Graham build

[rex1927]

Wow! Thats the way to get all the rust out.Cool

[BillM]

Here are some updates - after the chop and metal repairs, I had to build a roof. Turns out that I couldn't find any donor metal anywhere. The Graham is a very wide car, and the way the roof was originally constructed - wood right out to the top of the doors - nothing I could find was going to work. I had to buy a sheet of HR plain, and start from scratch. As you can see from the pic's here, I had a few moments of thinking that it was never going to work......

[Oldrodder43]

Great looking top! I can see from here that it was a LOT of work. I have to do almost the exact same thing to the roof of my '29 Essex Coupe! Darn discouraging to me. Got a detail pic of the roof ribs and how you made them? perley

[BillM]

Thanks for appreciating how much work the roof was Perley! Unfortunately, I don't have any better pictures of the roof ribs. I made them out of 1/2" X 1" tube. I ran a couple along the length of the car first - I shaped them to the curve of the car, then welded them in along the top of the sheet metal. To make the ribs, I bent the ends around a propane bottle, and cut them off to the height and length that I needed - mimicing the curve in what there was of the original sheet metal roof. I made them progressively shorter and flatter as I worked toward the front of the car. For the roof metal, I bent a 4" pipe to the same curve as the shape of the car, and tried to wrap the sheet metal over that. As you can see, I ended up with a couple of really bad "pleats". I stretched the pleats using a dead blow hammer and a bag of sawdust, until I had something close. Once it was on the car, I did have to make about 4 relief cuts in either side, and it turned out ok. It's a little flatter than I would have liked, but I think it will look ok. I put some really dense 3/8" foam on the ribs before I installed the sheet metal, in order to prevent any welding, or squeaks. I hope this all makes sense to you. If not, PM me and I'll try to explain it better....

[Oldrodder43]

Yes, I can follow that explanation BillM. The Essex is very similar to your Graham. I'll mull that over some, still got some time before I need to do that. I did ok on the structure of the frame and such, but the darn body work is getting me! I know it looks simple from watching videos and that, but just doesn't work as easy as it looks---
Thanks for the description of what you did, and I've enjoyed watching you build. Perley

[BillM]

Here's a couple more of the roof skin that I just found.....

[BillM]

Here are some pictures of the frame....

[BillM]

Found some more frame construction pictures........I need to organize these a bit......

[Sam_Fear]

Impressed with the roof - looks very good.

[BillM]

This pretty well brings this thread up to date with where I am....installing the floors. After fitting the floors, I stood the body on end, on the firewall obviously! This made finishing the floors a hell of a lot easier....