I thought I'd start a build thread on my '54. It's been off the road for a while, and I miss it and want to get it back to being my daily driver. I'm hoping that this thread can do a couple things. Seeing as how I build cars for a living, it can sometimes be hard to get into the shop on days off. Not that I'm complaining, I'm very fortunate to do what I do, and be able to be paid to build the cars I do, but sometimes it can be tough to get back in the shop on my days off to build my own. So, I hope you guys can help keep me motivated to get my ass in there for my own car. I also hope that this thread can be informative and helpful to someone. Anyway, here is some info on the car. Just like the title says it's a '54 Chevy 210 Post. I bought it years ago, as a fairly stock car. The body was all stock, but it already had 350/350 combo, and a late model Camaro rear end. Everything was there and in pretty good shape, pretty solid from what I could tell rust wise, interior was there and useable, but had seen better days. Struck a deal, and drove it home. It had a B&M shifter in it, which I hated and was one of the first things I changed. Swapped it to a Gennie shifter. It would take quite a bit of work to find old photos and post them, and this is a new phase in the build, so I'm going to describe the past a little and bring the car up to present. I swapped out the tires for some white walls, added spider caps, and spray bombed it flat black. I added bear claw latches, shaved door handles, and shaved trim. Frenched tail lights, shaved fuel door, added 4 teeth to the grill and painted the chrome silver because I was poor and wanted it all to match. installed a Gambino notch in the rear, added a triangulated 4-link and bags, and bagged the stock front suspension. Drove it like this for quite a while. I ended up then stepping the stock lower front control arms, then drove it for a bit again. Then I tried to swap the stock steering to a rack and pinion for reasons I won't get into here. With his novice I was at the time, the swap didn't work well and the car sat for a bit. Then I ended up getting a Fatman mustang II for it. My plan was to install that, and a new engine. That snowballed and before you knew it, the entire car was blown apart for a full rebuild and everything I always wanted to do to the car. So many things with life got in the way, and it sat for too long. So I decided to get back into the car, Talked my way into Troy letting me bring it into the shop to build. I had lots of plans for the car from the beginning, many that I haven't gotten to yet. Some I have, but was much more green at the time. So, it's basically a full restart. I'm going to do everything I ever planned, but also have to redo most of what I had done years ago. There are a few things that I did previously, that I won't redo, because they aren't really a big deal, and aren't really worth me redoing. I'll make the car nice, but it's not a full show car, its a nice driver. So, I won't be redoing things like the driveline tunnel, which I would do differently these days, but won't be seen when the car is finished. Well, Ive typed enough. Here are some photos of how the car looked once I got it into the shop.
I began to get all the body panels I could unbolt acid dipped, piece by piece. These are the front fenders, and the much worse door.
Then, I brought my engine in and set it on there with mounts I had made before at home. I have ended up raising the engine up and making new mounts since this photo. I also would have addressed the firewall differently if I was to do it now, but decided to leave it rather then redo it. Here is bringing the engine to the shop, and sitting in the car.
I began with repairing the fenders. I started with the passenger side. It didn't have any rot, but it had dents. I don't have any good photos of the dents before, only what you can see on the photo of the stripped fenders. But here it is after the repair.
Then the driver side. Everything on the driver side is in worse shape then the passenger. More rust, more dents, and a poor repair on the quarter. There was also a poor job of shaving the antenna hole. This can be blamed on me. I honestly don't remember if I did this or a friend who was helping me did this. It's really irrelevant, because this was my skill level at one point. But, it has been fixed, and it is proof that if you keep at it, practice, and learn, that you can vastly improve your skill set. Here is the shaved antenna before. You can't really tell how bad it is in that photo. This one demonstrates it much better. So, I cut it all out and redid it. Here is the repair.
The next order of business was the rust in the lower front corner of the fender. I made a patch, although i think this is the patch I ended up scrapping because I wasn't happy with it, as you can see by the light line. Made a second one, and made the patch big enough to shave the rocker trim hole. And here is the repaired section. There was some additional dent repair on the fender which I didn't get photos of.
Then I sent the body shell off to be media blasted, and worked on the frame a little. I reworked the rear suspension, and made a new trans crossmember. I redid most of the rear suspension, I left the old notches, even though I would do them different now. Although, I pretty much ground out the welds and redid them. I don't have any good photos of the rear suspension reworking, but it isn't finished. It is stitch welded and will be finished up when the body comes off again for the frame to get powder coated. (I might also change it slightly, so I didn't fully weld yet.)
Then I got the body back from media blasting. I knew most of the issues with the body, although there were some surprises. This is an example of one of the surprises.
So, I put the body back on the frame, and began assembling things again and making it look like a car.
So, I bolted it to the frame with new mounts, and then mocked up the front end. This is pretty much where it sits currently. It has the grill and front splash pan mocked up now though. The plan is to align everything, and then start the serious work once everything is sitting where it should be. Once everything is aligned where I'm happy with it, I'll start modifying and repairing starting from the front and working my way back.
I realized I didn't say what the plans are. I like the main styling of the '54. I'll be doing smoothed and slightly reworked bumpers, stock grill with 4 teeth added, '55 chevy headlights, one piece hood with fade out peak, rounded hood corners, Shaved trim except for belt line trim, frenched tail lights, and a chop with cut down rear glass. I obviously have more modern suspension upgrades, which I plan to have hidden anywhere that can be seen besides from underneath. I also have upgrades in the cabin that will also be hidden. It is a pet peeve of mine to see a nice classic car with attention to detail, but then they dropped the ball by having a modern stereo head unit in the dash or something like that. I will have A/C, power windows, power wipers, stereo, and front cup holders, but it will all be hidden. The interior will appear stock, but have the more modern devices I want.
I also swapped out the 350 trans for a 4L60E. I was going to go with a 700R4, but I changed my mind. I used to have an S10 with a 4L60E and I like the way that drove way better then my dads roadster which has a 700R4. I also got a pretty good deal on the 4L60E.
Not much of an update because I didn't get to make it into the shop over the weekend, but here is the car with the grill back on. Still needs everything aligned so I can work on the hood and head lights.
We are pretty short on space right now, I made a deal with Troy, and I'm the only one with a project in the shop currently.
I got to work on the car a little today. Got the '55 Chevy head light bezels mounted. With the head lights mounted from inside the fender, and the bezels fitting on the head light properly, there was a 1/4" gap between the bezel and the fender (which you can see below). Rather then try to make a piece to fit, I put 1/4" spacers on the face of the head light bucket to space it back. I forgot to take a pic, but it fits up nice now. The next thing to take care of was the the '55 bezels diameter is less then the '54 so I have to bring the sides in to match. I started working on that today, and will continue tomorrow. I'll snap some pics then. My dad came with me to the shop today, and got all my panels that had some surface rust on them metal prepped and wiped down with Gibbs. The car looks much better now. Kinda hard to see in the photo, but I posted anyway.
Well, I wasn't going to post this stuff till I was going to finish the hood, but I'm still up and I'm bored, so here it is. I roughed in the front peak for my hood the other day. As luck would have it, the peak we put in the front fenders of the Packard we are building, turned out to be the same as the peak on the '54 fenders. So, I already had a die for the pullmax to make the peak. Here you can see the peak on the Packards fender. Here I am running my piece through the dies. This is the panel after the peak is put in, bent to fit the hood, and I shrunk the edges a bit to get the right shape. It defiantly still needs some cleaning up, but this is the basic panel set on the car. It is sitting up so high because the factory peak is still underneath it. I'll cut that out once I'm ready to fit it to the hood. I'm going to get the headlights done before moving back to this.
Well, I didn't get as far along today as I had hoped, but made progress none the less. Here you can see the difference in diameter between the '55 headlight bezel and the '54 fender. I decided to start by getting the bottom half of the headlight opening to fit the bezel, and then make the piece for the top. Here you can see how the bezel fits to the fender after I spaced the headlights back 1/4" You can also see the relief cut I had to make to get the fender to fit the bezel. Sorry it's kind of a crappy photo, but you can kind of see how the bottom half now fits the bezel. Then I made the pattern for the top piece. I transferred my pattern to metal and added 3/8" to the leading edge, then cut it out and tipped that edge. Once I had that edge tipped to 90°, I hemmed it all the way over by hand. Then I started roughing the shape in. This is where I left off. I was hoping to get the piece clecoed in, but didn't quite make it.
Cretin, Dyno-mite build. Nice solid ole' Stovebolt Chev' Thanks for sharing. How expensive was the acid dipping process?? Sheesh..that little bit of rust your worried about ain't nothin' Come to the Sunshine state and see what we got to deal with. When I moved here from Cleveland, I thought I left rust behind. Man', was I in for a surprise. JT
Haha, I know its a pretty solid car, there was just a few little rust spots I didn't know about before stripping. Overall its in real good shape. The acid dipping isn't too bad, considering it comes back bare metal everywhere, and those guys hand scrape a lot of that stuff off. I did it a panel at a time. It depends on the size of the panel, but it runs about $75-$125 a panel
Well, I didn't make it into the shop this weekend. The compressor at the shop started acting up, and we are waiting for a part for it, so I didn't go in. I did get the garage reorganized a bit so there is room to mess with the Model A project though. I hope you guys made more progress than I did.
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