Go Back   The Ford Barn > General Discussion > Model A (1928-31)

Sponsored Links (Register now to hide all advertisements)

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 03-22-2020, 10:48 AM   #1
eystein
Senior Member
 
eystein's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Oslo, Norway
Posts: 521
Default 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Has anyone got any unmolested 68B top folding irons and could tell me if they are supposed to be angeled or straight. I have always thought that they should be straight, but then I saw the attached picture which makes me wonder.

The angle shown on these irons make a lot of sense since as the irons come out of the front header at an angle, the bend in the irons in front of the hinge point would serve to align the axis of rotation of the L&R hinges.

On the other hand, I thought that I have always seen these irons being straight, but then I may be wrong?
Attached Images
File Type: jpg Capture.jpg (15.4 KB, 116 views)
eystein is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-22-2020, 12:14 PM   #2
jw hash
Senior Member
 
jw hash's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Auburn Washington
Posts: 2,550
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

I`m working on my forth 68B and the front arms are straight and rear arms have a off set to them. somewhere around here i have a blue print copy. here is a picture of my arms that i had re-plated. and a hand drawing.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg DSC_0011.jpg (36.5 KB, 129 views)
Attached Files
File Type: pdf Scan_0001.pdf (353.3 KB, 69 views)
jw hash is offline   Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links (Register now to hide all advertisements)
Old 03-22-2020, 01:11 PM   #3
eystein
Senior Member
 
eystein's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Oslo, Norway
Posts: 521
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

John,

This is connected with two other aspects related to the mounting of the iron to the header and the snap for the overwindow flap.

With the iron straight I find that I have to mount the iron at an angle to the header, or else the iron will be too far out to the side of the car, creating two problems:

The overwindow flap button will rattle against the window frame and the snap stud on the iron will hit the windlace retainer and the bowdrill when folding the top.
eystein is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-23-2020, 01:51 PM   #4
Russ B
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Millbrae, CA
Posts: 504
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

My 68A looks like your photo, having a slight bend before the pivot, and a dogleg after, on the back piece. They are original pieces to the car, in family since 1929, but replated 1963 and 2015.
Russ B is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-23-2020, 07:20 PM   #5
Kevin in NJ
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: South East NJ
Posts: 3,398
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

So before you go to far....

Is your center bow basically flat across the top?

There should be a good curve to it.

The repro wood copies the wood that flatten out over time from the taught top material. This causes the sides to be pushed out.

Wood that is made this way introduces a problem for the irons, at least on the 68C, where the top can not be fully retracted down. The irons will hit the wood of the #1 pillar as they go down. If you know what to look for you will see this often in pictures of restored 68C's. I never looked at the B's.

It is important to mock up the top and test, a lot!
Kevin in NJ is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-26-2020, 11:48 AM   #6
eystein
Senior Member
 
eystein's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Oslo, Norway
Posts: 521
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Sponsored Links (Register now to hide all advertisements)
Kevin, no wood reused or copied from old sagged pieces. Exclusively fabricated and controlled and set up according to factory drawings. Finally I have come to suspect that the fasteners rubbing was just the way things were, and that nobody care back in the thirties as long as the car worked.

From the responses here, on facebook and from calling friends it seems that there are around fifty-fifty observations of straight irons and irons with a bend in them.

Finally I decided to go with straight irons like John is showing above.
eystein is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-29-2020, 06:05 PM   #7
Kevin in NJ
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: South East NJ
Posts: 3,398
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

I was pretty sure I had helped you out before.

From a historical point of view:
Ford bodies were put together with pretty tight specs. I have learned that assuming Ford did anything sloppy is more often wrong. Over time just about everything I have been told in the past that was just thrown together by Ford was shown wrong by prints calling for some fairly tight specs. I have heard the wood prints called out some fairly tight specs for wood. I know the jig they used to build the cabriolet would ensure fairly precision building. Look at the 68C article.

Basically Ford found it more expensive to have to trust the average worker to assemble something. So everything was precision built in a way to leave nothing to guess.

What I am trying to say above it that Ford would not have had things not fit well. Just the opposite, I would be more likely to say they were surprising well done. If you could go back in time and look at cars off the line you might be surprised at how well they fit together.

That being said, we have reality to work with today.....

Honestly, the cabriolet is a complex mechanical contraption. It takes a lot of thinking to get it right. Throw in the inaccuracies found in making the wood and the lack of jigs you end up with a difficult restoration effort. I would say that most guys will have issues with building the body. The only exception is the rare guy that works way above my head.

The moral:

You have to make some guesses and do your best.
Kevin in NJ is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-30-2020, 02:59 PM   #8
Russ B
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Millbrae, CA
Posts: 504
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin in NJ View Post
I ...

That being said, we have reality to work with today.....

Honestly, the cabriolet is a complex mechanical contraption. It takes a lot of thinking to get it right. Throw in the inaccuracies found in making the wood and the lack of jigs you end up with a difficult restoration effort. I would say that most guys will have issues with building the body. The only exception is the rare guy that works way above my head.

The moral:

You have to make some guesses and do your best.
Agreed. Putting a cabriolet body back together with new wood is a job that can not be rushed if you want it all to fit good. While every body coming from Briggs Body May have had identical dimensions, one restored today may look and fit perfectly, but inevitably there will be one or two dimensional differences from another one in which the other owner/builder took as much time and effort to make it as good as possible considering all the different parts source, wear and tear on the original parts, and just plain wrong dimensioned reproduction parts that have to be used.

I am happy with mine looking as perfect as it does. While mine is intentionally modified in many subtle ways, it is more a Briggs Body restoration than many other that have been put back on the road.
Russ B is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-31-2020, 05:50 PM   #9
eystein
Senior Member
 
eystein's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Oslo, Norway
Posts: 521
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Kevin, I don't quite understand what you're getting at. Do you believe that the front section of the folding irons should be straight or angled ?
eystein is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-01-2020, 01:34 PM   #10
Kevin in NJ
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: South East NJ
Posts: 3,398
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

I know for fact the fronts are straight and the rears areoffset for the 68C.

I was trying to verify from my very limited 68B archives.

But then I remembered Bob's website has lots of pictures.
If you look at Bob's pictures you will see his confirm this for me.

Jim Wilkinson's pictures show them straight too.

http://www.modelahouse.com/cgi-bin/p...cabriolets.txt
Kevin in NJ is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-01-2020, 05:52 PM   #11
eystein
Senior Member
 
eystein's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Oslo, Norway
Posts: 521
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Kevin the photo I am showing at the start of the thread is actually taken from the modelahouse page - and show the 68-B irons angled. Other photos also on modelahouse show them straight.

To add to the confusion - and in relation to your comment on the 68-C, page G-3 of the JS actually show the 68-C iron angled and the 68-B iron straight.
eystein is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-17-2020, 06:07 PM   #12
CabrioletDon
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Lawrence, KS
Posts: 35
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Hi, Eystein...I'm no expert, and I am far from the stage you are with my 68-B, but I checked my car's top folding irons where they are in storage, still attached to the (original) front bow. One is obviously bent and damaged, I'm sure from 5 different moves and locations over the years, but the other is straight. If I had to guess (and that's the best that I can do at this point) it would be that the irons were originally straight.
CabrioletDon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-18-2020, 10:46 AM   #13
Jwilli
Senior Member
 
Jwilli's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Kennesaw, Ga
Posts: 511
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Pictures of my late 1930 68B. Hope this helps some.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg 0518201040a.jpg (29.0 KB, 52 views)
File Type: jpg 0518201041a.jpg (27.2 KB, 53 views)
File Type: jpg 0518201044.jpg (27.7 KB, 51 views)
File Type: jpg 0518201045.jpg (27.5 KB, 47 views)
Jwilli is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-30-2021, 06:30 AM   #14
eystein
Senior Member
 
eystein's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Oslo, Norway
Posts: 521
Default Re: 68B Cabriolet Front Folding Irons - Angeled or Straight ?

Kevin,

I completely agree that the Ford parts tolerance and assembly procedures could not have been sloppy. It must have fit well together without any need for manual adjustments. Anything else would have amounted to $$.

As to rebuilding the bodies today, I found that it was not all that tricky even without the fine jigs that they had at the factory.

The trick is to observe a feature that is often overlooked on the wood manufacturing blueprints, namely that for several parts, figures are called out for three critical dimensions from the part, namely distance to :
- Centerline of car
- Sill line
- Front line of cowl

Using these dimensions one can check for/correct any inaccuracies in fabrication of the wood, when assembling the structure.




Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin in NJ View Post
I was pretty sure I had helped you out before.

From a historical point of view:
Ford bodies were put together with pretty tight specs. I have learned that assuming Ford did anything sloppy is more often wrong. Over time just about everything I have been told in the past that was just thrown together by Ford was shown wrong by prints calling for some fairly tight specs. I have heard the wood prints called out some fairly tight specs for wood. I know the jig they used to build the cabriolet would ensure fairly precision building. Look at the 68C article.

Basically Ford found it more expensive to have to trust the average worker to assemble something. So everything was precision built in a way to leave nothing to guess.

What I am trying to say above it that Ford would not have had things not fit well. Just the opposite, I would be more likely to say they were surprising well done. If you could go back in time and look at cars off the line you might be surprised at how well they fit together.

That being said, we have reality to work with today.....

Honestly, the cabriolet is a complex mechanical contraption. It takes a lot of thinking to get it right. Throw in the inaccuracies found in making the wood and the lack of jigs you end up with a difficult restoration effort. I would say that most guys will have issues with building the body. The only exception is the rare guy that works way above my head.

The moral:

You have to make some guesses and do your best.
eystein is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

Sponsored Links (Register now to hide all advertisements)


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:02 PM.