shock mounts for the rear.

This is basically the progress Josh and I made for the week.  The transmission angle is -3 degrees and the rear differential pinion angle is +3 degrees so when the suspension compresses under acceleration the drive shaft is at 0 degrees.