PAUL'S PROJECT A

All the latest news on Paul's project A can be found here. The latest project news is just below the introduction. Click here to see the first entry. Click here to go back to the main Projects page.

INTRODUCTION & BRIEF HISTORY

It's August 1998, with the remains of an unfinished and lost interest "27T" laying in a friends garden back home. I decide that whilst staying in Atlanta Georgia for a few months I would hunt around for a steel body for it. With no luck finding a roadster body I decided to go in a completely different direction with a "31A" Sedan body.

As soon as I saw the body I knew what angle I had to take with the car.

The Little Coffin Model B Sedan built by Dave Stukey and Daryll Starbird in the late 50's has always been a big inspiration for me, although the car continually evolved over the years it is the earliest carnation that I am interested in.

Im not looking to do a clone, more to draw inspiration from, along with others such as Jack Chrismans "29" Sedan, and in more recent times Gary Fiotos "32" ford pickup.

Ill be the first to admit that not all channeled cars look right. Its difficult to get the proportions just so, and i have to continually readjust things until i'm happy, but because i've started out with a good soild plan hopefully the sedan will not end up faceless and instead will keep its soul...

See what you think.

Body - Paul



This side of the body had some pretty extensive damage, so I decided to re-make the lower 1/4 panel.




The new panel was made from a blank of steel, passed through the english wheel to form slight double curvature, then return edges were folded and shrunk as req'd. I then had some wheels with the correct profile made and formed the swage in the beader.




New panel fits perfectly, from this picture you can see how high the wing will sit in relation to the swage line.




The other side all finished up. all hammer welded and metal finished.




All mocked up. the new wheel arches are now 6 inches further up in the body.

body - Paul

The roof struts were formed from 1" thin wall box section that runs down through the pillars, the main reason for doing this other than making it stronger was that i could not afford the new wood kit.




I had a couple of attempts at filling the roof but the one that worked the best was to use five seperate panels all with a very slight compound curve rolled into them on the English wheel, they were then welded to the box section roof struts.




I wasn't to keen on the original 31 firewall, its to deep for my liking, so I recessed it and removed the first lip on the body. The firewall was quartered and banded to make up the new area, then the teardrop for the fuel tank outlet(which im going to use) was moved inward to line up with the hole again. this has now given me a bit more room to play with in the engine bay.

body - Paul

Once i bought the body the doors were taken off and then it was cut in half through the subrails i got a load of new panels, it was all packed into a crate and then shipped home.

The first thing to do after having the body shotblasted was to repin the hinges, hang the doors and realign the two halves of the body back together again with braceing throughout.