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You don't have to go that far. There's one in the Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

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The gas tank is back where it belongs. I'm really lucky to have the brackets that attaches to the frame and the tank. Whoever moved the tank to the top... fastened them both to one place on the frame.

I will have to move the filler neck after I measure up the speedster next week ☺

I am also using an updated gauge sender unit. This will require cutting new holes

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The frame for the body is welded up and ground smooth. There was a lot of welding on the inside radius of the curves. This tends to shrink the metal. Next I'll heat the bends up with a oxygen acetylene torch and shape it back to position.

The original wood framework was bolted down with carriage bolts. I have made this frame so it fastens down with carriage bolts that pass through the box tube and the top of the frame. I have reinforced the box tube with a pipe with an ID of about 7/16". I shaped one end of the pipe square with a hammer to engage the head of the carriage bolt.

Slowly but surely.....

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Using a closed car frame for an open car, will you have to beef up the frame for body flexing?

Will you have something between the frame and the body?
Some kind of rubber or steel body mounts?

The 1955 convertibles had a steel shim, all of the other closed cars used a rubber with a steel core. The convertible also had extra bracing on the frame, and a thick inner rocker on the steel body.

I am not planning on strengthening the frame. It seems like the 1930 frame is very solid plus I'm building the separate body frame shown above. The most likely place to see flex is in the door opening. So I may use a trick that muscle car convertibles used and put a hard rubber wedge at the top of the jams. (Only if flex is observed). I suppose I could box the frame rails to eliminate any flex also.

All along the top of the frame and bottom of the body frame I will sandwich in a strip of rubber, felt or leather. this should eliminate squeaking. Six bolts will fasten the frames together.

This brings up a question that someone may be able to answer...

Was 1930 open car frames different than closed car frames? Truck frames?

Just finished taking pictures and getting measurements of the 1930 Packard boat tail speedster at the Cussler Museum in Colorado. Kieth the Curator and resident mechanic was awesome and very happy to help me gather the information I needed for this project.

I will post pictures and details as I have time

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I'm back home freshly energized from the trip to get close to the boat tail speedster at the Cussler Museum and the car featured in one of Clive Cussler's novels.

I got to measure and document all of the features I couldn't see in pictures I have found on the internet. Some of these revealing pictures are below.

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Previously I thought that I would have to move the filler neck on the gas tank to make it right for the speedster. As it turns out the original position is the same as I measured last week! Cross that job off the list!

I do like the design and looks of the hinged gas cap that is on my tank (and I already have it). The gas caps on all of the boat tail speedsters I have found pictures of has a more traditional removable cap. This works better for removing the gas tank as with the cap removed the tank would drop out. The hinged cap would require a large unsightly hole.

So in order to use the original gas cap I have cut the neck and will use a hose to extend it and make it possible to remove from the top.

I will post pictures or a link to my YouTube for details when I make progress on this.

The Speedster cap is also quite a bit larger than the one you have.

Yes it is... I would have liked to see below the skin and above the tank to understand how it all assembles. At this point I'm going to execute my plan due to time and cost. Maybe at a later date I'll do a project and update the gas cap to more resemble the original.