Projects 56 Chevy 210 Hardtop Build

wow! great start to a nice project, thats going to be fun driving !

 

Well today I managed to spend a whole lot of time thinking instead of doing. The only thing I managed to get done tonight was install a tube in between the frame rails. Tomorrow I will go ahead and remove the lower splash pan and make sure to take some pictures. Here is earlier today before I installed the tube between the rails.

 

IMO I would leave the A arm suspension...a set of ball joint spacers and a taller spring will give you the stance most mid 60's tri-fives had...and if you get sick of it later you can change it easier than with an axle up front...

 

FUNNY, it's funny you say that. As my dad and I were looking at how to take the splash pan out he was doing some other investigating of his own to see why exactly my 56 sits up higher than his 57. Well he glanced at my a-arms and pointed out that the car actually already has ball joint spacers as well as bigger springs. I'll make sure to post some pictures sometime tomorrow

 

So today I finished the tube bumper, let me know what you think.

Also here are the pictures of the ball joint spacers/springs

 

Looks good and I like the stance it has now , Put some elbow grease on those wheels and you will really start getting excited!! Larry

 

Great looking car, I like the rear radius wheel wells. I've seen tube axles installed on these while maintaining the stock front frame, that is not lopping it off and installing 2x4s.

 

Front end looks like we did them "back in the day"

 

Very cool ! Good to see a '56 get played with. That one is very nice.

 

So I've decided to go with the slots that are already on the rear for right now and to go with something different on the front. I'm thinking a set of cragar s/s or gts. I have a set of each but am uncertain as to which would be more appropriate for my build. I also went ahead and polished one of the rear slots, didn't turn out great, but far better than what they were.

 

I'm thinking yourve got it figured out pretty well for a guy your age.
I look forward to watching the progress.

 

Looks nice, you have to be careful with the backspacing on the front wheels or the tires will hit the upper control arms when you run ball joint spacers.

 

Thanks for the info, that's the kinda stuff that really helps out in the long run!

 

Okay, I'm trying to find the rules that pertain to what class you would figure your car to run in 1965, 66, or 67. I think it was some sort of formula that used your cars weight and cubic inches that decided what class you ran. I could be wrong, does anyone else have any info on that subject?

 

Here's is the NHRA weight breaks for the NA gas classes...

 

Exactlt what I was after, greatly appricate it!

 

And then the AHRA from 66

 

My favorite example of a real deal trifive gasser that was dominate at Niagara drag strip in the mid '60s was Jim Zakia's 'red '55 Chevy. Google His name and a bunch of pictures will show up. And yes it had a straight front axle. Jim went on to race a '33 Willys coupe, an Anglia, and an Opel GT in various gas classes. Still races the Opel and has found and is restoring the Anglia and just turned 73. I'd try to post a pic of it but as you can see from my previous picture post of the E/G '56, I'm not very good at it.

Lee

 

Spin the car to face the street/downhill on the driveway. Take a few pix for stance and measure from the lip of both front & rear fender to ground. Then add a 100-200 lbs or so in trunk. Take a few pix of the new stance & measure distances. Leave it be in the rear and now floor jack it at the crossmember and raise it an inch or so. Pix. Raise a bit more, pix.

 

I know just what you're talking about. I've read about Jim and his cars before, his 55 was B-A-D. And Slammed, I may toy around with the stance a little, but I doubt it will change dramatically because I defintely like the way it is sitting level right now. However the car has airshocks so I believe if I let some pressure out that should lower the rear some.

 

Nothing permeant. Only to see what this combo has hidden by changing each end slightly. For a bit of time & no money. And another mock up would be to max the rear shocks AND raise the front a few inches (floor jack) for that near Street Freak effect.

 

This is just my two cents, but to me this car sits perfect.

 

I love it, but IMO it deserves paint. It does have a perfect stance, wheels, and tires.

 

I love it the way it sits. No paint needed.

 

I like where this project is headed. Seeing the car "as is" in grey primer immediately reminded me of the movie "Two Lane Blacktop".
gassers are cool right now, but many of them are cartoonish, so it would be great to see one done "era correct". You've got all the right ideas.
I think you should keep the rear slotties permanently, they look great as they are.

 

Yeah, youve got ball joint spacers but judging from the space between the top aframe and the frame it doesnt look like you have bigger springs to actually raise it (you could have, its hard to tell from a pic)..on second glance, with a bump stop in place I doubt its raised.
The original "idea" of ball joint spacers was to allow room for the car to come up in the front, on launch, shifting the weight to the back tires, dont really know if that helped at all but anyway........... with bigger springs also, you can raise the car in the front, Ive heard guys say to use 409 station wagon springs or some other kind of heavier springs???

...........tho it may look a little jinky heres what I used on a 55 I had a few years ago and it worked fine "for me".

............also I would turn the black walls out on those tires if I were gonna keep em, and yes like mentioned earlier you can only have around just over 2 inches of back space on your front wheels depending some on how wide your tires are.

 

Yessss! You hit the nail on the head with this one. This is exactly the stance I'm going for, and it doesn't look like I'm too far off at the moment. And Low Budget, I'm lead to believe that it's raised slightly at least. It sits about 3" higher than my dads 57 up front. I have heard of the station wagon springs being used to raise the car in the front, my dad and I actually looked into that for his car awhile back. As for the tires in the back, I've been wanting to thinking about getting the 28/12.50/15LT M&H Racemaster cheater slicks that are on Coker Tire website for an ungodly amount of money.

 

It's been about a week or so since I've posted due to starting this semester of college classes, but during my time away from posting I've been doing some wiring on the car. I'm at the point where I'm trying to wire the headlights. What I've got left is running all the wiring from the firewall grommet to the headlamps. I believe it's called the chassis harness. As this is my first wiring project I'm very unfamiliar with it all.

As for the engine I've been thinking about building up the 350 that's in the car. Ive been wondering what kind of compression Im going to make from the 1972 195hp 350ci by putting 64cc chamber 462 double humps on and keeping the stock pistons. Im wanting something to run off of the pump so I figure this would be my best bet for the street/strip setup that I'm after.

 

So cool to see this car is alive, well, and pretty much intact. Man, I was SO in love with this thing in high school.



Note: While the word "bracket" appears 6 times, and the phrase "street/strip", or "street machine" appear a couple of times, NOWHERE in this article does the word "gasser" appear. Back then, this was just the way tri-fives looked, and "Gas" was an NHRA class. The word "gasser" as it is used today didnt even exist in the hot rodders lexicon. Its so refreshing to go back to that unpretentious time when we could call cars what they actually were. I miss those days...
PHR Sept. 74

 

Looks like the term was around to me...