Projects DrGoodspeed's '52 studebaker build aka 'studebroken.'

I figured I'd show you guys what I've been working on. Long story short, I picked up this 300 dollar '52 studebaker a month or two ago because a) it was 300 bucks and I'm a sucker for a project, and b) my dad really likes studebakers, SO I'm putting this thing together as something that I can enjoy with him while all of our other projects collect dust with intentions of making them "nice," or something.

I quit my job to focus on my education (mechanical engineering), so the budget is tight.

If this is your thing, check out my Facebook page for my shenanigans (goodspeed handmade), which I think is just facebook.com/goodspeedhandmade, or, if you're an instagrammer, goodspeedmakesthings would be me.

Anywho, on to the photos, to give you guys something to laugh at.

studebroken on trailer by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

This is what 300 dollars gets you in the wide world of Studebakers. It has shoddy bodywork in every body panel, the floors are shot, motor and trans are gone, there are only two pieces of glass in the car and only one is usable, interior is mostly gone, and on and on, BUT my father is a stude guy, so he's got a lot of stuff kicking around. Here he is sort of annoyed but cautiously optimistic because I drug him 150 miles from home in our car hauler to pick this pile up.

Dad and I by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Once I got it home, the next installment in the Studebroken saga is the brakes, even before pulling it off the trailer. We had an incident a few years back with a car that ended up rolling down the street, so I like brakes. Plus, I got into a "discussion" with him over what would and wouldn't work as far as brakes are concerned, so the next post with be a quick look at what I did. Stay tuned.

 

OKAY, annnnnnd here we go. Studebroken, chapter two: the brake pedal.

So, last time we picked up the pile of rusty South Bend Sensibility, I suppose. Definitely not muscle, that I am sure of.

Anyway, here's a quick look at the brakes I decided to put together. The idea with this car is to use it as like a shop truck, minus the truck part. Bounce to the parts store, around town, etc, but I also have intentions of doing the hot rod power tour at some point in my life, so the idea was to use parts that are easily available from pretty much any parts store.

For safety sake I'm replacing the old drums for front rotors and calipers are along with the brake hoses. They do sell kits in internet-land for studebakers to adapt disc brakes, buuuuuut I'm not a fan of the rotor and caliper combo they use, plus I'm a bit of a car geek and wanted to do my own thing.

and I'm broke. The student thing, and all. And on to the photos.

Machining studebroken hub by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

The first step was to make the rotors physically fit over the hubs, so I mounted them in my baby 9" swing lathe to turn the OD down something like .150" or so on the radius, but don't quote me on that. That's also the original wheel bearing inside it that the center is riding on. Good thing this isn't a critical dimension. I changed out the studs as well to fit the metric size of the studs on a mustang, but they needed replaced anyway, since the drums on a studebaker are held on basically between the hub and the studs from the back, so they got destroyed taking the whole deal apart.

Now let's talk about the clamping bits. The calipers. Or, more the brackets than the calipers, really. The calipers are pretty boring, but they're red. That makes them work better.

bracket cut out by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

The first step in my foray into caliper bracketry was to make a template out of cereal box to get everything lined up. I then made it in corian countertop material (like plastic sheet, more or less. super easy to work on my milling machine) to make sure it'd all work as planned before moving on to steel. Or, in this case, 304 stainless steel.

caliper brackets welded by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

I, then, turned these little do-dads out of 304 as well to basically act as washers so I could use the stock caliper bolts, which are also available at advance auto off the shelf (just in case, or, well, WHEN it breaks down on the way to a show or something). Melted them on to the back via the tig welder and there you have it. Some caliper brackets. I chose not to go all the way around the spindle like some brackets do because a)the studebaker disc brake setups didn't, and b)these brackets are 1/2" thick at the mounting surface with 3x 3/8" grade 8 bolts, which I feel is sufficient, but I didn't do the math so it's mostly a hope and a prayer.

caliper bracket bolted up by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Here she is all bolted up, safety wired, and hit with locktite for good measure.

brakes bolted up by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

And there they are in all their cheap glory. The rotors I had previously and just never installed, so they were essentially free, and the rest is from rock auto. All told there's maybe 175 bucks wrapped up in them.

Next step is the master cylinder bracket. I also ran the lines, but I won't bore you folks with that, because nobody wants to do it, anyway.

 

Annnd, chapter three: Return of the Master Cylinder

So, recap. The car's back and now has shiny red brakes but is still sitting on the car hauler that I backed into my shop instead of trying to coast a car off it with no way to stop, so now I needed to sort out a master cylinder.

Step one was acquiring a master cylinder and step two was cutting up everything else to make it fit. Makes perfect sense. At least the floor was shot so I wasn't hurt about cutting a big hole in it to sort all of this out. I picked up a random aluminum body master cylinder in the correct bore size from my local advance auto by basically getting on their site and looking through all the ones they had until I found what I wanted. Good news is that it was like 16 dollars, so I can't argue.

pedal pivot by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

My first step was to modify the factory brake pedal to move both the pivot out and get some room for brake lines, since the fittings are on the frame side of the mount, as well as to change the throw ratio to fit the brakes/master cylinder and all, so I milled this thing out of a36 and melted it on. I later changed the pivot size from 3/8, which was the factory size, to 1/2" and added a groove and grease fitting, as well as delrin bushings for a nice, smooth action.

Clutch pushrod before by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Next on the list was to sort out both the bracket and the pushrod for the deal. We'll talk about the pushrod first. I cruised down to my local pre hardened steel supplier and picked up some material...and by that I mean that I went to tractor supply and bought some bolts to make my pushrod out of.

pedal pushrod by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

And after a bit of machining and some elbow grease, here we go. One brake pedal pushrod. The end I did the math on and machined off just as much as was necessary to keep it from binding, and the turnbuckle thing in the center is rated at 3000 pounds in tension, so, being used in compression like this, it all should be good to go. Even with the leverage ratio of the pedal, my 158 pounds doesn't have enough ass to hurt it.

Then there was a bracket.

master cylinder bracket by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

I'll spare you the boring details, but I machined and tigged this bad boy out of 3/8" a36 on the frame side, 1/2" a36 on the master cylinder side, and the bracing is all 1/4" a36. I jacked the car up by it just to see what would happen and it had no problems so I'm confident that it will hold.

Next time: will it make it off the trailer and not take out my 3000 pound milling machine in the process? TUNE IN NEXT TIME TO FIND OUT!

 

I would have paid $300 for that without thinking too hard too.

Low air in the tires and a safety chain to catch on usually works to get one off a trailer.

 

And here we go. Operation try not to destroy my building or my mill with a 300 dollar car has commenced...

studebroken out of shop by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Drug it out of the shop and into daylight, wondered why in the hell I bought this thing for a while, then proceeded with the dismount.

studebroken off trailer by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

And there you have it, folks. Even with a dual reservoir master cylinder with zero brake lines even attached to the rear reservoir, she did just fine. I got to drive my new car via sitting on a 5 gallon bucket. Good thing it doesn't have a gas pedal or I'd go cruising around town.

Okay, it's on the ground. Now what the hell do I do? Guess we'll sort out a rear end. Cruised down to the pull a part, fondled the 8.8/ 3.73 and ended up taking it home. First step was to plasma cut everything rear end related out of the car. This car had been sitting since '82 (I was born in '88), so things like "bolts" and "threads" dont really mean much anymore.

studebroken rear end gone by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

...and there we go. Lt Dan AINT GOT NO LEGS. But I'll fix it. Hopefully.

Right about here is where I got side tracked, because of this...

frame rot by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Now, I'm no expert, but because of my edjewmahkation I've spend money I don't have on books to make myself feel smart and this ASSUME that framerails shouldn't look like this. Luckily, it's just this one spot, so it can be repaired. It will be better, faster, and stronger than it was before.

frame rot fixed by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

and there we have it. With some editing magic, the area was braced, bad stuff cut out and replaced with 1/8" flat bar. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "man, that's a pretty thick frame for '52, and the answer is that it's nowhere near that thick, but, since I was cutting it out, I figured why the hell not. And flat bar in that dimension was easily acquired and on hand. I ended up doing both sides, since the other side didn't look great, either.

 

Yeah, I thought about that, which is why I didn't put it in the traditional section. If they do, Hopefully they'll give me a heads up so I don't have to type all of that again.

 

Yeahh, we had one take off down the road at my dad's shop, and my whole driveway is basically a funnel into my shop so better safe than sorry. My trailer also doesn't have a winch, or I'd just have used that.

 

Okay, rust sorted. Some people would have thrown the thing out, but my daddy always taught me to at least try and fix it, so there. And I have steel, not money or sense.

In all seriousness, though, let's move on and talk about that lovely rear I fondled at the local pullapart. I didn't take any photos, but long story short I took it home, hacked off the lower mounts, made some matching stilts to weld the rear directly to the car at ride height in the correct location/angle so I could build my suspension arms. It won't be super low or anything. Actually, with 3" between the axle and the frame there's still 5 inches between the frame and the ground.

4 link before by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

A quick note, though. If you buy pre made parts, check the welds, guys (and ladies).

4 link fixed by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

ended up going over every weld on the things.

4 link whole by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Unfortunately I didn't take too many photos of this process. My lift is an old in ground deal that doesn't go up nearly high enough so I basically spend the whole time I'm under a car with a neck ache and pissed off, so you get what you get. Anyway, there's the bars installed. The lowers are 0.5 degrees with the axle down and the uppers are 7 degrees with the axle up. I wanted to be more like 6 degrees, but 7 I can live with, and they agree with eachother so I think it should work well.

Now it just needs a crossmember to bolt shocks or something to to, you know, hold the car up.

 

Okay, crossmembers and such. Here's what I did.

cell mount and rear crossmember by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Bad photo, I know, but, like I said, short lift makes Devon (me) and unhappy camper. Basically the crossmember is 1.625" .120 wall steel tube with 1/4" gussets and junk tied into the factory crossmember and use front shocks from a c10 shock.

I chose those for their size and availability so I'm hoping the valving won't beat me to death. Luckily they'll be easy to change out.

Original gas tank was a issue - so not going to focus on a replacement non traditional item.
My fun is the fabrication aspect and hope you guys appreciate it.

Here's a photo of the original trunk, just for inspiration and stuff:

trunk before by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Which brings us to the massive hole I cut in what was left of the floor.
That'll need to be sorted out, so ignore what's in the picture.

trunk with cell mocked up by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Let me say that I worked for an industrial fab shop for the last several years, but I did cushy quality testing stuff with coil springs and junk and not actual fabrication, so this is just what I do for fun. I am very much a novice when it comes to sheet metal, especially. I had to press a friend into service cranking my bead roller to get these panels rolled, and here's the general process we used.

trunk panel laid out by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Laid out the trunk panels on both sides with a sharpie...

trunk panel english wheeled by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Attacked them with wild abandon and an english wheel to pre-stretch the panels. Later I switched to my planishing hammer, which seemed to work better. This car should probably have a "sponsored by harbor freight" sticker on it from all of those tools, but, in my defense, every welder I have is Lincoln Electric so maybe it balances out.

trunk panel half wheeled by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

and here you can see the difference between the stretched side that hasn't been rolled and the rolled side. The pattern kind of sucks and I messed part of it up, but I had to remind myself that it's a trunk and's being bedlined and covered with carpet.

trunk panel all wheeled by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

and that's how much the pre stretching helped. Worked pretty well. This is a bolt-in panel so I can access the shocks and junk.

trunk all panels mocked up by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

after that, I drilled the crossmember for cap screws to bolt that panel on and hosed it all with self etching primer.

It feels good to check that off my list, but terrible that I now have to tackle the front floors, which are really bad.

 

So now on to the front floors. Man, I hate doing floors.

Floors are like working under a dash upside down while working under the hood while simultaneously taking your inlaws out to eat. It's just not a fun experience for me, but let's power through it.

First, let's take a look at what we have to work with:

drivers floor before by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

This was covered up with a piece of aluminum flashing and some pop rivets. Now, I'm cheap, but I'm not THAT cheap. I have to draw the line somewhere and that line is drawn before having my feet hit the roadway, but, hey, maybe the passenger side won't be that bad.

passenger floor before by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

...Well, shit. Same situation on this side. Guess we'll have to cut a really big hole in the floor, but I'm going to do it one side at a time so as to not lose 4 body mounts at once.

driver's floor mocked up by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

So I made these. The blue junk is layout fluid, which tells me where the panels fit up and stuff so then I can cut the remainder out. Ended up doing the same thing on the opposide side using my favorite template material ever...

cereal box templates by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

CEREAL BOXES! This is the trunk floor template, BUT you get a tasty snack, AND template material. It's a win-win, really.

studebroken floor by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

and finally, FLOORS in all their glory! The dimple died panel is a bolt in deal that acts as like a wire tray for the taillight wiring and junk.

And that's pretty much where I'm at as of now. The plans are suspension (but not super low, as I've previously said), bedline the floors, carpet, bench seat, retrofit the factory gauges to work with the fuel tank and junk, floor shifter and just drive it.

I don't have the patience or the time for bodywork so I'm operating on the principle that the car earned the character on the exterior and I'm going to leave it that way for the time being until which time I can afford to sort it out.

We also have a '66 commander, a '66 avanti ii, a 57 president broadmoor, two '50s, and probably some others I'm forgetting, Needless to say, my dad is a studebaker guy so he'd been a big help in trying to source parts like a taillight, windshield, and so on.

 

Very impressive. I think this Isn't your first rodeo.

Sent from my SM-T350 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

My Grandpa built this 52 before he passed. Was a fun childhood memory

 

I fully agree with young fella's posting posting their builds and talents. It is whats going to keep this hobby alive Not a fan of air bag suspension though

 

You done good...always liked that year...

 

I appreciate the compliment. Those are actually the first mostly complete floors I've ever made in my life and, while I can do the math and the machine work, I've never built a brake system, so I'm just trying not to screw up too badly. A lot of this car is just going to be practice for the more solid cars, and I like a challenge....I never said I was smart. Haha.

Plus, I've never really been a "kit" kind of person and usually couldn't afford the kits, anyway.

Very cool car. I wish I had that style of wheels for this one. For now it's probably going to be either steel wheels (preferably painted or powdercoated red but we'll see how motivated I am to do that), or I have a set of crager star wires I could put on there but I'm not sure they'd really match the car. We'll see on that one.

 

Haha, well, I'm not going to discuss it per forum rules, but I have my reservations as well, and I own the thing. Lol. I'm usually a handling over comfort kind of person so it may not last long and I'll leave it at that.

Thank ya. I'd prefer a '53, but I was never a huge fan of the '50-'51 bulletnose. They just look odd to me, so this is a happy medium. And the price was right.

 

Keep going Devon..you appear to be a talented machinist and fabricator. I too am a Stude fan Just don't drop an ls in it or I can see the cloak of invisibility coming...Well done young man!

 

My first Studebaker was a '52.... 4 door. I parted it out. You'll do better with yours!

 

Hey, Devon;
Glad you posted.
Looking good so far.
Only thing I see, is maybe the frame needs the (re-)under-plating extended, as the oem is looking rather rough, & it's needed for strength - which Studes were not known for having an abundance of. .
W/your attitude, skills, n writing style, I'm pretty sure LeRoy 'Tex" Smith would've encouraged you to keep going & keep at it, as it's good; + it's humorous. If you don't know who he was, n what he did - spend 2 minutes & look him up. (Compliment here... ) .
Marcus...

 

keep at it. great work. following along.

 

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the compliments! I will be extending the plating up where the frame crosses over the axle but the plan is to do that once I cut the axle back off the car just to make it easier on myself.

Even though the car was basically encased in kudzu vines when we picked it up, the rest of the frame is good to go. Just the downward section over the axle for some reason. It'll also have some drain holes drilled and the insides filled with cavity wax to hopefully keep off rust a little longer.

I'm also pondering ways to brace the frame and keep it from flopping around like a sun bonnet in a sandstorm, but we'll see on that one. I am kind of amazed at just how thin the wall of the frame is, but when it had like 60hp worth of flathead six, I understand that there just wasn't a need.

 

Devon, this is a great car to develop those fab skills - your welding looks top notch and the rest is coming right along... As they say: make it stop, make it go, then make it pretty. But above all, make it YOURS!
A little "nose up" attitude and a good, strong traditional motor will make for a great shop truck (without the truck part)

 

Well done so far!!!! A tip of the hat to the Moderator for working with you, since this is a very interesting thread, especially with the fabrication. Plus, it's not your run-of-the-mill "common" car, which I really like. Good luck, and I'm looking forward to following along!

 

onward - we are watching you

 

Thanks for the compliments, guys. I'll try and keep updating this with the parts of the build that fit the scope of this forum.

ANYWHO, let's update these shenanigans a smidge. So, most of you guys have been around and I'm sure you know what sort of quality you can expect form imported exhaust manifolds. Well, while I'd LOVE to be able to afford to just buy the bends and whatnot and whip up my own manifolds, it just isn't in the broke college budget for this car, so I ended up picking up these imported manifolds.

GTO Imported manifolds by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickred[/url], on Flickr

From that photo you can DEFINITELY tell that I'm an unmarried car-guy with a ton of hobbies, but that's neither here nor there.

I got them for two reasons: 1) They're for a car (my engine came with truck manifolds), so I'm gambling that they'll fit between the rails on the '52, and 2) They were 60 dollars shipped for the pair, which is absurdly cheap. Being as that they're that cheap I was expecting garbage, but I have more tools than sense and, well, here we are. While they look pretty decent, put the outlet in a position I can work with, and they're pretty close to the block, there is a slight issue.

Manifold Clamped on mill. by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

I didn't ACTUALLY take a photo of said issue, but close your eyes and imagine that one of the flanges around an inner runner is .050" or so from being flat when a straight edge is put across them. Now, that simply won't do, SO I cobbled up this workpiece clamping setup from what I had available and went to town with a 2" inserted face mill...

Face Milling GTO Manifold by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Face milling manifold. by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr

Now, I'm sure that someone has a different idea of how to do this and I'm willing to bet that it's better than my rig here, BUT it's what I had on-hand and actually didn't produce bad results so I'm satisfied.

Clamped to welding table. by Devon Goodspeed, on Flickr/url], on Flickr

The final step of this deal was to play musical work holding clamps and knock down where they were originally bolted, THEN to bolt it to my super-sophisticated granite surface plate (and by that I mean my steel welding table that is probably miles away from being actually FLAT) to see how we did. The shadow makes it look like there's still a gap, but I can't shove a .005" feeler gage under it, so I'll take it. I'm sure the gasket will seal up any less than that, anyway.

They'll probably get wrapped or coated in something because, while I (as I'm sure you can tell in the rest of these posts) love stainless for it's corrosion resistance, I'm not really one for shiny stuff, but that'll come later.

Now I have one more to do. I still have no idea if they'll actually fit because I'm miles away from that point, but sometimes it's good to bounce around and break up the routine a bit.

I still have to finish up the floors, coat them, then I can move on to sorting out some front suspension and wiring, then motor stuff.

 

Nice work, Devon
I had a '52 Starlight, Commander. My first bent engine. Good car. It did not like me when I hooked the 33ft house trailer behind it.
Did I miss the engine you are using? Obviously you know.

Ben

 

Nice work on fabrication and saving money. I can sympathize with your broke college student budget, BTDT myself.

 

Coming from another Stude fan...nice work.

Mike

 

I just stumbled over this and have to say kudos to you for your building as well as writing skills, I am building a 53 and am using a 58 Hawk frame because there are somewhat stronger. I'd suggest adding an X frame to add some rigidity which was what I was going to do to my original six cylinder frame until I bought three Hawks for parts