Hi all. After a couple of years driving my coupe around without the family i decided it was time to sell it and get a bigger car so the family could follow along. After a while a deal was struck on a nice 49 Buick. It had been in a small fire so it needed new paintjob and some new wirering. Plan was to take it apart paint it and put it together and drive it. Things got out of hand and one thing led to another and the next i was building a custom. This is how looked when i started pulling it apart. Every panel on it had some burn marks. I started thinking that i could just take of some badges, backup lights and clean up the trunk. Then that uggly gasfiller door had to go. After some talking with a good friend of mine it was decided that we move it to his shop for a bit of work. I am pretty useless at sheetmetal work so it felt good he was going to do the work. All marked up. At this point i got a little bit nervous and started to think i must be crazy doing this. We had to quickly put the roof back on so we could se the line we were after. Not realy sure how much we took out but it was about 2,5 inch. Once we decided on how much the roof was tacked together so work could start on the decklid. Thats all for now.
Some more pics of the decklid. My mate Ola Thorslund did all the work. We had a bit of trouble with the decklid. I wanted to get it mocked up before the roof was finished so we could se how it looked. He took the skin of and cut the inner peice into to 3 and reshape the part up towards the roof. We put the skin back on overlapping so he could se were to cut. I wanted to put the rear fender on so we could se how it looked. Once the fender was on we could step back and sort of see how it was going to turn out. I was realy starting to love the new look.
Are you planning to take the kink out of the rear fender, where the lights fit? It always bothers the eye a little. Can´t help thinking it would look nicer smoothed out.
What IS it with Sweden?! I suspect their three R's at school are reading, writing and roddin'!! REALLY nice.
Nice to have some balls!!!!!! You guys are doing a great job.big under taking as so many chops go oh so wrong.yours is nicely planned.
Fantastic job on the chop top! I have a 1947 Cadillac fastback that I want to chop someday. I'm thinking of doing more of a "wedge" chop like the image below, were we are taking more out of the front than the rear section. I will not have as low of a chop top doing it this way, but it will prevent me from having to alter the trunk lid or rear window. One of the things I don't like in chop tops are when people alter/shrink the rear quarter windows to much. Your Buick looks perfect and flows great with the new roof line. I like that you kept the drip rails. Great work, subscribed!
We talked about doing something about that but it just didn´t fit in the time frame. I know you shouldn´t rush a custom but i just couldn´t swing it now. The car is actually a bit more further on than the pics show.