1915 Firewall

[Vrayfoster]

I have a 1915 Touring car and the firewall is cracked. I removed it and bought some Baltic Birch plywood to make a new one since I pulled my engine after 20 years of running and not surprising, It needs new bearings. I have three 1915 firewalls so it would seem easy to make a new one. Unfortunately none are original and most of the holes are in slightly different locations. Just enough to make one wonder which holes are correct. So, perchance does anyone have a drawing with the dimensions of a 1915 firewall? If so, I would appreciate a copy of it.

[Oldav8tor]

John Regan is the expert when it comes to firewalls. You might ask him what's available as far as reference material. You can find him with a member search.

[Susanne]

You can get away with a modern marine-grade birch... since it's painted black you can get away with some modern wood, BUT you have to remember NO BOAT PATCHES. Otherwise you failed the "looks original" test.

[pre15dale]

I have a 15 hood former with the wood firewall in it. The firewall looks very good with no extra holes however it is a replacement as it is stamped "Syverson cabinet co" I don't know how accurately they made body parts. Perhaps some one else can chime in with their experience with Syverson. Anyway if you don't get the information you need I could make a drawing with the placement of the holes

[Allan]

If you use new plywood to make a replacement firewall, there is a chance that it will need a little relief at the back side to accommodate the rolled rear edge of the hood former. 3/4" plywood may be just a little too thick to comfortably fit the former, unless work is done to allow the back edge to sit down over the firewall. This work is not seen when the firewall is fitted to the cowl.

Hope this helps.
Allan from down uder.

[Vrayfoster]

I talked at length with John Regan as he has a lot of good information to share! It turns out that the 15 firewall is a difficult item to correctly make. I certainly don't have the specialized tooling to cut in the correct radius to fit the metal former. Then I discovered that the holes I thought were out of alignment was due to the way Ford made the original parts out of alignment. So I'm contemplating what to do next. Anyway, thank you John for all the information.

[NealW]

So I'm contemplating what to do next.

Victor,

Last year when I was restoring our 15 runabout, I had a new firewall from Snyders. It was nicely made, but it was a little thick to slide into the cowl part. I just sanded a slight taper into the firewall before painting it, and it then fit well into the part. You cannot see the added taper at all.

Neal

[Ray Syverson]

I was making firewalls for some of the parts suppliers up until 2016. The 1915-16 firewall required a couple of separate router passes with different bits to get the correct edge shape so it would fit into the hood former properly. The other issue was the thickness. They had to be 11/16 inches thick. I found that baltic birch could often be found at close to 11/16" thick, even though it was marked as 3/4" or 18mm. I was able to surface sand a tiny bit off to get it to almost 11/16" exactly. The baltic birch made a very tough strong firewall. I remember trying my best to position any football patches, if there were any, on the surfaces where they would be hidden.

[Vrayfoster]

I have a piece of Russian Birch Plywood (AKA Baltic Birch), 3/4 nominal thickness and 24"x30". It is actually 0.703" thick and it is consistent at several locations. The max thickness per Ford drawings was 0.697" as I discovered so mine is close as is. I doubt that I will sand it thinner as I would most likely put deep valleys and high ridges in the otherwise nearly flat wood. In all this process trying to make up a 15 firewall I discovered the front cross member splayed out a bit and I corrected that. The spreading of the cross member affects the firewall mounts which in turn will put the holes in the firewall out of alignment. It truly is a trial and error fit up. The only "foot ball" patch on the "B" side of the plywood and it will be in the cut out section. Locating the position of the steering column hole is at best a guess as the non original firewalls I have are all located in slightly different positions. If I have it correct, the carburetor needle valve rod hole is cut at 22 degrees. I haven't a clue where that hole really goes as the firewalls I have are different by almost 1". I think I have all the other holes located in the correct positions, I hope. A lot of checking will be done before cutting the wood. What I thought was a simple job has turned out to be a lot of tinkering, measuring, marking, then correcting the marks.

[Piewagon]

I have all of the drawings and tooling to make a 1915 dash. I even had a custom router bit made to put the correct edge on the outer perimeter of the dash but my bigger problem is that I really don't want to ship them since I have had terrible "luck" getting UPS or FEDEX to haul it from St. Charles, IL to various places far away (like California). They arrive broken and even though I insured it UPS won't pay off on the claim. They think it is a reproduction item that I am trying to sell as authentic and rip them off. My answer to them is just don't break it and you get to keep 100% of the insurance premium. They have no conditions that they talk about before you ship it but after shipping and insuring it and then having it fall off one of their conveyors and get whacked on a corner and broken.....well then it becomes a case of attempted fraud on my part or so they imply. I have delivered dashes to Hershey myself and brought them to Chicasha. If anybody out there can help by playing mule I am going to the winter tour in Florida and could hand a finished dash to someone there if the rest of the trip can be made in a reasonable time frame which is unknown to me at this time Anybody from California going to Florida Winter tour? Anybody traveling through Northern IL on their way West? I know that a lot of us are not getting out and about these days.