Altered 34 Ford Dragster front in aluminium

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long time since i posted here . My hobby metalshaping has turned into a side business and i have not that much time anymore , so it is all good .

Many of my friends are involved in dragracing , so i got asked if i want to build a complete front in aluminium for a altered dragster build.

To start with we made a bunch of simple basic bucks and templates , just to have something to go with , the basic shape and size .

The goal was to incorperate some designelements from the iconic 34 Ford but give it much meaner and faster look . The proportions are far away from the stock 34 ford , a much longer wheelbase and narrower wheel track .




Here is the dragster still on the chassis table . Not perfect for designwork , but we needed to start somewhere.







To find the outlines of the sidepanels i made these templates in metalstrips welded together , witch worked nice .



After a couple of weeks all the chassi work was done and we could move the car outside his workshop.
From here it was much easier to walk around the car and look from differnet angles and try to find the best possible lines and proportions .
I was taking a bunch of pictures, and printed them out and made some simple sketches on them , like i use to do , with this kind of project .

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Made a bunch of test pieces, trying to find a fairly easy way to build this grill sheel .







To the right is the piece that i used in the end , i made it a little bit bigger at the outside and used this as a guide for the bead roller . That gives me perfekt beadrolled lines , that little strip i cut away later.



The next 3 pictures showing a test grill sheel , here i was just trying out if my ideas will work .

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Here i have started the final grill sheel



the evolution with all the testpieces













Testing on the car for the first time



Later that year , the car is in my shop to build the rest of the front .



Adding a little joggle for the overlapping 3 other pieces.

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Finding the exact position for the grill shell was next upp , after a wile of testing , looking from different angles and so on . i moved the shell slightly backwards and tilted just a little bit more . From here i needed to find a tempoary way to mount the grillshell rigid to the chassi . Not shown.



Another test with the initially, and already modified, buck . It was close to what i had in mind and i wanted to build a more rigid buck anyway . That was the plan from the beginning .



Here i have start to build the new buck , i clamped 2 base pieces to the chassis and the other pieces where welded to the base . that worked well .







I made a lot of changes to the buck on the fly , that was quit a lot of work. Used tape to find the flow of body lines .









First paper template for the hood piece , made the hood and the 2 side pieces a little bit longer. Since, i was not sure, att that point of time about the design att the rear of the hood .

[Charlie Myres]

Looks really good!

Thank you for showing the process that you used,

Cheers Charlie

[Gojeep]

Great to see something evolving from scratch like that.

[schönheit der arbeit]

Made a pair of bead roller dies for the 34 Ford bodyline .





testpiece , just to prov if it works out to made the bead first and bend the hood afterwards .



the layout for the panel



beading the hood as flat piece , much easier to do it that way



than the panel was gradually bend in the english wheel using a polyurethan top wheel and full radius lower anvils . here i got help from a friend , since the hood is to big to handle for just one person .





cutting the hood to fit togehter with the grill shell



next upp were the 2 sidepanels , for the layout i used the metalstrip template that i made at the beginning. even if the design and size had changed quit a lot , i hade a good startingpoint . tried out some different designs for the suspension openings and worked out some minor interference problems with the steering system .



and one paper template for the left side done

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the 2 sidepanels where cuted out and i was leaving it just a little bit oversized at the front, to give me some wiggle room for the final panel fitmend



made the hood and the 2 sidepanels longer to give me some extra space for rear lines . i was not sure how they should look , and that way i could try out some differnent ideas . that has tacken some time .



mockupp wings



then i marked out holes for the rivits , working att the final panelfitment att the same time , the lines around the grill shell where challenging .

[dwmh]

Superb work Silvio. It looks great.

[schönheit der arbeit]

i drilled all these holes twice plus deburring from both sides .









then i added this little reverse lipp att the end of the hood , mostly hammer and dolly work



next upp where some bodylines , both to stiffing upp the sidepanels and to add some style . these side panels interfered with both of my beadrollers , but no problem . i hade already made attachments to use my beadroller dies in the english wheel . that works good . the top die is driven by a normal 3/8 ratched and the lower dies is mounted with bearings . by gradually raising and decreaseing the pressure between the dies i made the bead disappearing into the panel . after that i added a corner radius att the lower end , using rollover dies in the beadroller .