Having been requested to post up some pics & spec of my T coupe, here goes.
It's an all-steel, fully fendered 1926 Ford Model T 2 door coupe, known here as a Doctor's Coupe & in the States as a Phonebooth. Anyway, it was originally built by Phil May from Scarborough & was finished in 2001. It had the standard 350/350 combo, a chrome dropped I beam front end with 4 bars & Vega box, the rear however was a very trick Jag-based IRS with custom billet aluminium lower arms & cantilever-operated inboard, horizontally mounted coil-overs. Full cream leather interior, narrowed Metro seats, full length Britax folding fabric sunroof, electric windows, Chevy tilt column with shift lever, VDO gauges, opening screen. I managed to prise it out of Phil's hands in April 2009, having coveted it ever since it was finished. Incidentally, Phil had owned it in one form or another for 17 years & had built it completely himself apart from paint & trim!
This is how it looked when I first got it...
The first thing I did was to have a complete new exhaust system in stainless steel, tucked up to provide more clearance & with a few kinks in it to try to eliminate a deep resonance. This required a couple of modifications to the chassis (the first of several) in order to get the pipes over rather than under the axle.
However, Last December I took it into Tino's Rod & Kustom for a check over to investigate a rather alarming lean on one of the rear wheels. Well, before I knew it, the complete rear suspension was removed, the coil-overs re-positioned in the more conventional position & the first of several(!) new diffs fitted. The initial fault was badly worn-out wheel bearings, but we found several more problems so it was easier to rebuild the whole thing. The diff changes were prompted by my quest form the optimum ratio, together with a Powerlok, but more about this later. In the process of doing these changes, it was decided to remove the original rear crossmember & fabricate a new one, incorporating the diff mounting plate & lowering the protusion into the boot area. The final change here was to fabricate an extension to the chassis, behind all this under the boot floor to enable a tow bar system to be fitted.
New hub, needed as the original had been destroyed by the bearings.
Now painted to match.
This is the rear suspension, mocked up on the bench so you can see how it looks.
This is it dis-assembled, aarrghhh!!!
These are the cantilevers for the shocks as removed & you can see why we decided to ditch them!
This is the new layout, mocked up here so the car could be moved around.
Here we found a couple of problems with the original crossmember & chassis rails, which decided the revamp & alterations to the rear chassis.
& this is part-way through the changes, showing the result of Tino's favourite tool, the plasma cutter!!!
and finished off prior to paint.
At this stage, the rear extension was dreamt up(!) & as it happened, made a nice neat finish to the remaining old crossmember & chassis rails.
& here's the finished article.
It was painted prior to welding in place so that there was paint on the upper surface, tight up against the boot floor. Once it was welded in, it was finish painted & you can't see the join!
The two holes are for the tow bar to be bolted to, which curves down under the rolled rear pan & reappears level with the holes but on the outside.
Whilst it was on the lift, I looked at several jobs I wanted to do, including re-jigging the fuel system, as the feed pipes were almost the lowest things on the car & it took absolutely ages to fill the twin saddle tanks (something Phil had told me about). This led to having two new tanks made & a new dual-feed system designed to fill both tanks together, rather than the original one feed to one tank & gradual balance feed to the other. These are the new tanks, mocked up in their cradles..
This was made necessary by the desire to improve the fill rate & tuck the feed pipes up out of the way. This led to removing the complete interior, so that a new siamesed filler pipe system could be laid under the false floor below the seats leading up to a new location for the filler cap. Original fuel feed pipe under the tanks...
Laying out the filler pipe run under the floor in the passenger area...
Locating the new filler cap pipe..
Whilst we there, & having made the new crossmember lower, I thought it might be an idea to re-locate the handbrake master cylinder & reservoir, freeing up even more space. This meant finding a shorter unit & we found a Triumph unit that fitted the bill. This is the original one in place, sticking up proud so it needed to be hidden behind a sloping panel.
This is the new one, moved into the passenger area under the driver's seat & below the floor panel, accessed by a hatch in the floor when the seat is moved right forward (how many times will I need to get to it?).
Whilst doing this, I decided to re-locate the handbrake lever as it was really difficult to reach, being tucked down between the seats. Now it should be just proud of the front edges of the seats & hopefully easier to operate.
All this was made easier by the fact that, after doing the rear suspension, I wanted to get the engine checked over as it had always overheated & fouled its plugs after it got very hot going to Billing last year (remember it was very hot then!). I also then got the hots for an overdrive transmission, so it was felt it would be easier to pull both engine & box. Whilst they were out, it then made sense to do the tanks. So one day, I wandered in to the workshop to be confronted by this...Hey dude, where's my engine???
Of course, there's always people to help with a project of this magnitude, so here's the apprentice in his favourite position under the car on the ramp...
There's more but you'll have to wait for the next installment of...the Doctor's surgery!!!
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Originally Posted by mike noble
the only option seemed to be to move the vacuum pipe hole to the inside, so that's what I did. First, a blank plug was formed out of stainless steel & hand formed around the existing hole to ensure a snug fit fit, then glued in place with super-strength Araldite. After it had cured overnight, I removed the clamps & packing piece (also semi-glued on!!), cleaned all the excess off & then sealed it on the inside. From the outside it looks like a purpose made seal, even down to the appearance (it is in the chromed section of the reservoir). Then it was a simple job to drill a new hole in the new position & fit the rubber grommet back & jobs a goodun! I have no pics of this bit as yet, as soon as I do I'll post them up.
I then found out that Jags also had higher ratios even than that, in fact they had a 4.09, a 4.27 & a 4.55, so the hunt was on for one of those. After a lot of phone calls & net searching, I tried a number given to me by Tino & hey presto, a 4.27 & not too far away. After a bit of haggling, I became the proud owner of what looks like a very low mileage 4.27 ratio diff that I can fit my Powerlok lsd into, which will give me the desired RPM.
