Hello everyone, My wife just rolled her car. It was an '07 Yaris. Fortunately the Lord was looking out for her and she was completely unharmed. She had it when we got married. Now that it's gone I'm planning on building her a '37 Chevrolet. We plan to have children in the coming years so the plan is to make a 4 door car as our family car. My end plan is to have a '37 4 door and basically make a good family car. I've tried to find informative websites online, but can't seem to find any real good information sources. I'm used to working on old, original cars. I'm new to the "street rod" type of thing. I understand this website is based on pre '64 technology, but with the huge membership I thought someone might be able to point me in the right direction. At least it's better than buying some new piece of crap, and I told her another Japanese car is absolutely out of the question. Thanks, Brandon
Really depends on what you are wanting to do. The street rod thing isn't going to fly around here but if you narrow down what you are looking to do you might get some answers. Chevs of the 40's is a good place to find parts. Might be a starting point.
There is a hamb group for 37 & 38 chevys. My dad has a un-restored 38 deluxe sedan. I have been on him to do something with the car.
Put a Mustang II front suspension with bigger disc brakes on the front. Put swapy bar, P/S and P/B. Put whatever engine and trans you want, keep the hood closed if it is late model fool injected. Put an open drive rearend on the stock leafs in back, maybe a 2 inch block to get it lower. Put seatbelts in it. Parts for the 37-38 Chevy's are not too bad to get, old or new repro. I and I Reproductions makes a lot of them along with Chev's of the 40's. These cars are pretty easy to build, and would make a great driver for your wife and kids.
hahaha, well matt, I think you've been more help than any of the other websites I've found since this post. Yeah, I know the streetrod thing won't fly here and that's why I didn't want to straight up ask for suggestions on this site, but I know there are so many people here that they might have knowledge of other sites. Personally, I don't like streetrods myself, however it's the only compromise we can make to have my wife drive a car daily and it be a cool car. She wants something from the 30s and I want her to have complete reliability and not have to take backroads to Indiana by herself when she has to drive 3 hours away. Also, I want safety glass and seats with seatbelts. My concession is that I'm going to use all bolt on stuff so it can always be turned back into the original car (i'm keeping everything) and hopefully you won't be able to tell it has a more modern engine in it, except for maybe a SLIGHTLY lower stance from original and the 8 inch whitewall tires on reproduction artillery wheels. Thanks for the suggestions.
Don't get too carried away with being all bolt-on and reversible. 37-38 (and for that matter 39 too) Chevy's are not that rare, and a four door will not be worth as much stock as a good updated rod style driver. Most people with a lower non-gasser style 37-39 Chevy have Must II front end. You could use a dropped solid axle, but for what you want, the IFS Must II is the way to go.
I agree with what you said about original cars not being worth as much, but my passion is for original and period cars, so one day if my wife gets a different car after our children are grown it's likely I'd like to have the original '37 back. I like the experience of driving them just as people who lived with them did. Brandon
Thanks Vergil, I've never seen that first one, and I've pretty much turned every link I can find on google purple from having looked at them all. Brandon
...get a Chassis Engineering catalog, they have bolt-on stuff to upgrade everything... at least a good start.
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