More decisions

  May/June 2010 Decision time. The front suspension needs work. A quick check indicates that at the very least, it will need new kingpins. But do I repair it, or replace it with a different style? It's no secret that I love cruising message boards. I love to see what other people are doing, and learning whatever I can from it.

  Reading what other people have done, and what they think of it is a great way to learn, but when it comes to the front suspension on a 1949-52 Chevrolet, it gets to be a mess fairly quickly. There are numerous options, and everyone thinks that the way they did it is best, and all other ways are terrible.

  Some of the options, and the plusses and minuses of them are:

  Rebuilding the stock suspension: Good because everything fits already. No engineering involved. It's useable if you want to use airbags later. Disc brakes are also an option. This same suspension design was was used on Corvettes from 1953 to 1962. Negative because it's an old design, parts can be difficult to find, and if you want to add power steering, the comnponents to do it are extremely hard to find and expensive.

Does THIS look like something I want the suspension from?

  Mustang II: Positives are that it is a newer design, power steering is very easy and relatively cheap, and very easy air bags if you want. Negatives are the high price of the kit, You have to be careful who you get your kit from (some of the kits are poorly engineered and downright dangerous), The stigma of knowing that your front suspension is actually the same suspension that was originally designed for the Ford Pinto.

Yummy!

  Jaguar: Positives are that it is actually darned near a bolt in, easy power steering, and the suspensions aren't too hard to find in a boneyard. Negatives are that finding replacement parts can be difficult and pricey.

  Firebird/Camaro: Positives are that parts are cheap and easy to find, and no other direction makes V8 installation easier. The negatives are that you have to stub the whole frame- you actually replace the frame from the firewall forward with the frame from the donor car. When you do that, you're then faced with the fun of trying to bolt your old sheetmetal and radiator to a completely different frame. Something else that I see as a negative is that you lose the underfloor mounted master cylinder, and the old style "stab pedals" for the brake and clutch, as well as the cool oldskool hand operated parking brake on the dash.

  So, I weighed all of these thoughts against what I want to do with the car. I will almost certainly upgrade to disc brakes in the front at a later date. I may want to use airbags at a later date, and I at least want to lower the front a bit for now. I'm not 100% decided on what engine I want to use, but I know I don't want to go with the one that's in it already. Power steering isn't a hot button for me- if manual steering is in good shape, it's fine, and I'm not going to have steering that isn't in good shape.

  The winner, after much thought, is the stock suspension, with any and all needed repairs made. There's nothing more traditional than that. And, if I'm at a car show, and some jackweed starts asking "did you use the Mustang II or Jaguar front suspension?" I'll just tell him I used a Corvette front end.

  Engine. Wow, lots of options, here. Of course, I could put ANYTHING in it, but, since I'm building this as a traditional kustom, there are a few standouts. The ones that are tickling my brain as of May and June are:

Buick Nailhead

348 Chevy

Olds Rocket

Caddy 390

3rd generation Chevy 6 cylinder

2nd generation Chevy 6 cylinder

283 or 327 Chevy in traditional dress

Why an engine change? The 216 6 cylinder in the car runs pretty decently, why would I switch to a newer 6 cylinder when the old one runs well? The answer is easy. The first generation Chevy 6 cylinder engines were designed, built and used in a totally different era. Keep in mind, that when my car was made, our interstate system was still a dream. Sustained high speed vehicle operation just wasn't happening. The oiling system in my engine is what is known as a partial pressure system. There is an oil pump, and it pumps oil to the top of the engine, but the bottom end is lubricated by a dipper on the crankshaft that splashes oil on the moving parts down low. This was fine in its' day, but I'm going to want to get my car out on the highway. The shows I want to go to do NOT welcome cars on trailers. You gotta drive 'em in. So, I want an engine that can handle 60-70 mph easily, and the 216 isn't going to fill that bill.

  In fact, the entire driveline will have to go. Not just the engine, but the transmission and rear axle. Again, these parts are victims of being designed for a different era. The car has a closed driveline (torque tube) with a very low rear axle ratio (4.11:1)

  A 4.11 rear is great for the dragstrip, but with stock sized tires, going 70 mph calculates out to an engine speed of about 3400 rpm! This car is going to be a kustom. A true leadsled. It's going to be a cruiser, not a racer. A lover, not a fighter. Changing gears in the rear is an option, but the torque tube rear is notoroiusly weak, and more difficult to work on than newer rears. The transmission is fine, but to mate it to a newer engine, and also to the different style rear axle would require a lot of engineering and specialized custom parts. It's just not practical in any sense of the word. So, it will be getting a different engine, transmission and rear end, but what exactly it will get remains to be decided.

Phase two, and a lesson in old car parts

  April, 2010. When you're working on an old beast like this, it's a lot different than a newer car. If you need a door or fender for an S10 truck, you'll have several to choose from at the scrapyards in any decent sized city. You'll also probably still be able to get new ones.

  If you're working on something sixty years old, things are a bit harder to find. You quickly learn to keep a list (either on paper, or in your head) of things you know you're going to need at some point. And whenever you find any of these parts in any kind of usable condition for a reasonable price, even if you won't need it for months, you buy it when you find it.

  The week after we got the car, we decided to head to Logansport, IN- The 51 chick's hometown. There is a junkyard in town that keeps a lot of old stuff. Of course, everything is relative. Many people think a 1999 vehicle is old. When I say old, I mean 1965 and older.

  Heading up 31 on the North side of Indy, we came upon a couple of junkyards that have newer cars. As we approached, Lori asked if I wanted to stop. I told her "No- they won't have anything old there." by this time, we were passing the front gate, and she asked "Oh yeah- what's that?" I turned to look, and sitting right nbext to the front gate was the unmistakable nose of a 1950 Chevy, with a 1950 Buick next to it. We quickly turned around to check them out. The Chevy was a four door, so no use for the door, but the front fender was in usable condition. Not perfect, but very repairable. I stopped and asked if they were selling parts off of the car, and how much for the fender. Decent price, so I went back the next day and got it. The junkyard in Logansport had a lot of neat stuff to look through, but nothing for me.

  My nephew Justin (part of the extended crew) came to check out my new toy, and was both impressed and intimidated by it. I say intimidated because he has lots of skills, but sometimes does not have near the self-confidence that his skills and abilities warrant. His comment: "I wouldn't know where to start- it needs one of everything."

He shot a quick video of the old 216 firing up and idling. Not bad, but needs tuned.

  Time to address a serious issue. I cannot build this car in the driveway.

So, I took a Saturday in mid-April, and cleaned and reorganized the garage. The Fairlane was pushed out of it's cocoon of the past 12 years, and all of the bullshit in the garage was tightly consolidated to one side. Everything in a garage falls into one of five categories: it is a project, it is a tool, it is a part, it is raw material, or it is bullshit. 51 chick's book collection is very cool. I'm glad she has it. But in a garage, it is bullshit. Once the BS was consolidated to one side, I was able to reorganize the tools in such a way to leave a nice work space for the car. So, in it went, and phase two of the build started.

  First, I got it's butt up in the air, and started on the rear brakes. The odometer on the car shows 97, 000 miles, but who knows how many times it's been around? When I took the rear wheels off, I found something VERY interesting.

  That small clip you see on the wheel stud is a clip used on the assembly line. They put the clips on to keep the brake drums from faling off as it moves along the line. Someone may very well have taken them off to do a brake job, and put them back on afterward, but I've never known anyone to do this. These things may mean that the car has never had the rear brakes worked on, and the last time the brake drums were off, Harry Truman was president, and the car was on the assembly line in Flint!

  The rear brakes were a mess. The axle seals had gone bad, and everything inside had a nice sticky coating of gear lub on them. So, I started with new seals, then new shoes and rebuilt the wheel cylinders. The steel brake lines weren't leaking, but, at 60 years old, I wasn't going to trust them. All steel lines were replaced up to the passenger's door (I'll get the rest when I do the front brakes), and the rubber hose at the rear axle was replaced, too. Once removed, it was easy to see that every one of the steel lines was very corroded, and would have been a problem fairly soon.

  While I was loosening one of the brake lines, I lightly bumped the fuel line with my wrench, and it started leaking gas, so I replaced the entire fuel line while I had the back end in the air.

  On the last Wednesday in April, some inspiration pulled into the driveway!



 

My bud Tim was getting married that Saturday, and planned on using his '59 Chevy that we restored years ago as a getaway vehicle. But, the wipers weren't working, and the forecast called for a chance of rain, so he and his son Jacob came up so we could work on it. And of course, I showed them the new project. With an inbtensely rusty old Chevy in the garage, it was nice to see a pretty one that was rusty when we got a hold of it. I CAN do this sort of thing!

Driveway driver

      The first time I put a wrench to it. As bad as the electrical is, I don't DARE leave the battery connected!

  March 27th, 2010. This car stinks. I don't mean it's a bad car, or in bad condition, I mean it smells, and not good. Very musty/mildewy in the interior. That can't stand, as my sister will want to come look at it, and she has a deathly allergy to mold.

  Fortunately, the mold and most of the stench was emanating from the pimpmobile red velour interior that the Jedi car mensa who "fixed it up" before had stapled to the original seats.

                   OK, so the material choice was nasty. At least he did a shitty job of installing it!

  Once all of that crap was ripped out (yeah, that felt gooooood) and bagged up for the trash, it started smelling better almost instantly. I rolled down the windows to air it out and pulled out the seats to bake in the sun. I'm sure the dead mouse under the back seat wasn't helping the bouquet of the car, either.

  While that was going on, it was time to deal with the Autozone flame job. Did I mention that the guy who worked on this car before was a complete and total fuckstick?

  Actually getting to to driveway driver status was fairly straightforward. The sticking brake and clutch pedals were solved with new return springs and copious amounts of WD40. The charging system wasn't working properly either. I mmentioned that the electrical on the car is a nightmare. Admiral Fuckstick, at some point, decided to convert the car from 6 volt to 12 volt system, which was a good idea, but, as usual, his execution sucked donkey balls. He'd added a 12 volt alternator, and by the time I got the car, the alternator was bad. I replaced it, but there are more issues, and it still doesn't charge right. I'll completely rewire the car during operation roadworthy, so I'll let  the charging system slide for now. And, for what it's worth, Dennis (the guy I bought the car from) was NOT the one who perpetrated the "heinous fuckery most foul" on the car. Dennis wanted to restore it to "as new" condition.

Gouged up the paint while scraping them off, and it still is a huge improvement. Besides, the paint is oxidized, and a bad color for the car, anyway.

                                 looking better already, and I haven't owned it for 24 hours, yet!

Now what?

  March 26th, 2010- OK, so now I'm officially The 51 Guy. The rollback pulled away, and I'm left with a really forlorn '51 Chevy. I've got some good tools, enough know-how to muck my way through most of it, plenty of ambition, and a good crew. Time to pull it back behind the house (there isn't room for ANYTHING in the garage), get some pictures, and sit in it and make "vroom-vroom" noises, while figuring out just where the hell to start.

  While we're at it, let's meet the immediate crew. Lori and Leigha, the 51 chick and the 51 kid:

  Brillo, Shop dog #1:

  Trixie, Shop dog #2

OK- the driveline is good, so let's learn from a past mistake, shall we? In 1990, Tim, my good bud since we were 5 years old was given a 1959 Chevrolet by his uncle. The car ran good, but was rusty. We instantly tore into repairing the body. A couple of years later, when we had  all the sheetmetal off of the front of the car, and the quarter panels were cut off, I looked up at him and said "You know, if we'd been smarter, we'd have drove this thing around for a few months before we started on the body. Just had some ratty old car cruising time."

  So, with my Chevy, I decided to go that route: get it roadworthy, and drive the girls around in it for a few months before tearing into the body, even though that is exactly what I want most to do. When I get hard and heavy into the bodywork, things are going to look very grim, and they're going to look that way for a while. It will be good for the girls if they have some good memories of the car during those times when it's going to look like it will never be a complete car again.

  Let's have a look at what we have to start with.

Doesn't look too bad from this side.

From this side, you can see that the fender and door aren't happy. and aren't those Autozone flames just the shit?

  First, we'll get it to "driveway driver" status- where it is relatively easy to move around the driveway. Then, we'll get it roadworthy and cruise it a bit. After that, we'll worry about getting a more suitable (yet still traditional) drveline in it, body repairs, body restyling, and interior.

The find

  OK, so I've got some cash, and I've got to find a project car. Actually, I already HAD a project car at that time, but the car in question is a 1968 Fairlane. It's a great project, and a cool car. Back in the 1990's, it was my daily driver, and it was a million miles from being a show car, but it shined up decently, and got attention. But, my tastes have changed. I really love traditionally styled kustoms and hot rods, and something from the musclecar era just isn't going to trip my trigger anymore.

  So, I began searching for something older. I've always loved the 49-51 Mercury, but they are one of the most desired cars from their era, so not only are prices higher on these, they're harder to find, and at the shows I like best, there are always several of them. So, you have to do something really odd or spectacular to get them to stand out.

  My search was broad, to say the least. My criteria were: It had to have been manufactured between 1909 and 1962. It had to be able to seat at least three people (my girls worked to push me down this road, anything that we couldn't all ride in was unacceptable). It also had to "speak to me," as it were. I had to be able to have a vision for it from the first look. That vision would almost certainly change during the build process, but the initial vision would let me know that this was the car for me.

  So, I begn searching local classifieds, classifieds on the Hokey Ass Message Board (HAMB is a huge resource- more about it later), Flakelist (Craigslist) and eBay. Within a couple of days, I was coming across cars with a LOT of potential:

  A 1949 Olds torpedoback in Chicago that sold the day before I inquired about it.

  A SWEET 1949 Lincoln 4 door, but it was in Oregon, and would have cost an additional thousand dollars just to get it here.

  A decent 1951 Ford 4 door (easy conversion to a 2 door) in Cincinnatti that tickled my brain continuously until I went a different direction.

  A pair of '49 Chevy 2 doors (one to build, one for parts) in Southern Indiana. I dismissed them because of not wanting my neighbors to have to look at a semi-stripped car in my driveway for months.

  An interesting 1941 Chevrolet that I was trying to get used to the profile of.

  A 1940 Ford 2 door sedan that was REALLY rough.

  And on eBay, there was an interesting 1951 Chevrolet 2 door. I didn't put much hope in finding a car on eBay, because it would likely be so far away that transportation costs would make the buy-in price higher than I wanted to pay. But, this '51 was in Indianapolis, had an opening bid set at $1500, and had no bids. It looked pretty workable, so I contacted the seller about coming to take a look at it. On Friday, March 19th, after Lori got off work, I asked her if she wanted to go for a drive and get some coffee (sucker offer). I also told her I wanted to show her something. We went out, and when we pulled in the drive, she oohed a bit at the faded maroon beast.

  The father of the seller came out (it was his house) and began showing us the car. It was plenty rusty (well, DUH- it IS a Chevrolet!), and someone with no business working on cars had perpetrated quite a bit of nasty fuckery on it. But, it had potential. Lots of it. He fired it up, and it didn't run perfectly, but it didn't run badly, either. It wasn't anything that would be safe on the road as it was, but it did have a functional driveline. Lots of rust underneath, clearly a buttload of bondo, wheels that... well, let's just say that someone apparently went shopping for wheels with the intention of getting the set that was most wrong for that kind of car. At some point, the driver's side front wheel had actually come off when the car was in motion, which tore the hell out of the bondoed to the hilt fender and door. I like to think that the car knew the wheels were ghastly, and was wanting to get rid of them. We thanked Mr Clark,and indicated that we were still quite interested in the car.

  The auction was due to end Sunday or Monday night. I contacted the seller after we'd viewed the car, and asked him to e-mail me outside of eBay. In our conversations off of eBay, I told him that I was still interested in the car. I told him that I would NOT be the first bidder on the car. I told him that if the car got no bids, he should e-mail me, and I'd make him a fair offer for the car on a private sale. I made sure to tell him that I would NOT be lowballing him, and if the car got a bid, then ignore the e-mail- I'd be in the same boat as everyone else.

  The car got no bids. The seller e-mailed me a couple of days later, and asked what my offer was. I told him that if I had bid on the car, and nobody else had, I would have paid $1500, and eBay and Paypal would have taken 300 of that, which would have left him with 1200. I offered to split the difference with him. I'd pay 150 less, he'd get 150 more. He agreed. We would meet on Friday the 26th, we would meet at his father's house to complete the deal. Now I was faced with deciding how to get it home. Driving it was an option. If carefully driven, it would make it with no problem. But, the brakes were pretty dodgy, the electrical was beyond shot, the front suspension and steering were an unknown, and both the brake and clutch pedals liked to stick. Common sense won out, and I had a rollback meet me there. I met the seller for the first time then. Talking with him, I found that his plan for the car had been to do a restoration to factory stock. (Boy, he won't like where I'M gonna take it) but a house fire and other pitfalls from life had put him in a place where he needed to just sell it. He asked me to send him updates and pictures as I built the car. The wrecker driver loaded it up, and we were off!

Getting started

  Early March, 2010. Lori calls me into the living room. She's sitting at the computer, and asks "What do you think of this?" On the screen is a Craigslist ad for a 1942 Buick project car. It's very rare, it's rough, and it's COOOL!

  "Not bad. Rough, but workable."

  "Would you enjoy buiulding a car like this as a custom?"

  "Yeah"

  "Call the guy."

  I looked at her quizzically. That's when she told me the plan that she and Leigha had been cooking up. Back in the fall, they'd started swiping the change jars around the house as they filled. They'd also overwrite checks at the grocery for ten or twenty bucks here and there. The plan was to keep saving until Father's Day, and give me the cash with the directive to get a project car. The Buick catching Lori's eye forced their hand a bit early. They handed me an envelope full of cash and said "Happy Father's Day. Call the guy."

  Well, as it happened, the seller of the Buick was a flakejob. Then again, the ad WAS on Craigslist, so that shouldn't be a big surprise. (It's a proven fact that 90% of the people you deal with through Craigslist are either insane or a blithering idiots) From the way the guy mumbled around, I think he had a potential buyer already. He wasn't terribly coherent in his speech. Whatever his reason was, he didn't seem too interested in selling me the car. Buick or not, my directive was clear: The girls wanted me to have a project car, and had worked to make it happen. The search was on!

Introduction

  My name is Brian. I'm a happy husband, a proud father, and a tightwad. With all of the responsibilities as a husband and father, my dream of building a traditionally styled custom car remained pushed to the backburner for years.

  Of course, my wife and daughter saw it differently. They got a little sneaky, and behind my back, they worked a plan to get me back into the old car game.

  In this blog, I'll detail the buildup of the car as it progresses. As of now, I'm about a year behind actual events, so the posts will be somewhat frequent until I'm up to date.

  You can follow the build and the story. There will be technical information here, as well as build tips you can use.

  I invite comments, questions and suggestions.