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1934 Roadster Door Cowl Sill & Drivers Door

by on January 12, 2014

I haven’t posted for a number of weeks because my 88 year old father pasted away November 21, God Rest his Soul, and I was busy taking care of his and my mother’s affairs. The sad part is that my father will not see the 34 completed (but a small part of me thinks that maybe he will).

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We continued working on the upper cowl, cowl sill and the drivers door.

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 At top of the cowl edge we cut away the fracture steel which at onetime was repaired with a brass bracing rod.

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 The upper cowl now looks much better than it’s previous incarnation.

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The top of the cowl Sill was originally finished at the factory with a bead of lead as you can see in this unrestored roadster photograph. We haven’t yet finished mine because we need to disassemble the sills, cowl wood so as to prime and paint the bare steel. We will then reassemble and finish the upper and lower sill.

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We have also fit the inner cowl sill to the cowl.

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With the drivers door closed I’m now very pleased with the fit of the upper door to the cowl.

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 The seam between the cowl and door is very uniform and the door now fits very snugly in place.

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The metal work at the front of the driver’s door is also complete.

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Ignore the screws holding the door latch in place they are not correct. The correct ones will be installed shortly.

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 You can see in this photo the nail holes which run the full length of the cowl. The cowl is nailed in place and then the cowl sill goes over top and overlaps the cowl covering the nails.

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 Here you can see the general fit of the cowl sill.

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 You can now see the flange on the cowl sill that overlaps the cowl and covers the nails that I spoke of previously. Once the cowl sill is in place it also has holes drilled in it running the length of the cowl and will be face nailed to the cowl wood . The driver’s cowl sill needed a bit of metal work because it was a little wonky.

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The cowl sill is now in place where it belongs.

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 The cowl, cowl sill, cowl wood are only temporarily in place. They will be removed and all metal parts will be sprayed with Dupont DTM Epoxy primer then reassembled.

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Escutcheon Discussions

by on November 2, 2013

I’ve been having some interesting discussions about the door handle escutcheons. On my car we re-skinned the doors and I unfortunately didn’t make a note as to the positioning of the escutcheon screws. I wasn’t certain that they were straight up and down or if they were on a slight angle.

A quick look at the copy of the original drawings from the Ford archives that I have shows it to be perpendicular, but many details on the drawings never actually made it into production so a double check is always a good idea.

To make matters worse its hard to tell on many photos because there is both an angle on the door and the door itself angles in on the car, creating an illusion! So I asked the guys on FordBarn for their input and they posted the following examples.

 

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If you look at this outside door handle, from Randy over at FordBarn, it looks like the escutcheon is actually slightly tilted forward at the top and it appears the upper screw hole is forward of the bottom screw hole.

Some more photos from Randy over at (FordBarn) showing several escutcheons, which all look pretty perpendicular.

I asked David J at FordBarn to place a square on his unfinished door aligning it to the bottom of the outside belt line. Seems that the holes are perpendicular, though perhaps not perfect.

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1934 Roadster Drivers Door

by on October 26, 2013
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 Over the past few days they have been working on the fit of the driver side door, checking how each panel and part fits next to one another.  All the gaps and seams between the panels are uniform and the drivers door now opens and closes smoothly and also sits squarely in the door opening.  

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In looking at the almost complete door all the seams and gaps are very uniform.

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We still have a little metal work to do on the cowl and upper door edge. The area at the top of the cowl where it meets the top of the door is an area that on some roadsters is poorly restored. I’ve seen many where the detail in this area is something to be desired, general all out bad! We hope to do much better. In all fairness this area when built in the factory was shaped and then leaded. Over time it typically fractured and broke down and then was filled with bondo, sanded and painted over.

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Again from this angle you can see the small gap in the metal between the top of the door and cowl which will be dealt with shortly. If you look closely at the top of the cowl edge you can see the fracture in the steel which at onetime was repaired with a brass bracing rod. This will be cut out and rebuilt properly.

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When we tried to place the top cap in place behind the drivers door the top of the rear quarter panel needed to be slightly modified so the cap fits properly.

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The seam along the back edge of the drivers door is very uniform from top to bottom.

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At the top of the cowl edge you can see the remnants of a brass bracing rod and a little Bondo from its last reincarnation. This will be cut out and rebuilt properly.

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The  Cowl A-Pillar wood fits snuggly to the cowl just waiting for the installation of the metal that encases the wood from the top to bottom. I will document the installation of the metal in a future blog.

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The door now fits beautifully and latches securly. Ignore the leather door check strap – it’s wrong. It will be removed and I will show you the proper installation of the door check strap in a future blog. I have numerous 34 roadster body reference photos and you can see one sitting on the floor. These photos are absolutely invaluable when restoring a car of this vintage.

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The door is looking good except for the diagonal metal strap which is actually upside down and needs to be flipped over to be correctly installed.

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The door latch fits absolutely perfectly the only thing missing is the metal that incases the wood from the top to bottom of the cowl A-Pillar.

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The folded over metal edge down the B-pillar still needs to have holes drilled down its entire length. Originally this metal was nailed in place and we will again nail it in place.

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The top of the door still needs a little metal work to complete.

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The inside door edge is almost complete a little more metal work, a few screws in the door latch and we’re done!

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Hi, I’m Steve. I restored my first car at 19 years of age, a 1929 Chev. I did it in my brother’s garage because I knew my Dad would kill me if he thought I was wasting my money on such a thing. I’ve been wasting my money, and loving every minute of it, ever since.

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