Ok, short history first. My Dad bought this car about 13 years ago and at the time it was a parade car that had been stored for thirty years until he bought it. He had plans to build a street rod and went so far as to purchase a Progressive Auto frame with a Corvette rear and had a Kugel front crossmember welded in by Brizio's. Then he removed a few pieces and let it sit for years until it was stored in a container in Santa Rosa until last weekend when I went down and picked it up. He has decided that he has too many projects and will never get to this one (bummer for me). So it is now in my garage and I have no intention of putting the above mentioned frame under it. This thing is way too nice to cut up, even though that was my original thought, the wood is even in good shape, just needs some work in the top area. So I need ideas from you early Chevy guys as far as better brakes, engine ideas, etc. The stock engine is frozed solid and is down to a short block, thanks to Dad. I would like to be able to drive it some reasonable distances and was wondering if there was a somewhat straightforward brake system upgrade. I want to keep this one basically stock looking but lower it a little with the stock suspension and change to better brakes. Let me know any ideas you have.....
I really like these chevy coupes... It sounds like you want to keep it more stock looking, but they look good chopped. Have you seen that 32 chevy coupe on here on a ford frame with the straight 6? That's a sweet car.. Lot's of possibilities!
Nice looking car! It's 1931, so it's 6 cylinder, right? Chev built 'blue flame' sixes, 250 ci, right up until the 70's from memory, then went to a 6 cyl SBF using lots of V8 components. If you want to keep it basically stock a much later Chev 6 with all the goodies should get it moving along nicely without cutting just about anything. Oh yeah, I found this too... http://1931chevrolet.com/ Cheers, Glen.
Gotta agree with 38chev about the coupe with the inline six. It's an amazing car. Hopefully someone will post the pictures of it. If or when you see it you will certainly be ready to do more. My opinion is the inline, new drive line with all new brakes maybe a T-5 tranny. That's the only way to really drive and enjoy this car.
I'm all for traditional, but I would use that chassis. You could still use a 6, wire wheels and a resto on the body and interior. I have one just like it.
Mine has '59 self-energizing Chevy truck brakes up front.(1/2 ton truck only!) Bolt on to the original spindles with the spacers used on the same truck. 11x2" Drums. I originally got this information from Squirrel here: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111548 The extra spacers on the bottom bolts in my pic are just placeholders for the original steering arms when I was mocking this up. Also had to grind about 0.030" off a corner on the spindle. I will likely upgrade them to self-adjusting since it's inexpensive and a nice thing to have. You may run into issues with your wheels, I've never seen the wires up close. My original disc wheels would have interfered with the new drums (original drums were conical shaped like the wheel center) so some creative wheel-making was in order.
38chev and 52HardTop are talkin' about this: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=258189 Its one of my favorites...
Yeah, I saw that car a while back and really liked it, and was going to go that direction until I saw the condition mine. I already cut up a '50 Chevy so I have a different motivation for this one. Thank you very much valkokir, that kind of swap is what I had in mind. It is a six cylinder GlenC so I may likely just do what you suggested and update the drivetrain to newer generation stuff that works. Right now I'm trying to keep this a bolt on build in case I ever decide to go back to completely stock - never been my train of thought before but these generation vehicles are becoming harder and harder to find unmolested. Maybe I'll just swap the body back and forth between the frames depending on my mood .
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