Best Deck Lid
 

Working on 29 coupe. Deck Lid is a welded up mess and needs replaced. Plan to install as a trunk. Who sells the best repro decklid for fit, authenticity, etc.... Where is best place to buy truck mounting hardware. Thanks for all comments and help.

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

All new deck lids are made by Brookville Roadster, who has mad them for 30 years. Hinges ar made by three different companies.

Steve @ Bert's Model A Center
Modelastore.com

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

I found out a lot when I bought a repro for my car.

They are nice and quite usable, but here are the quick points. You can learn more by clicking the link to my website at the bottom.

Original hinges do not work on the the lids, they were built for the repro hinges. Repro hinges do not work on an original lids. This is a hard and fast rule. Violation of this will end up with a lot of work and cursing.

Repro hinges are smaller in every direction!!. This means you might have to make bigger holes in the side supports to get the lid to fit.

The big thing is to measure the distance between the hinge mount points and have them fit the repro hinges to match that distance. If that distance is not right you have to understand the repro hinges will not flex with a side load, they break.

The repro lid has a flat bottom. You will find cars with repro lids have chips on the top left and right corners of the lower rear panel. You need to sneek in a bit more clearance if you want to avoid this problem. It is worse with the repro lower panel as it is flat too.

It takes two to fit the lid. They come with the top and bottom panel loose and need 4 tack welds to make the shape that works for your car. Look at the original lid they did the same thing. You should find 4 welds.

You might have to relocate the latch. Mine cause the front edge to be low because of the placement of the latch. Also the latch collar must be flush with the top sheet metal.

As always, they work just you need to pay attention to detail if you want them to work better.

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

Kevin has well represented the facts of repo deck lids per my experiences too
I have resorted to fixing originals. I have also decided that 100% of lids come apart and are cleaned inside as well as out. You'd be surprised that great looking lids have pinholes lurking in the bottom ready to show up in a few months/years after resto
Yes taking one apart is an adventure of hard work. But there is a bright side other than cleaning. If converting to rumble it's then a breeze, dents are better fixed, warpage can be corrected and sealed inside which they were not at mfg

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

Try to find a good original. I've use the repops and there close but you'll find the crown through the center of the panel is to flat. Also the repop hinges are like Kevin says. I've put a couple of days work into making a new panel fit, align and gap up properly. I went from a new panel to an original on my car because I didn't like the fit.
If you shop around you can get a good original panel. Talk to Steve at Bert's. He'll fix you up right.
John Poole

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

I used repro parts to convert my rumble back to a trunk, using an original deck lid, and didn't encounter the problems Kevin describes regarding hinges, though I did keep and use the original hinge part in the lid itself. You can read how I did this in The Restorer, vol. 60 issue 5, Jan-Feb 2016.

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

Original hinges on an original lid will fit perfect!!

At one point I have a darn near perfect 28-29 lid. When I was doing my rumble lid stuff I tried the original hinges with the original trunk like (no screw holes). I was impressed that there was basically only one place the hinges fit and they did not even want to slide around, completely self locating. When I tried the repro hinges it was grossly apparent that the hinges did not fit in any direction!!!!
That is why I tell anyone who will listen, if you have an original Ford lid then only get original rumble hinges. It will save you more work then you can imagine!!

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

Kevin, I was a able to use the original part that was on the deck lid. But I used the repro part for the body. It had to go outside the raingutter, and it was tricky to install the lid, but I didn't have a complete hinge set for either side, so... a man does what he has to do. I used half original and half repro.

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

The development time and cost to make tooling is the same to make reproduction parts that don't fit as it would to make parts that are identical to the original.

Ford had many tools to make the same part over the time period the Model A was in production and parts from those different tools were expected to always fit. Why is it that companies supplying reproduction Model A parts have difficulty with manufacturing components that fit like the original?

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

The problem is with the cast triangle arms. The rest of the hardware is good.

To me, I could be wrong, it seems they did a direct casting of the original arms. So everything is smaller and the angle area where it mates to the lid is not shaped right.

As far as not fitting the width of the mount brackets. That may be due to my fitting in a cabriolet where the wood sills and other parts were not the best. I had to do my best in fitting. I know of 2 other cabriolet people that had the same experience. So I include that advice just to be safe. When I attempted to get the arm to move a bit it broke with almost no side force. You could see there was a pre existing crack in the metal due to the rust in part of it. I must say Brookville had excellent customer service. I bought the lid at hershey and they paid to ship it back and they sent me a new one with the proper spacing for my car.

Given how hard it is to find good lids the Brookvile option is welcome even with the issues you need to understand.

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

It sounds like you are describing rumble seat hinges here, not trunk hinges. Is that right?

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

Simple...it is because these "repro" companies do not want to take that extra step to make the repro product right the first time because it would cost them to much money to do so and then that repro part would be cost prohibitive!

At least that is what I was told once.

As Kevin pointed out the Brookville lid apparently does not conform to the curvature of the original lid...that really sucks that they can not do it right the first time.

But I degress...if it were not for these repro items, we would really be stuck!

Pluck

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

I have an original 28-29 trunk lid I would sell.

Re: Best Deck Lid
 

Might want to check this out:

Instructions For Converting a Rumble Seat to a Trunk in Model A Roadsters and Coupes

This Article shows how to convert a rumble seat to a trunk in a Model A Roadster or Coupe.
Part 1 Click Here

Part 2 Click Here

Part 3 Click Here


Pluck