They don't make 'em like they used to. Thank goodness. Today's chassis are a world apart from the flexible flyers that the factories used to rivet together. Modern welding techniques, painstaking craftsmanship, and sturdy sheet and tubular steel all contribute to form a foundation for today's Deuce that's more solid than Henry could ever have imagined.
As it should be. Compare the hard, skinny tires produced in the '30s with contemporary radial gumballs. Or the output of an early flathead versus what even the tamest crate engine can generate. The performance parameters of today's rods put a huge amount of stress on a chassis and could quickly pretzel a 70-year-old frame.
Yet at the same time, a rod chassis has to retain some prewar-era characteristics, or those old-fashioned bodies (or reproductions of the same) won't bolt to them. A Deuce 'rail, no matter how high-tech its construction, still has to look like a Deuce 'rail, with its distinctive arched reveal in the frame's side.
How does the modern chassis builder juggle these needs? To find out, we spent several days at Total Cost Involved Engineering (TCI) watching a '32 frame go from raw steel to rolling chassis.
