Projects All Studes, All The Time

This story goes back years, but escalated quickly over the last year or so. I've been meaning to start a thread for a while, but it seems like time has been flying since I started this little adventure, so we better get going on this.

Like any self respecting gearhead, I always thought 1953 and 54 Studebakers were great looking cars. I would go back and forth on which was better, coupes or hardtops, but its hard to go wrong either way. At one point in my life I would have considered one as a dream car. Time went on, I went to college, got a job, got married, bought a house, played with a bunch of OT vehicles, and eventually forgot about the dream. I remember having a conversation with a coworker about how I used to want one, but it would probably never happen for me. Too many projects, not enough time, money, energy, etc. Probably about by this time I had come to the realization that Studebaker people were in some sort of strange cult, and I did not need to be part of that.

At this point I was at least a few years into pestering my wife that she needed some type of "fun" car. I really didn't care what it was (OT cars included), but I just wanted it to be something that she enjoyed, and would help her to participate in my hobby. At some point she got tired of the pestering and told be that she would know what it was when she saw it. At Back to the 50's in 2016 or so she found it. It was a light yellow 1960 Studebaker Lark Convertible. She proudly proclaimed that that was the one, that's what she wanted. I rolled my eyes and scoffed. A Studebaker? Really? How about a Rambler American or a Plymouth Valiant instead? And a convertible? In Minnesota? Oh, and its a one year only car since she does not like the quad headlight 61+ cars. I tried to get her to look at alternatives, but she was hooked. All I could do was roll my eyes and tell her good luck on finding one. I did briefly consider that I could pick up a 53 or 54 and make this a family thing, but quickly dismissed that as a pipedream. Plus I really did not want to be associated as a weirdo Studebaker owner.

Time went on. 2020 happened. Then 2021 was really rough. Our dog got sick, and after taking things as far as we could medically, had to be put down. A few months later a coworker of mine passed away unexpectedly (age 55). I looked around and realized that life was way too short and uncertain. I had a driveway and garage filled with parts and pieces of projects that I had started but was burned out on. They sat too long and the dream died. I was done. I realized things needed to change, so a bunch of stuff went down the road. I had to move on so I could focus on things that I actually wanted to do. Then as things were starting to get back to normal, we rounded out the year with my wife getting a condition that had the potential to cause blindness. Overall just not a good year.

2022 had its own struggles to drive the point home. I needed to focus. I needed to find something to sink my teeth into. Something that was worth the effort. I just did not know what. I remembered a friend of mine commenting a couple years before that he had bought my dream car in the form of a 1954 Commander Hardtop from its 2nd owner. I had pestered him a couple times about selling it before, and finally he said he was thinking about it. I had not even seen the car at this point, but eventually decided I to pursue this a little further.

It was a fairly solid car, pretty much complete minus the drivetrain. It had been partially disassembled years ago by its 2nd owner, but it was all there. He was not going to sell it until he found a different car to replace it, but we kept the conversation open and a tentative deal was struck. My wife and I had discussions of finding a compromise Studebaker around this time. Likely an early 2 door Lark. She wanted nothing to do with it. It was a 1960 Lark Convertible or nothing for her. No Compromise. Again I rolled my eyes and wished her good luck. I decided if given the chance I was going to move forward with my dream. Have my own personal Loewy (Burke actually) Hardtop to do whatever I wanted with.



Looking things over before a deal was struck. A few weeks later I got the call he had found his replacement car. A 1963 GT Hawk. The day after he towed it home from out of state, a friend and I took his tow rig to go retrieve my new car.



Loaded up and ready for the short drive home.



Unloading using a vintage Cub Cadet 100 as a brake. This is how I got to know the friend that sold me the Studebaker. This tractor was also purchased from him a few years back and was a 2021 mini project.



Pushed safely into its new home.





Got it up on the hoist and did a better inspection, plus a rough inventory of parts. One piece of trim was broken and the rear quarter panel trim spears are missing. Other than that (and the missing drivetrain) it was all there. The missing drivetrain was not a big deal. I figured it was just an open invitation to put something different in. I had a Studebaker, but I was not going to go down the Studebaker power rabbit hole.

 

Spent a couple days pulling the interior and then a full Saturday with a pressure washer cleaning out years of grime and rodent remnants from this thing.








There are a couple soft spots at the base of the A pillars, plus the typical Studebaker front fender rust, but overall very solid for a Midwest car.



Picked up a "crate" engine one day after going to look at a cheap Lark 2 door. The car was pretty rough, and my wife was still set on getting a convertible, but I had an empty trailer so I figured I should at least bring something home. I got the engine cheap because no one knew any history on it. It turned out to be a 259 that was missing its rods and pistons.

Around this time I also drug home a couple Studebaker T10's and some other parts from a neighbor who has a 289 (Studebaker) powered 1930 Erskine Coupe hot rod.



I had also read that a B.O.P. scatter shield can be fit to a Studebaker, so I picked one of those up too. Suddenly the Studebaker power thing was starting to creep in, even though I swore that would not happen.

 

Good for you.... a long time coming true for a desire of the heart... but it has started
Back in early 60's my high school buddy and I put a 331 Hemi in his '53 HT
a couple of kids with basic hand tools and got 'er done..

 

Back in 1974 we started using Lakewood Oldsmobile scattershields behind Stude engines.
The starter pocket just happened to be in the same dr side spot where Stude put their starters
I forgot the Lakewood number, but it was for late 60s early 70s Olds, prolly bop too. Occasionally we used a common Chev scattershield, but that put the starter right where the 1962-64 Stude full-flow filter would be. The Olds scattershields would allow use on both full-flow, plus the earlier non-full-flow-filter blocks.
All the chevy clutch stuff fit right together on the Stude flywheel.
The scattershield fit almost like a cork in the Stude floor tunnel but they fit.
When you start using heavy duty pressure plates, you will have to beef up the Stude linkages etc. I started twisting and bending stuff until I forced myself to make my own beefed up linkage parts. It's worth it.
A 19 yr old skinny kid driving his Stude hotrod slowly at Daytona Beach with a 3200 lb Zoom clutch left this kid's left leg trembling at every stoplight, hoping my leg didn't give up and send me straight thru the light. But the upside was that with the bias ply tires of the time, I could leave rubber in 3 out of four gears.
Sounds dumb, but it was a great thrill for this 19 yr old hotrodder.
If anybody remembers seeing this white 55 zipping around Orlando and Daytona in 1974-75 , it was me.

 

I had tracked down the missing trim pieces and some hubcaps for the car and went to my first Studebaker swap meet in the fall to pick them up.



While at the swap meet I was talking to someone about my wife's dream Lark. He walked me over to a different vendors booth and pointed out a for sale sign for one that was local to me. I snapped a picture and sent it to my wife and told her we should check it out. What we found was a pretty solid car that had been restored 10 or 15 years ago, but was in need of some TLC. The price was right and it was local. She wasn't sure and we did not have a place to put it with winter approaching. With some help from my neighbor with the Erskine I found winter storage for if we bought the car, and he gave my wife a little pep talk about how cool of a car it was. I stayed out of the discussion, but eventually she decided to go forward with it.



We decided to trailer it the 20 miles or so home since the brakes seemed fussy and the tires were pretty dry rotted. We spent a week or two going over it, cleaning it, and prepping it for storage.





Here it is all tucked away for winter. Lots of plans are being made for this car. This will be the family cruiser, so that frees mine up to be a little more wild if I choose to go down that path.

 

@dare-to-be-different It was some of your old posts that got be going the B.O.P. bellhousing direction. I don' t have it all the way figured out yet but we are getting closer.



I'll leave it there for the night, but I'll be back with more updates tomorrow.

 

WOW.
COOL!
Thanks for letting me know I made a difference no matter how small. Thanks!

 

That Erskine is one of the nicest Stude-rods I've seen. Got to see to go thru it's build stages at small stude meets over the years past.
Nice convert Lark, wife's gonna really enjoy that.
On the 54 hrdtp, you might want to consider keeping the 3-point star. IIRC, those weren't used long, the tie-in was from Mercedes. If it's in fair-decent shape, there'll be interest from the stude-restorers iffen you're inclined to sell. Floors look real decent. Maybe visit the SDC & Racing Studebakers sites, if you don't know about them. .
If you don't know, there's a *very* good stude swap at St Josephs' County Fair grounds in South Bend each yr, it's now the "June" meet, instead of the "May"meet. Should be better weather, not too far away... Junje 2nd & 3rd.
Marcus...

 

Greta thread and story.... keep it coming!

 

Great starts for your projects, can't go wrong with that coupe and your Wife is going to have a fun little cruiser. Have Fun, Carp.

 

You're screwed!
I own a '53 Stude and a rusty '60 Lark convertible.....
If you haven't already, Join the Studebaker Drivers Club. The news letter Turning Wheels is pure gold.
Studebaker people are great, and they're notoriously cheap, which helps keep prices down. It's amazing what is out there in parts, NOS and otherwise. People outside think parts are a problem, but that's just not an issue.
The cars are mechanically good, but a mix of innovations and outdated engineering. The company's history is like a roller coaster ride, they were all over the place with ideas.
Despite your intentions, if you do go Studebaker V8, you will have something interesting. (not another SBC!) They are super rugged (HEAVY) little engines that can make some power, but that won't come cheap!
The front ends are spooky with the weird steering and kingpins. A lot of guys try to adapt rack and pinions, but the architecture and geometry fight it. The track width is narrow, so a lot of front clips leave the tires hitting the fenders. I have a Fatman under my '53.
Studebakers make great fun cars that people love to see, because they're so uncommon in the wild.
I wish you the best of luck! I'll stop here, but keep us posted!

 

get on the Studebaker Drivers Club website for information, parts, contacts, etc.

 

Looks like a couple of cool projects! I'll be following your progress.....I'm a closet Stude fan, I have a '56 Stude 1/2 ton PU waiting for some love.

 

My long term project.
The Quick Change axle is in, brakes made and in place and wheels chosen, the transmission is sitting and waiting...for me to finish the engine.




The intake manifold -
A chopped up Chevrolet manifold, with some spacers, will now work on the Stude engine.


Mike

 

It appears you found a decent example, my 53 was a total rustbucket from Minnesota I ended up buying three Hawks to build mine (and I used a SBC/700R4 combo) as well as a 58 Hawk chassis (the later frames are heavier), Classic Enterprises in Wisconsin recycled some of my money for replacement tin (maybe all you will need is A pillar supports?). https://www.classicent.com/ If your car doesn't have the "batwing" (provides additional support of the body at the A Pillar) I'd also suggest you procure one to help with body rigidity.

Good luck on your project and glad your wife got involved too I'd also suggest (as others have) joining the SDC, the members have helped me immensely.

 

Have fun with your project.

 

A suggestion. Join the SDC and then join the Northstar chapter here in Minnesota.
Great bunch of people and a lot of members won't mind if you are modifying your cars.
Excellent source for finding parts plus they are a fun bunch to hang out with.

 

My intentions for my car are to use it as a hot rod, not to let it sit around and stare at it. Take it drag racing, autocrossing, cage it and do La Carrera, take it out to Bonneville, even if it is just to run it in the USFRA 130 club. I don't care if it is actually good at any of the above, but I want to have something of my own just to go actually do all of the stuff I dream about. There are probably a many better platforms to do lots of these activities in, but it's just not going to have the style and class of the Studebaker. Segments of the hobby have gotten so specialized that a guy probably needs a car built for each discipline. I live in town, and work out of a small shop, so I just can't have a bunch of specialized cars. The car will evolve and change over the years depending on what I want to do with it. Having the Lark around as a family cruiser will hopefully make this process easier just in case mine ends up not being a great street car.

In either case, my hot rod or our cruiser, I want the cars to have good brakes. Even though I am fairly young, I have driven enough sketch old trucks and jeeps with bad brakes for a lifetime. My wife however has always had somewhat modern disc brakes. I don't want her to have to fight a sticking drum brake to keep the car on the road, or blow though a stoplight when a brake line blows out on a single master system. Good modern disc brakes. Something I can go down to that parts store and likely find parts on the shelf. I also decided pretty early on that I wanted to keep the floor mounted pedals. It just seems to fit the character of the cars. Yes, I could brace up the firewall and convert to hanging pedals, and then actually fit a power booster, but I don't want to. I could also order up a very nice kit from a couple of different companies that make parts for these cars. I also could have bought a tri-five Chevy and built the whole car out of a catalog. But that is not the direction I want to go.

I wanted to fit as as large of a rotor as I could, while still fitting it below an average 15" wheel. Again, manual brakes and I am setting one of these cars up for my wife. I spent quite a bit of time tying to find a 12" or so rotor that had a deep hat height to push it as close to the kingpin as possible to maximize wheel clearance. Lots of trips to the parts store looking at my options. We even had to use a real paper parts book in the quest. Lots of options were considered including all aftermarket stuff, but I wanted to be able to get parts fairly easily. Eventually I landed on mid 2000's Ford Ranger / Explorer Rotors and Calipers. These are Ø12" and 1" thick and available in lots of different grades at pretty much any parts store.

They get at close as I dare to the kingpin and just need the I.D. slightly opened up to fit over an Avanti disc brake hub. I wanted to stay away from having to customize components, but it did not work out that way. The 1956 and newer castings are all the same from what I have researched, but the disc brake cars had the back surface machined to get the rotor to run straight. So essentially I am making an Avanti disc brakes with modern parts. My original 1954 hubs are machined on the back, but have a much bigger inner bearing so the rotors need a lot more machined out. I also have also not figured out what wheel studs I need to put this combination together, but I'm sure there is a solution.

I designed up a 2 piece caliper bracket in SolidWorks and used paper templates to prove the idea out with a caliper I borrowed from the parts store since I want not sure on the caliper at this point. I had already modified the rotor, so I owned it either way at this point. It was fun figuring out the pattern on the back of spindle. It turns out Studebaker liked to use simple bold circles for stuff. The real trick is figuring out the bolt circle, and what segments were skipped. What looks like a simple 6 bolt pattern with 2 holes moved down is actually a 24 bolt circle with a bunch of segments skipped to make the pattern. Or something like that. Nothing ever ends up being a good clean angle, but it is a good multiple of something. Lots of trips were taken between the computer and the shop, cutting out paper templates trying to get in the head of a designer 70+ years ago. It was a frustrating process, but eventually the light bulb goes off and you get it.

Once I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, I sent the files out to a local fabrication shop to have the parts laser cut. Laser (or waterjet) cut parts are shockingly cheap if you can find the right place to do them. This place had no problem doing quantities of 1 for me, and can usually turn the parts around in a day or two fitting them into a job they are already cutting anyways. Pictured are my first prototypes. The washers and drilled out nuts between the adapter and spindle will be replaced with a machined part on the real version. The 2 pieces will ultimately be welded together. I decided to bridge around the kingpin to grab a 4th bolt on the spindle, as opposed to the 3 used on the Avanti setup. As I designed this I purposely did not look at the commercially available setups. I did not want to be copying someone else's work. Once I had my prototypes in hand and proven out I decided it was safe to look. I found that I did essentially done the same thing that the other kits were doing, which was a good confirmation.

So far I have had a variety of 5-7" wide steel and aluminum wheels over the brakes. OEM and aftermarket and have not seen anything com close to hitting the caliper. I still need to sort out the brake hose, but I think I have a solution on the way. Wheel bearings and seals were in stock at the parts store. So far I am very happy with the way this part of the system is turning out. Hopefully real life testing goes well once the snow and salt are gone from the roads here.

 

Nice work on those brakes. FYI: Jim Turner in South Carolina makes kits that'll fit your cars, I have one on my 62 Lark. www.turnerbrake.com

 

Yeah, but well overweight for their purpose. I bought a set...and sold them before mounting.
My second wagon uses a modified Hotrods & Brakes bracket, with Wilwood / GM aluminum calipers.
Again, light weight, but plenty to do the job in excellent fashion.

Mine are similar to the above and work VERY well.




Mike

 

Doesn't matter where you're goin' in a Studebaker, it will be a better trip. Even those who don't know cars recognize style.

jack vines, third generation Studebaker owner

 

SDC membership has been applied for. Once I get that complete I will definitely be joining the North Star chapter. My neighbor with the Erskine has been after me for a few years to get a Studebaker and join the club. Pretty sure he told me more that once to sell off all my "stuff" and get a Studebaker. Peer pressure I tell ya. I have been lurking on the Studebaker forums but have yet to join up. Some prominent members over there are also active here. I have been developing numerous connections locally as well.

It has been pretty cool so far researching the history of the company and the cars. It's just a wild roller coaster ride with some really high highs and some really low lows. Lots of innovation and scrappiness to keep going the way they did.

I spent lots of time researching different options for steering and suspension. Ultimately I decided if a person was building something for high performance, cutting it off and starting over would be a viable option. We would not discuss that here, and realistically most of what gets swapped on is mechanically inferior, and does not actually improve geometry. With the kingpin and trunnion arrangement the arms have to be on the same plane, which definitely limits performance, but how many of us are actually worried about getting the caster camber curve or anti-dive dialed in just right? For now my thought is to rebuild what is there, ideally with 61+ kingpins and lower pivots for a little more (less?) castor, and maybe drop the upper inside pivot down towards the frame for better camber gain if the need ever arises.

 

Nice job on the disc brakes. It is good to improve the braking.

 

Couple guys in the Northstar chapter have raced a Stude at Bonneville and did the Flying Mile in Ohio.
There is a gentleman near Plainview that was involved in a serious '54 coupe Bonneville car out of Winona.
Can't remember his name but ask around and you will get the contact info.
Any knowledge is good to get even if you discard it.

 

Some Studebaker stories from my past. Around about 1960 I was hanging out at filling station/used car lot learning about cars. One customer had a 56 Hawk with a 3 on the tree. His only complaint about his Hawk was that his knuckles hit the dash eyebrow when he shifted hard into 2nd gear. Another customer had a 53 or 54 with and Oldsmobile engine that was pretty hot. A few years later I was working at another filling station and my boss bought a 53 Studebaker coupe as a daily driver. It had a 6 that had been rebuilt, but the "rebuilder" put a couple of rod caps on backwards. The engine wouldn't turn over on the starter so he towed around the block until it would. We dropped the pan used some emery on the crank throws and some tapered shims. It would run for a few weeks before it would develop a rod knock and we would tighten it up again.

Years later I was running the shop for a Dodge dealer who had originally been a Hudson dealer and picked up Studebaker when Hudson went under. We had a customer who had a 60 Lark convertible, bought it new. He had us rebuild the engine around 1982. It was a solid car that just needed a little TLC.

 

For the rear end of both of these cars I decided to go the simple route and use a Ford 8.8" rear axle. I have a 9" for mine, but nowhere near enough power to justify its use and the parasitic loss associated with the low placement of the pinion gear. Long term mine might get the 9" or a quick change, but for now the 8.8 will do. 3.73 gears, limited slip, disc brakes, pretty stout, great parts availability. Yada Yada Yada.

I picked up a couple of late 90's explorer axles and narrowed them 2.875" on the long side using another short side shaft. This takes them down to 56.75", so nearly 2" narrower than the 58.5" that the Studebaker came with. Now I have an easier time getting bigger rubber in and out of the rear fender, and I have much more wheel selection. The stock Studebaker wheels are 4.5" wide I believe, and nearly all of that is backspacing.



Hard to see, but a typical 15x7 wheel is going to push the tire pretty pretty far out using the stock axle. Plus I didn't want to deal with upgrading to one piece shafts, updating the brakes, re-gearing, etc.



So junkyard parts and a welder to the rescue. I debated about buying a fixturing bar and pucks, but decided to sleeve it internally instead with a 6" long piece of DOM tube that was slit through at the seam. This made it spring open and act like an internal clamp, very effectively aligning the tubes together. 100% correct? No, but every bit as straight as it started out. I made sure to penetrate down into the root and did numerous low power passes with the TIG to help keep things straight. If I ever get to the point of pushing the rear ends strength wise, or get this thing going fast I will re evaluate.

I also made custom spring perches that drop the axle a little further from the leaf spring. Off the top of my head between the perch and the larger diameter tube I lowered lowered the rear end around 1.5". I also modified the stock U-bolt plates to work with the 3.25" wide U-bolts. I will have to do a second set of plates for the Lark once it gets out of storage.

My car will wear steel wheels for now, so I have a set of 15x5 and 15x7 Wheel Vintiques series 62 wheels waiting for the car. The front was going to be a 6" wide wheel, but I have been waiting since November to get a second one, so I changed plans.

The Lark has too much of an "old man" look right now. Nose up stance (screw in coil spacers), narrow whites, and dog dish caps. Just not the look we want. We don't want anything too aggressive, but a bit of attitude is ok. After much hemming and hawing I saw that Halibrand Sprint wheels were on a really good sale a couple months ago, so I got a set of 6" front and 7" rear wheels with the exact same backspacing that my steel wheels had planned on originally. It turn out the sale was because that finish was going out of production. In a panic I bought another one of each to have around as spares for even cheaper than the first set. I think I got one of the last of the 15x7's that they had in stock. The Lark is getting radial tires. There, I said it. As a family cruiser I think its worth the aesthetic sacrifice just for general usability and improved, predicable handling. My wife has never had to experience a bias ply tire grabbing grooves in the road trying to pull the steering wheel out of your hand, and I'm fine keeping it that way.



After some trial and error (because tires always run short) I landed on 205/75R15 front and 235/75R15 rear. I wanted a true 26" tall front tire and a true 28" tall rear tire and this was the closest I could get. My car could take an even taller rear tire (and a 16" rear wheel), but this set should work nice on both cars if we ever want to change things up.






Here they are on my car with the font springs pulled (no drivetrain) and sitting on the hoist using a 2x4 as a frame adapter. This is the approximate 2" rake that my car seems to want. If I go more than 1.5" lower it will not fit over the hoist anymore (without ramps anyways) so it is probably low enough for now. We will see how it sits with a drivetrain in it one of these days.

 

Drivetrain wise the Lark has an ok running 259. The block says its a 259 and I confirmed the stroke while inspecting it. It had a part throttle lean bog, but once you got part that it was ok for the couple miles I drove it. I suspect a bad accelerator pump. The fix will be a 4 barrel. Probably a 500 CFM Edelbrock AVS2 based on what I have read over on the SDC forums. Tying to stay within the spirit of the original Carter, but with some modern updates. I am traditionally a Holley guy, but for a driver this will be great. Give the distributor (a Prestolite for now) some love or swap it out, put a few gaskets in it and we should be good. It has a 3 on the tree with O.D. and the current plan is to keep it that way.

In my quest to get my car on the road road ASAP and on a budget I found a running 259 out of a truck on marketplace. It had been swapped in, and I have not bothered to look up the numbers to see when it was made. I was told it ran and was pretty cheap and came with a bunch of parts and a truck 4 speed, so I brought it home.



These little Tacoma's thrive on abuse BTW. The human body? Not so much. About 3 minutes after taking this picture I managed to slip a disc in my lower back fighting with the engine hoist. I am on the mend now an taking corrective lifestyle actions to prevent this from happening again.



I borrowed a run in stand from my neighbor with the Erskine. Conveniently it was already set up for use with a Studebaker. Hooked up a couple of wires, sprayed some gas down the carb and we had a runner.



Oil pressure at a very low unsteady idle running off a spray bottle. It idles a bit higher now that I have hooked it up to a small gas tank and can run on its own. Of course it leaks everywhere, but that goes with the territory I am told. The dry cranking compression is around 150 psi on 6 cylinders, 145 on 1, and 140 on another non-adjacent cylinder. That's a 7% spread, so I am ok with that considering that this thing has been sitting a while. I think I can make out 040 stamped in the top of a piston, so I think this had been gone through before. No smoke to speak of either.

 

I partially stripped down my "crate" engine to use it for my bellhousing conversion that @dare-to-be-different had talked about. By this point I had also had conversations with @PackardV8 and @Mike VV, as well as numerous other people and hours of reading on forums about Studebaker performance. I was going down the rabbit hole. There was no turning back now. I had said I was looking for something to sink my teeth into, and I had found it.



I started with the block plate, dialing it in and transfer punching holes. Lots of horsing around, careful checking, some TIG welding later I was ready to transfer the holes into the bellhousing.





Thankfully it fit on the first try. I still need to deal with the dowel holes, but have not decided how I want to approach that yet. I will need to run socket head cap screws on the real version.



Studebaker to modified B.O.P. to Ford / Chevy adapter to Studebaker T10. The aluminum adapter is acting as a spacer since the Studebaker bellhousing is about 5/8" deeper than the Brand X stuff. I pulled it out and was surprised to find that the input shaft seems to clear the crank just fine. I will need to do some careful measuring to see if I can run it that way or not. I am definitely not running a stock cast flywheel, so I am sorting that out currently. I hope to outgrow the T10 power wise some day, but for now it should work great. I also have a disassembled one, but am not sure what is broken or missing. I am hoping this one is good and complete inside, but have not opened it up yet.

I am currently making plans to buy some parts for what should end up being a pretty cool 289 as a stage 2 engine for my car. I'm also doing some daydreaming about the engine after that too. With the availability of high octane ethanol gas at every gas station (like it or not) we have some interesting opportunities for Studebaker performance.
As others have said these things were built tough around the theory of readily available high octane post-war gas. Studebaker might have been a few decades off on the timing, but eventually it worked out. Combine that with some forced induction to overcome the poor flowing heads and I should be able to have some fun following in the footsteps of Studebaker and many enthusiasts over the years.

 

Keep up the good work!

To get past the "poor flowing heads" you will need to cut away the factory built in restrictor rings called Factory Valve Seats, and reject everyone who insists on cutting for hardened seats.
Using a 60° Neway cutter, you can remove the biggest power waster bottleneck, and convince your Stude engine it is much bigger than it thinks it is.
You can bring the seats WAYYY out to actual bowl size, and cut bigger valves slightly to match your new bigger seats.
If you ever have any shop cut for seat inserts, you have killed any chances of big flow, and need to start with another set of heads to start over.
I have been running street cars, and daily drivers since 1971 like this, and really run them hard.
Cutting away those factory choke-rings out to bowl size makes a huge difference.
Ignore the passionate appeals that tell you to pay them to install Hardened choke rings.
On valve size- bigger is better only to a point. Stop short of creating your own shrouding, no matter how tempting it is to copy someone's slightly bigger bragging number.

Make your valves match your best bowl work, not the other way around.
What you see in the pics are heads done in the 70s, 80s, 90s
This was when a flow bench was almost never available to anyone. Today the planning might be different somewhat, but this was what gave the biggest bang for the buck if you had a workbench and not a laboratory.

 

From what I have read, people have very different opinions on hard valve seats. Obviously people have been doing it both ways for a long time on many different engine families, so it can't be a simple matter of right and wrong. It seems like a balancing act between performance and longevity to me.

My understanding is the valves really don't get to go a whole lot bigger due to the small bores and valve location. How big is everyone going on valve sizes before it stops being beneficial? What about putting a hard seat in makes the port necessary smaller? Just a simple matter of geometry, or risk of hitting water? Could a person compromise and put hardened seats on the exhaust side only since it already flows relatively ok? I obviously have never done any head work beyond lapping valves, so this will definitely be a learning process as time goes on.

For now I'm planning on putting some gaskets and a paint job on the 259 I have and leaving it more or less alone just to get the car on the road. Carb and ignition updates, but otherwise try to leave it alone for now.

I have done some reading on flywheels for these. I know that aluminum flywheels are available, but I'm planning on going with steel at least for now. When people use other flywheels are they reworking the counter bore that locates it to the crank? Or is it just a matter of keeping RPM's down?

I have spoken a a manufacturer that can make make be a custom flywheel to spec for a pretty reasonable price, so I am thinking of going that way. I can get the locating bore done to the right size for some high RPM future engine with no worries.

My big questions are ring gear size and mounting it to the crank. I think I need to set it up like a Pontiac and use a 166 tooth flywheel with this bellhousing. Any thoughts on this?

For mounting it to the crank, I can plan on using studs and nuts counterbored in like how Studebaker did. Or I was looking at tapping out the crank to 7/16-20. The flange is the same thickness as a SBC and I can get 6 or 7 good threads into that thickness if I recall correctly.