We I haven't posted this one one here but think some folks might like this one. I did some work for a friend of mine and got a 1951 Monarch in trade and the wife claimed it as her own. So around Sept this is where we started. Now seeing as this isn't actually going to be my car we decided on a chassis swap to which I had a 1986 or so Pontiac Parisienne was used for a donor. This is how it looked when we picked the Merc up. The start of the cropping of the Merc.
Fast forward to the donor, I'll spare you the tearing apart of this one other than there was lots that I didn't need. All the not needed stuff... Prepping the Merc for it's new chassis
No I think it was about 2" off but I had the car so I used it. I believe the Buick is a better fit only 1/2" off.
After lots of cutting and trimming. Rocker to Rocker fit was so close that the Merc rocker overlapped the Pontiac's.
You'll have to do a little head on your shoulder for a few of these Here is a shot of the rear fender tubs just needed little patches. Clean up the firewall a little more hindsight I should have left more material and trimmed it away, live and learn. This is where the donor door post use to be.
So here is where I ran into the fitment of the front fenders that I knew I was going to run into. To solve this I just moved the wheel well opening back a little. I wasn't to happy with the front part, and later in the build trimmed the opening to the grille piece to smooth the look over a bit. Here we have Esther doing her part as it is her car after all stripping all the paint off. Almost all the paint gone Sealing up the welds in the trunk
So at this point we started with the chop. On with the sacrificial first cut.... Many many cuts later. Giving the roof it's new shape. Fun times lol We decided since the rear window was broken on the 51 that we got a rear window out of a 1950 Merc.
More Chop!!!! This part actually posed the biggest problem really. Didn't help that I decided to change the way the rear window opening worked, but just kept plugging away at it and getting it done. Now for the rear.. Some new panel shapes
Now to put in perspective what we started with. Ah the fun with paper. Testing to see if I made it right Time to rid of the excesses. Little bit of welding to go. I also wasn't going to do all the welding haha time to learn babe.... Didn't take to long she got the hang of it. Told her your either a good welder or a good grinder.... She chose the first route.
Well time for some vent windows which is always the crappy part of any build. The arsenal.... Stripped apart What it need to turn into. Apply a little heat... Volaa More or less did round it out a little more down the road..
All that work and it only took a couple of hours??? Great ambitious project, you guys make a great team, I wish I could get my wife to just pass me the tools. Keep up the good work and keep us posted.
Subscribing. Looks great. I have a GM frame and pans in my car, fits good the rear of the frame was extended a bit.
Yeah will have more pics up tomorrow when I have time to post them it's actually almost at that point very little left to do.
Wow great build,looks like alot of pretty low buck fun! The 2 four doors I have are so rusty I have no choice wether I want a chassis swap! Gonna try and make a coupe as well even though I have no coupe parts..should be fun! Keep up the good work,looking forward to more pics too!
Normally I hate the GM into Ford thing but you're keeping another one rolling so that's great in my books. Great work thanks for posting it! BTW whatcha doing with my yellow hammer I was looking for that!
Excellent-é. Great job and a super nice flow on the chop. Four doors can look soooo bad above the rear door...you did good!
What a transformation! That is going to be a cool ride, I like the slope on the rear door window frames.
Thanks guys. Couple more pics. I love the back of this car!! So anyway at this point we where pretty tired of welding and stuff and started the mud.. Saving you all the drama of bondo and stuff Boom Primer! So we where hunting the paper and found some tires and rims for the car. Then I set out and started on the dash. I moved it out 4" to clean up the steering column and clear the heater box from the Pontiac. Few more touch ups.
So now we got a little paint in the door jams and some color on the dash. Started getting the interior back in. Then set out to make some sill plates. As the carpet didn't quite reach to where the original sill plates fit. Then made a makeshift head liner for this year. Gets a little dizzy in there staring at it haha Then I took a shot at making door panels turned out ok. But I do want to redo them as I now just got a good sewing machine. The typical house hold one works like ass to try to sew through vinyl and foam.
So at this point we had a friend of mine come out and do a little painting of her wheels and strip the dash before glass as put in. So any way this car just kept snowballing originally all I was going to do was just swap the body just to make a little room in the yard. But Esthers got so excited that I had started on her car. It was sitting in the lineup for about 1-2years that we decided to just keep going. It was going to just be rough and rock it in epoxy primer for this year. Then tear it down next year. But one thing lead to another and we just went for paint as a buddy had some of the color she wanted and it's still rough but straited it out the best we could and shot some color on it Monday. Theres Esther still in Awe that that's her car haha. So this is where we are at as of this week still have a small list of things to do before she is ready to cruise.
The Jalopy Journal
