Projects I'm back - 56 Chevy handyman wagon

Looks like the one that was for sale in the Auto-Round up????Bruce.

 

Try as I might, the street sign wasn't clear enough to read. Guess you were shakin' up the streets in Towson. Cool!

 

Mainly just enjoying the car, but my compulsion to "fix/correct" things is nagging at me.

I got a manual gauge cluster (old one is real rough and automatic). The front wheels just didn't work for me. I tried to find some vintage front wheels at a decent price to no avail. I settled on 15x5 TTOs, so I can reuse my tires.

I started staring too closely at the steering and carb linkage and will probably redo those as well.





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replacement cluster

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great to have you back. keep the pics coming! good choice for the front wheels.

 

I'm an idiot- I ordered the wrong bolt spacing.

Since it'll be on jack stands for a week anyways while awaiting new rims, I guess I'll go ahead and fix some front axle and steering issues.

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What happened?

 

Maybe use one of RottenLeonard's drill pattern setups, and re-drill the hubs to the wheel pattern? You probably can't return the wheels since mounting them anyway. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

Hope the wheel situation works out. In the first pic, she looks like she cut a 10.00 sec ET!

 

Got my wheels on. No more faux spindle mounts.

Removed the Moon tank.

New front emblem.

New throttle linkage. The old one was a mix of homemade allthread. The studs were smaller than the holes in the brackets, etc. And I wasnt really getting WOT. Also got the carbs synced up real nice.


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Finally got rear seat belts in, and took the kids out. There was one bolt broken off in one of the mounts, which took me a couple hours to remove.

No more moon tank.



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Nice! Like what you're doing with it

 

Saturday was nice so I hit a local car thing up the road. Then put the kids to work.

 

Train them when they are young so when they are grownup washing a mans car will be part of their normal routine LOL

 

Your car is really very cool and nostalgic looking. It really looks period correct to me.
Jimbo

 

I'm in southern md and didn't know there was anything going on this time of year , but then again my cars apart getting work done anyway lol


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April 14 2017, the occasional death wobble reached a pinnacle and broke the Speedway steering arm.

A month or two later I went to start it to move it into the garage it had been sitting outside for some time. I pulled the #8 plug knowing that it may have gotten some water in the air cleaners. Unusual, the motor fired right away with a loud clunk and then it would spin ~270 deg by hand, but hit a hard stop (this turned out to be the piston hitting the crank shaft counterweight b/c the rod was bent and shorter than normal).

Fast forward to now, and one thing has led to another.

I'll start with the steering. I think the death wobble was a cumulative effect of all the heim joints and a bunch spacers used to raise or lower the drag link and tie rod to clear the leaf springs.

• Remove 6deg shims from axle. It already has 5deg of caster, but the PO added them to try to fix the death wobble. And you could feel it in the steering.
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• replace flat Speedway steering arms with cast steel steering arms. Ream holes to accept tapered tierod ends. This will also fix the ackerman issue.
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• Replace 5/8 tierod and drag link with 11/16".
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• Short of moving the steering box, there was no way around a separate Speedway steering arm for the drag link. I cut, reamed, and welded in a tapered bung in a new arm so I can run real tie rod ends everywhere.
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• Cleanup and finish welding (fresh paint to come) since most of it was bare metal and rusted, and the welds look like they were done only where someone could reach when mocking up.
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• 

 

The exhaust always bothered me b/c it hung down so low in the front. Plus I wanted to be able to uncap the headers, so I did the following, which worked out well.

 

Neat car.

 

I tore the motor down and confirmed that I'd bent #7 rod. Sucks when you cause your own problems, but all in all, I got very lucky.


One good thing is I got to know the motor. As the PO said, it's a fresh build. But it's basically a stock 30 over '68 396 with a lumpy cam, which isn't what I was told. But I'm OK with that. Stock -215 heads, GM crank (.02 over bearings), GM rods, 30 over Sealed power pistons, 540 roller tappet cam.





I realize it will make little or no difference, but while things are apart I'm blending the intake ports so there's a little smoother transition from the Tunnel ram. Then cleaning stuff up before it goes back together.

 

Nice work bringing the steering, etc up to snuff.
Love the car. Keep posting updates.

 

The day I bent the connecting rod, I was finishing up redoing the carb linkage. In addition to looking crappy, the bolts were all way smaller than the holes in the carb levers which made for alot of slop, plus the main lever had a fulcrum effect. Lastly the threads were all right handed so it was a pain to adjust.

I switched to Left\right threaded turnbuckles, removable joints, and moved the main pull to the front carb which gets rid of that fulcrum feel. And the linkage b/t the two carbs now "pulls", instead of pushing.

 

Nice job, looks like you have her about sorted out. very cool car.

 

Looking good!

 

Nice updates on the exhaust! Great work.

 

Looking better with each update,really like the new front wheels. HRP

 

My first car was a '56 2dr. Handyman wagon so I've always had a soft spot for them. Had no money but sure had a good time with that wagon. Maybe one of these days I'll hunt up another one. I'm digging yours in the meantime.

 

im

 

im picking up one this weekend i think its a 150 sedan delivery?