Projects The Best 1955 Cadillac build

hahaha...:d

 

My new subscribed thread. Awesome ride.

 

Fantastic job - Both the build and the documentation. Regardless of the style of car that anyone prefers (early, late, gasser, muscle car, etc), you have to appreciate the results of your work. I'm looking forward to your next "progress report".

 

Where'd that shade of purple on the engine come from? Is it a factory color?

Very slick.

 

YEA count me in, I saw it.I am one of the 1,000.Nice job Roger.A lot of work went into the Caddy.I like how your skirts turned out. Is it painted yet? Rick

 

Awesome looking Cadillac! Those fender skirts are fabulous,too!

 

The caddy motor looks great ,love the color,Sean gets a laugh out of the colors we paint these caddy mills,so far I've painted them orange,dark metallic green,light grey and ford blue.
Seans doing a chevy 350 for my 1974 K5 blazer ,he's also putting the original 472 caddy motor for the 1970 coupe back together.
Ya need any chrome trinkets for the new motor?

 

I really enjoyed your build on the cad. Thanks for taking all the time and posting with explanations. Good luck with the finish product.

 

HOLY SHIT This is not a dial-up friendly thread....damn I need to move closer to civilization!!! I just love how this is coming along. Great build, great thread. Thanks soo much for taking time to give us the details and updates. SWEET.

 

Just read every page of this build thread. Excellent work so far, can't wait to see it in paint.

 

Me too ..... I'm on the hook now ..... keep me posted.

Paco

 

I'm hitchin a ride on this one!!

Your car looks awesome!! Very nicely done.

I appreciate your posting all this info, I have learned a great amount.

Bill

 

just read this entire thread, VERY impressive work. Gave me lots to think about for my own car, although I dont plan on doing anything this extensive, it's always nice to see what can be done and what others are doing out there.

 

Your right there Captain!! I read the whole thing with great intrest. I've admired Kustoms for years but never knew all of the "tricks". This is great.

Bill

 

I LOVE seeing the updates on this bad boy!

 

Have got to admire your ambition and skills. Thanks for sharing some cool ideas, good luck, and Happy New Year!

 

Nice Baddillac...

 

One quick question: I plan on smoothing the firewall in our 55 Cad as well. You said you left small drains for the factory vent. Where are these drains? Did you also remove the stock heating stuff from under the dash?

Bill

 

BIll, the drains are 1/2" deep, all across the bottom of the wide firewall...when you remove your air boxes, you'll see how the water flows down the factory channels...I left the area open all across the bottom of each air box...1/2" by about 14"...

Yes pulled out all the stock heater crap, including the tubes in the doors and the cardboard in the kick panels...I hid my 6" x 9" speakers in those kick panel boxes...when you pull yours apart you'll see what I mean...

Since Bill kicked this back to the top, let me show you the little progress on the Caddy...

Finally got the engine pulled out...and found out the oil pan Sean put on the rebuilt engine is not going to work in my frame...I've got an Eldo pan and apparently the one he put on mine is an early stocker. Now I'll have to pull my pan and have him swap the two...and prolly the oil pickup as well...it's always something that slows you down when building a car. Everything else on the engines simply interchanges.

Now I can start on the firewall ....again...I'm simply going to sand it and then seal it...no sense taking it all the way down to bare metal again. I've also decided to paint the toeboard and firewall/body mounts black...that way it will all disappear.



In the meantime, I've started filling the inner fender panels...they are getting smooth as well. When Cadillac formed them, they apparently didn't have a press strong enuff to keep the panels from wrinkling...so I'm smoothing the wrinkles out as well as smoothing the area I welded pieces into to make the A-arm openings. Both inner fenders need to be smoothed and just as soon as I'm done with them, they'll go to the body man.



The hood is done and it sure looks good...ten times better than I could ever get it...guess that's why I'm not a body man full time...the front bumper has been pulled apart and it's ready to go to the chromers...

Once the firewall is painted and cleared, then I can clean the frame...again...can't believe how dirty it got just from one summer of driving...the underside is still clean, but found out the pinion seal in the rear end is leaking...guess I'll have to fix that before taking the car any long distance this summer.

Well, now that the new year is here...it looks like it's going to be hurry-up time...got quite a ways to go before May one.

R-

 

Thanks Roger!! That makes sense.

Can't wait to see your ride all done, she should be a very sweet Cad.

Bill

 

WOW!!!! thats all i have to say....

 

Beautiful Caddy! I second the "WOW!"

 

So sweet! Keep the updates coming.

 

I love this thread.....makes me want to to things to my 54 coupe deville. great woork.

 

Guess it's time for an update...but check back later, I've got to go shoot some pix...

R-

 

Tease.........

 

all I have to say is WOW...I just read this for the first time...what an awesome documentation! I think I just spent 2 hrs reading this entire thread.... I need to be getting work done! Great Job!

 

Since it’s been better than a month or so, we’re all due for an UPDATE …

So we’ll call this one: IT AIN’T YELLOW NO MORE…!!!

Follow along on this part of the “SAGA” of RE-building my Caddy AFTER it spent a summer on the road…

It’s been a tuff row to hoe this last few weeks…not only because of the weather (we’ve had more snow, and cold, this winter then any I can remember in the past) but every time I tried to do something on the car, it simply didn’t work and I got stymied…but, I’m not a fatalist, I’m the kind that’ll keep at it until it gets done…

So…once the front clip was completely off and gone to the bodyman, it was time to pull that dirty, tired engine…



When it was on the floor, I noticed the oil pans were not the same…I’d told my engine builder what kind of pan I had and he said “No prob, I have one like it.” NOT…!!! I could tell from looking at his pan on my new engine, it was not going to clear the Trans Am cross-member, I called him up and he came and got the old tired engine and the new one, said he’d get it changed and, “I’ll get it back to you next weekend.” Great, we’ll have the firewall and panels done by then and we can put the engine/tranny back in. Once he drove off with both engines in his truk, I started on the firewall and underhood panels -- they needed to be prepped and painted…the yellow paint was going away for good…!!! Well, that’s where the first of the problems arose…the panels weren’t as straight as I thot, so after folding some new ones, some welding, some grinding, some filling, some sealer and primer, they were good to go (for paint)…and all of that takes time…more than I figured. Two weeks went by…way too fast.

The very last thing I needed to do was sand the firewall…until I realized I hadn’t given any thot to where I was going to place the bulkhead for the A/C unit. Hmmmmmm, better do that before I put on new paint. I crawled under the dash to scope it out…


In this pic you can see I’ve fitted the A/C unit, it just barely hangs out the bottom of the dash.

So, I determined, after thinking about it while I was sanding…if I’m going to order a bulkhead, I’d just as well get the proper Vintage Air unit I need to fit.

I pulled the top of the dash off to get a better idea of where the A/C unit would fit and tried to figure out where the bulkhead needed to fit.

While I was laying under the dash, it came to me that I remembered seeing an Alliance vendor that carried Vintage Air…I called up Jason at the Hot Rod Garage, a HAMB ALLIANCE Vendor in Sand Springs, OK and asked him if he had a Vintage Air Gen IV Magnum A/C mock-up unit…he did, and would he let me borrow it…??? He asked how long I would have it as they do a lot of A/C installs and needed it…I said only as long as it takes me to fit it (less than a week)…

The reason I asked him was simply because he is an Alliance Vendor, besides, NO ONE in Denver had a mock-up unit…imagine that…??? They all wanted to order one and me buy it. Why spend money for something I was only going to use once. Well, Jason sent the unit…and guess what, even tho the Caddy is huge…the Magnum unit would not fit under my dash, it was too wide…oh man…two steps forward and one backward. I would’ve wasted my cash buying a mock-up…even the bulkhead unit he sent me wasn’t going to work.

I sent it all back and asked him to send me the Gen IV “Super” unit…and a new bulkhead…a week later it was here…the “Super” just barely fit, but the bulkhead he sent wouldn’t work, I was literally out of room. On the phone again… “Jason, send me a straight up and down bulkhead.”…it arrived in three days. Perfect. That little project consumed better than two weeks…we’ll get that firewall painted yet…besides, the engine still isn’t back…“Sean, where’s my engine…???”

In the meantime, my bro, Dan, asked if I would help do some small things on his ’54 Caddy since “you’ve got a small opening and there isn’t much to do on yours.”



“Sure bring the car over, we’ll see what we can get done.” Well, the power steering pump was leaking (and it was rebuilt last March), so we took it off and back to the rebuilders, a couple of the oil lines were leaking so we sealed them up…Dan had purchased some new front shocks and sway bar bushings, just as well put them on…then he got the NewPort Engineering electric wiper motor he ordered (what great timing…!!!), it fits good and works well but had a hella time removing the old stock switch and installing the new electric switch. Weeeeeeeelllll, Dan’s speedo and odometer haven’t worked since the day we put his Caddy on the road so he says, “Can we pull the cluster and get at the switch that way…???” and, “Then I can take the whole thing down and get it rebuilt.” Why not, work has stopped on my Caddy and I can’t seem to get Sean to return my calls about my engine…did I just lose my cash and my engine…??? We pulled all the window trim, the dash cap, the steering column covers and dropped the column to remove the cluster…what a pain that was…but it came out...!!!

Two more weeks go by, but we did get Dan’s instrument cluster rebuilt and back in…the power steering pump got resealed (for zero dollars, I might add, they stood behind their work) and his car is now ready for spring (with the exception of installing a new windshield in March or April ).

In the meantime, as I’m working on Dan’s car, I have lots of time to think… I figured there was no sense simply painting the firewall when the door openings need to be jambed, too…guess we’ll sand all that stuff and get it ready, too. I pulled the doors apart – meaning -- the power window motors came out, the glass came out, the vent windows came off and the doors came off the car.



With the doors off and the glass out…I decided it’d be best to remove the interior…it doesn’t need to get painted, or overspray all over it…I removed the rear seat, moldings and armrest and stored them in my bedroom (when you’re single and a bachelor, you can do that…!!!). BTW, the rest of the car’s trim and moldings are in my living room, I seldom use that room.



I’ll remove the front seat when it gets to the body man…and yes, I’m well aware the carpet will be ruined by the time the body work is done…but it’s OK…I decided, after spending a lot of time in the car last summer, the bright purple carpet was not the color I cared for…it’s going to get replaced in March or April with something more in tune to the colors in the seats...AFTER the car gets painted.

When I’d taken the doors down to my bodyman, we got to talking about timing as far as getting the car done as he knows I want to have this car ready to debut at GoodGuy’s event here in ColoRODo in June…he asked who was going to paint the firewall and jambs…I said I was and hoped it would turn out well. He said, “If you want, I can come up and do it.” I didn’t expect that…and since he was well aware I’m not the world’s greatest painter, and since I have an ancient spray gun, and since I tend to get in a hurry when I paint, I asked when he had some free time. “Sunday afternoon/evening would be good,” he said…works for me, that’ll give us Saturday to mask it all off…

It took us most of Saturday to mask the car…the doors were the tuffest part…but it got done.





Sunday afternoon at 4:00 he showed up, box of materials and spray gun in hand…he inspected my handiwork and mask job and pronounced it workable. He mixed up the sealer, cleaned the painted area with wax and grease remover, tacked it off and set the air pressure on his gun……the yellow was going away for ever…!!!



It didn’t take long…I won’t miss it…FWIW, I was attempting an “ice yellow/pearl” look, but all my paint mixing pals in Denver couldn’t even come close to what I wanted…and once I’d tried their mixes, I was disappointed and decided a huge Caddy wouldn’t look good with yellow all over it…so I quit pursuing it.

In the meantime, I’d found a color I liked while attending the West Coast Kustoms event last May…I talked to the owner and he told me it was a Valspar color…well, not knowing much about Valspar and never using the stuff, and not even knowing if there was a store in Denver, I took the pictures of said vehicle to a PPG store I’d frequented many years ago and got to chatting with the store manager…”Sure, I can come close to that,” he told me after looking at the pics. "Give me a few days.” He called me a week later and said it was done…I went down and looked at the sprayed out sample and it was perfect… “That’ll do it…mix me a gallon.” We used DCC cuz it doesn’t require a catalyst…mix it with reducer and shoot. Yeah, it ain’t blitz black, hot rod flat, tractor paint or latex…and it ain’t cheap anymore, but I’ve always been partial to shiny paint…it makes a car…!!!

After waiting for the sealer to set, Len mixed up the color…three coats later it was lavender…matter of fact, right now I’m calling the color “Lilac.” I’ll think up a better name later.



We waited for the color to set and Len mixed the clear…three coats later it is mighty shiny…note the difference between the straight color and the clear on the edge of the cowl…it has a good gloss to it and at this point, a week later, it doesn’t need rubbing out…but it will get rubbed/polished when the rest of the car gets shot…



So, now I can put the engine/tranny back in (if it ever gets back here…“Hello Sean, you’re really holding me up on my project…I need that engine out here this weekend.” Sadly, a recording doesn’t talk back to you so I still don’t know if Sean will get my engine out here…I guess I’d better call my friend Tim Boyle (Mad-Cad) and ask him what’s up with Sean…



Once the engine/tranny gets back in, then we’ll take the rest of the car down for the rest of the body work…we ARE getting closer…

R-

 

that caddy looks sweet.

 

Beautiful!!!!