Shaved Trunk Lid W/ An Old School Popper - 1938 Ford Convertible

hey guys Matt iron tra garage today we're working on the 38 convertible again and uh we are going to work on making this trunk open and shut and latch when we got the car um I had the original type cable pool that was kind of cobbled together and it had no catch on the bottom somebody had obviously done some body workor and and different things that are kind of a mess around the the the openings for the whole for the license play Mount and the handle and all that so today we're going to take care of putting an electric cind oid on there and uh and getting it to pop in the car with the button which will be pretty cool and getting it all the latch and then we're going to fill the holes in the deck lid and try and make everything as smooth as we can and see what surprises we find when we start sanding all that body filler off so let's let's get started all right so we'll show you guys what we're working on with this we think this thing being obviously an old hot Roder custom um it's had all kinds of lives there's a bunch of screws screw holes here where there was some sort of bracket or something boled there much like our uh trunk release kit we got our old Cal Custom kit here and has a solenoid so I have a feeling that there was a mounting plate or something that held an electric solenoid at some point and then later in its life this is my guess they changed to this cable here not sure but they have this bracket that they made that actually is attached okay and it does move the latch no problem but the slot this is so sloppy the problem is now that I put a catch in here um when you close the trunk lid and you try to open it there's so much slop and flex in the cable and that setup they have that it's not really releasing very easily and a lot of times I have to go into the square in here and open it up manually so we definitely want to get rid of that obviously it'll also be cleaner to be able to shave uh all these holes up here after we get the the uh popper working correctly so I'm going to probably just find a good way make a bracket or something that's a good solid way to mount this I'm not sure yet um and we'll get that mounted up in there but it's pretty simple on this car since they already made this piece I can kind of just go like that mount that up in there and uh then use a piece of cable to go from here to there and Bing Bang Boom it'll be ready to go and we'll see what problems we run into so [Music] a [Music] n [Music] all right so got the solenoid mounted up here in the deck lid I ended up uh you could see they had all kinds of different holes where there must have been I'm guessing another solenoid at some point but I opted to kind of put it at a good spot for this solenoid and this linkage we're going to try and reuse this piece of linkage here that is uh actually looks Factory so maybe it is a factory part I'm not familiar with 38 convertibles that that well um so I ended up using the uh Riv nuts or threaded inserts that you put in drill a hole put them in and then you uh use a tool to uh crimp them in there and that's a good secure mounting for that use qu 20 bolts should be plenty for what we're doing here so this solenoid has a hole drilled in it that you can put a cable through it unfortunately this old uh Cal Custom kit didn't come with a cable or any of the ferals to uh attach it this already has two holes drilled in it that we can put a cable in it so I have a piece of cable I just cut off an old throttle cable setup um that was just laying around and basically what we want to do is put this through this cable here if I can get it to go through there like that and we need to put some kind of feral or clamp on it there and then it can go through one of these holes and I should have enough extra that we can Loop this one as well like so um we can either Loop it or put a feral that'll just catch here and work um so that's basically what we're going for so that when we have this thing um all hooked up it'll have some sort of cable setup just trying to do one hand here and then when this pulls down it's going to pull all of this and then hopefully release it back so that's what we're going for so I need to make up some ferals or clamps um some of the old ones it would have just had a onetime use feral that you would Loop through and clamp it um the only problem I have with that not knowing how this is all going to work is if I clamp it and don't like it um then it's kind of onetime use obviously so I'm going to try and turn some uh little feral clamps up in the um in the wavee and that way it'll have a little set screw in it that you can run in and clamp down on the cable and if I don't like it I can adjust it and move it closer so a little extra work but it'll be make it nicer for adjusting all this stuff that it should uh work how I want so move over to the lathe get that all made up and uh we'll see we get this thing to start popping the trunk open oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] all right so I got that little piece I made which is something you could probably buy but I was being stubborn and wanted to make it myself so I made this little feral or whatever that we can clamp in and hold the cable so I got that all attached and then I quickly realized that these um trunk latches never had a spring on them because there used to be a handle that you turned and you open and shut it with the handle and it didn't really need a a uh actual Will Spring I don't believe at least it doesn't seem like there was one so I started looking around and I saw there was a little tiny hole right here drilled and then there is a second hole drilled in this piece of linkage here so I went through our carb spring return spring bin and found a spring that was almost perfect and it all fit and it works like really well so now we can work on getting some of the wiring loomed up so we're going to run a wire down through where the cable was through the car up front we Mount the button Steve's working on getting the fuse box mounted under the car so we can get some power uh locations to hook up switch power and uh then we can give this thing a try once we power it up and see if I have enough throw in the latch that's going to be the the question and that's why I made this feral so that if we don't if we need to wet more slack in or make the cable tighter we can just loosen the screw and do it and it's not like a Crim the one where we'd have to you know one shot and we'd wreck the crimp so that's all right hopefully we get this thing working surely [Music] he [Music] all right so uh we found a switch unfortunately the switch that came with the kit was kind of crappy and the threads got messed up so we went and our bin and got a vintage switch so we got it hidden up underneath of here it's basically just a starter button switch uh in the directions it doesn't say you need a fuse so um the switch that we put in initially must have been a positive ground cuz as soon as Steve connected the battery I heard the solenoid in the trunk here quick and then the fuse blow so we had a small F in so the interweb says what 35 or 40 that seems to be the consensus 35 to 40 so we just feel more comfortable having a fuse so we got to see but he's going to connect the battery hopefully this is a non this is a non-positive ground switch because we actually this one works the right way this one isn't backwards so we actually used our uh our meter here to check so we're going to give this a try so he's going to connect the battery push the button hopefully the solenoid works and we'll see over here the little latch go my spring setup must have worked because it did spring back so ready yep here it goes yeah baby wow that's aggressive try it one more time yep okay the fuse that time we need to adjust my cable because it's only moving a tiny tiny bit here so I don't think it's moving enough okay to probably get off of that it's hard to say but it is springing back nicely mhm um yeah I mean all this was working great EXC I think we just got to take some more slack out of my solenoid or out of my cable setup there so we can loosen that screw and then if we can get this to retract I mean it's it's pulling you know that much so if we can get the slack out of there I think it'll be pretty good but that's a good sign it didn't blow the fuse y so I just have the ca's kind of in there so we just got to take um just got to take that little bit of like that much slack out of it cuz it was only moving it maybe like that much so I'm afraid that's not yeah it's going to need a little more or is it my spring isn't point no the Spring's doing its job we're just not getting the throw yeah cuz that's all it was getting us so yeah cuz as you you can see the the cable pulled tight yeah we need to get rid of all that yeah okay so if you want to yep loosen that screw up all right hold on I pair of Flyers yeah I got one here you got it yep I got them I don't even know how I did that myself without there were Vice scripts involved I don't know how I held all these pieces and right if I can just get get it all right go ahead just get it broken free and then I'll going to get rid of the vice G so there you go y it's just pulling the latch so I got to get to right there if you can just snug it up so it doesn't there we go and then this I'm also glad that my little feral didn't slip no worked fine that was surprising there we go so now there almost it's definitely tighter yeah you can see the difference there all right here's your pliers back and we'll hit the button again see if we're getting better throw see if we get a better throw this time oh yeah nice much better excellent let's watch that again go ahead one more time oh that'll do it let's try it I think we're ready for the real thing we can still before I shave all of this we want to get everything working pretty good we can climb in through the seed if we had to um but so I think we're ready to drop this down and latch okay here latch now the seal that was the other thing you and I talked about if you have a proper Rubber seal on that actually acts as a Sprint sure you're Crush you crush it when you close it so that might be where we maybe we try that next cuz I think we have one M maybe we pull the old seal out and put a new one in and see if that's just enough cuz that I mean a good seal that's going to bump it up a bit absolutely so we are latched ready yep all right so no that won't okay so go ahead go ahead M might not be enough although probably going to have to pull the seat so we can see what's going on yeah get an ey I look go ahead and hit it again but I'm going to try and hold it in so it stays in all right let go that's not quite I can feel it it's right there yeah so it could be something with adjustment mhm so that was a ton SC almost well we'll see yeah we'll see all right good yep that's all the way in now right you can't push it in any further yeah you're right yep there we go actually what we need let me hit the button see what it's see what it's doing perfect ni bottoming out yep got this bottom so that's what you need to do is almost preload it a little bit okay we latched I we definitely going to need a seal or spring cuz it's going to Rattle Like Hell Without now you ready yep EXC was I filming that I hope so yes we were nice got the first time all right let's try one more time oh go ahead yeah so we just need a you need slight pressure yeah cuz it opens and shuts so fast but that works so I would say we have it literally sitting right there I can see it [Music] [Music] [Music] every a [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right so we got everything pretty much uh welded up in the back and one thing we found is that even just with closing the trunk a few handful of times to seal our brand new seal is already compressed enough that it's not really popping the trunk open when you hit the popper you have to actually kind of pull in the trunk a little bit so we want it to pop open just a little bit so an old school trick I had heard guys tell me that they did back in the day was use Flathead valve springs as a little spring behind the door behind the deck lid and because these things are meant to you know compress a ton of times and they're very strong um if we cut this to the right length with just a tiny bit of light pressure when you close the trunk it should just pop it open enough to get it off the latch and you can pick it up by hand so I crawled in the trunk measured I need roughly 2 in from the little slam panel area to where the deck wood is so I'm hoping that that'll work got a bunch of these spare Springs sitting all around so give one of these a try and hopefully uh this this will work after a little bit of adjustment [Music] [Music] holy moly give me the information all right took me all day to put a threaded insert yeah what's up can you lift this deck wood for me okay set it down slowly I want to I'm holding the spring and then give it a push [Music] okay now can another person hit the button and see if it'll yep pop it open give it another no let me push on it go ahead what the hell push on and see oh two much spring oh it was putting too much pressure I got to yeah take like half a leaf off right you got cuz the Spring's so strong mhm it if you have not enough I had it was actually perfect before I my first try I had it perfect yeah a damn Strong Spring try this again start climbing in and out of the truck okay to push push up and then push in yep good all right slowly ready give it a push okay ready that did it that was perfect hey yeah it barely needs any pressure yeah and then we can tune it with a washer if we want a little more that's that's the Magic Spring don't look at it don't breathe on it yep nope NOP no got it to go all the way down go up there we go nope it's still not in it's got to go all the way down there you go I had it the first time there we go good job that or are they different like the series it might be I have to take a T of photos and I'll ask again for Dimensions oh give Dimensions he said it would have fit his grill but there was too much V in it cuz 32 still have headlight bars right start okay only thing we'll want to do on this eventually is put Loctite on the on the bolt yeah oh yeah put it on the bottom like that I can really crank it tight mhm there you go sweet so the only thing I may do eventually is put a like bike with we were talking about like a piece of rubber or something to dress that raw edge up or make a little rubber cap that fits over or something and yep so fingers crossed this thing will work okay latched give it a push fingers crossed yes look like it yeah heck yeah worked perfect how was it that was the ticket yep awesome yeah that was perfect just just enough to grab your finger there nice let kill her yeah I just put some kind of cap on there I mhm I don't know what but we'll find something that y maybe look at Hood latches or something and there's you know yeah something for hood latch spring all right so after a little bit of work got the valve spring set up all working this was just something that I had even recently talking some older friends somebody had mentioned that when they would shave the doors on a old custom or hot rod or whatever they would use valve springs in the door uh jams to pop the doors open I used to hear and it came out pretty nice now the thing that's a little difficult with this is the spring has to be because a valve spring is so strong it has to be just barely compressing the spring because if you make it too tight the uh solenoid is not strong enough to slip past the catch and I had that problem initially so I just very carefully took like half of a of a coil off at a time till I got it to where it works very well as it does I titig welded that little washer on the bottom when I first started uh I hooked it all up and bolted a put a bolt right down the center went to close the latch and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working and uh then I realized that the bolt was holding it up so we had to do the washer thing so now it works good so hopefully if the Gremlins don't fight us my beautiful assistant in the car will uh oh there we go now we're latched give it a try all right here we go yes nice did a pop yeah excellent good ready to put our groceries in so so that is a huge hurdle the deckwood still has a lot of winess where they had done the brazing and welding and leading and all kinds of Smashing and hammering all kinds of stuff there's some W there I can't get to it with the current inner structure of the deck lid so probably what I'm going to try and do is use a stud gun or something and uh stud weld or maybe I might try some PDR uh type glue and pull some of the dents out and just get the crazy lows out of there it's probably still going to be a little wavy but if we just get it pulled up a little bit but that again is when we get closer to making this car nice enough to paint yes someday we plan to paint this car um we will address that but for now we're just trying to get all of the doors to open and latch and the hood to open and latch now the trunk opens and latches we have bumpers and tail lights and we're starting wiring it's getting closer every day to being an actual Road worthy car which is pretty crazy so that's all we have for this one hopefully this is helpful if you're looking to do a similar uh type setup this is just the way that we did it doesn't mean it's the best way or the smoothest way I think it is fairly nostalgic in the way that we did it that it would look like something that somebody could have done when this car was built and that's the whole goal with everything we do on this channel so thank you guys for following appreciate it [Music]

Channel: IronTrap Garage

Views: 16,830

Keywords: irontrap, iron trap, iron trap garage, irontrap garage, matt murray, hot rod, street rod, rat rod, traditional hot rod, barn find, barn find hunters, kustom, trog, the race of gentleman, vlog, the hamb, jalopy journal, model a, model t, roadster, coupe, picking, american pickers, early ford, ford

Id: 80i2E7r7k-E

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024