35 H8 roadster project

bob ward

Following ra4jumb’s lead with his thread on his 34 build I thought I might do something similar. This is an Australian bodied car, possibly by Ruskin, its a 2 seater plus dickey seat with twin sidemounts, it has a fold down windscreen and sidecurtains.
I’m fortunate that a lot of the hard to find bits have come with the car. There is a mint instrument panel, good tail light housings, sidemount covers, front horns, good steering wheel etc.
Mechanical plans for the car include stepdown brakes, a 5 speed gearbox and a better ratio rear end, ideally I’d like the engine to be doing around 2000RPM at 60mph.

The first photo show the H8 arriving, it almost looks like a driver but alas its just been cobbled together for transport purposes. The next 5 photos are what it all looks like now, the shell, a shelf full of fenders etc, the engine, the chassis.

Browniepetersen

Bob, Nice looking project. Wish I could find them that looked that good......

RL Chilton

Great looking project, Bob. It will be fun to see this one come together. Do you have the top irons for the car?

Jon B

Bob, I'm curious: do all the Ruskin bodies have wood framing under the sheet metal? I am thinking especially of the 'slopers' ('broughams' to us Yanks) and utes. And the roadsters such as you have. I would assume that wooden framing would present a challenge to restoration.

StillOutThere

Jon, I can assure you the '34 Terraplane tourer (US phaeton) by Ruskins was a fully wood framed body throughout doors and rear panels. I brought the car back from Melbourne, sold to Jim Fritts, restored by Chris Davis, today owned by Glen Reeves. The hood, grille shell, fenders and running boards were US steel stampings. I honestly never made up my mind whether the cowl was an "adapted" US made part or exactly what happened there. The windshield glass frame and door hinges were brass by Ruskins.

Browniepetersen

Thought I would post a photo of the wood under the skin of my 1936 Hudson built by Coachcraft in England (avatar.) The firewall was plywood with aluminum hammered on the face. The A pillar has a bit of wood framing right in front of the windshield to support the metal between the A pillar and the hood. I would expect that Ruskins did much the same? The plywood firewall and a long side support panel of plywood along the bottom of the floor was dry-rotted away on my car. All new wood was the challenging part of this build.

essexcoupe3131

Nice project,
if you have all the patterns for the wood work, this should not be a drama at all
if you made some patterns out of fibre board (custom wood in our terms)
all you need is a cabinetmaker with a spindle moulder to copy them off
If I was over there could have helped you out, as I am cabinetmaker by trade
I used teak for all my timber work, its expensive compared to Ash but will never rot again
preserved for ever

Mike

RL Chilton

Mike-
You must have found a deal on Teak. Last time I made something for a customer out of teak, I paid $45.00US BF. It's outrageously expensive, almost to the point of prohibitive.

StillOutThere

Australia is loaded with hardwoods. That why the Sydney Opera House is such an awesome visit. One hall is totally hardwood, no nails, screws or other metal surfaces.

bob ward

@brownie, I’m the fortunate recipient of the hard work and $$ of others. Bill Huntley, a Victorian HET member and no longer with us rescued the car 20 to 30 years ago and did a lot of the rust repairs. The shell must have looked horrific when Bill first started work on it, the bottom 6” to 12” right around the shell has been replaced with new metal. All but the top 3” of one of the doors is new.

@russell, top irons are there. There is an interesting story that the top irons were missing when the car was first rescued and then they were found by one of those lucky flukes several years later and a few hundred miles from the car’s original location.

@jon, I’m not an expert on Ruskin bodies but around the mid 30’s they stopped using timber frames. 37 was all steel, 36 I don’t know, this 35 is timbered and all the timber has been replaced. Making a timber frame and fitting metal to it is one thing, refitting timber to a metal shell is I imagine a much trickier process.

essexcoupe3131

Russel, had to put the acid on may supplier and turned up free with a load of other wood
its $87.50 per meter here for 8" x 2" rough sawn, at least with this timber it is always over size dry, not shrunk down from its wet size cut and shrinks 1/4 to 1/2 " in width, which happens all the time with Oak

bob ward

One of the first things I looked at after I had a bare chassis was the condition of the leaf spring mounting points. Some threads were very worn or non-existent so those brackets had to come off for thread repairs. The plan was to build up the worn thread with the MIG and rethread the brackets. The tricky part of all this is figuring how to hold them in the lathe for the turning and rethreading operations.

The first 2 photos are the brackets I'm referring to, the 3rd photo is while I'm messing round setting up the bracket for repair shows just how badly the threads have worn. The 4th photo is of a built up pin prior to turning and rethreading. I can't find the photos of the nice shiny new threads right now.

bob ward

The crank handle hole in the front cross member had become very misshapen and needed to be made to look a lot neater than it was, ra4jumb was kind enough to provide the dimensions for the replacement hole. Curiously the grille seems to have escaped crank handle damage.

[Deleted User]

Bob Wow that looks really good, I am envious of what you are starting with. Mark

bent metal

That's interesting with the crank hole missing on the grill. It was an option to get a crank hole in your grill, or not, up till '42.

[Deleted User]

Looking good!
If you find a grill with a crank hole I will buy that one off you. I didn't realize they came both ways.