Projects Building a Custom 51 Chevy when you have no idea what you are doing

My good friend Doug Shaffer and I decided to build a cool 51 Chevy. Neither of us had ever done anything like this but that didn't seem to change our minds. Keep in mind this was years before I ever heard of the HAMB and the amount of great technical information available.
Of course the first thing to do was to get rid of everything inside the car...…..actually all the metal inside the body panels

Just a note ( that engine and trans ended up in my 26 coupe )


After we cut everything out of the car, it was time to figure out how to do the floors. We used 1x1 thick wall tubing along with 1 x2 tubing and 1 x 3 tubing. The floor finally came together
and welded the whole thing in the car

 

We decided that we wanted the car to be low but with all the available suspension travel so we built out own body mounts out of 2 x 2 tubing.
This allowed us to drop the body about 5 inches over the frame . I guess we could have called it channeling but we didn't channel it......we just lowered the body

The next step was doing the firewall. We found an old Polaris gas tank and decided that it would do the job
after cutting the top off the tank, we built support rods around the out side. We cut the tank top in half and added an additional 6 inches of metal to form the inset for the firewall
BTW, our entire collection of tools fit into that 6 drawer cabinet

 

we get the inset in the firewall in the car and are really happy with the way it turned out so we plated the firewall. All this steel plate was stuff my friend's employer threw away...…..It was all 14 gauge and 16 gauge steel...………….this thing is going to weight a ton

This is where I'm leaving it today...………..many more things to cover

 

I'm not really in to customs but this is a pretty cool build. Really like your fab work.

 

We had built a new rear clip as the original frame was rotted away. Since we knew we wanted bigger tires in the back, we decided to mover the rear leaf springs to an inside the frame rails position.

This allows some really big meats to fit inside the wheel wells. Did I mention this thing was a rust and bondo bucket ? Of course all the normal pieces needed to be replaced

This picture shows the amount we lowered the body over the frame

 

As with any custom, you are always looking for that alteration that most people will not see. On this car, it happened to be the body bulge where the stainless trim bolts on. Since we were shaving the trim, we decided that it would look much better with the bulge gone
This is the way the bulge looks normally

We ended up cutting the bulge out in about 1 foot increments
So we ended up with a smooth flowing line

 

Sure, why not. Neither of us had ever chopped a top so we added some white cardboard to figure out how much to cut...……...more to follow

 

I guess you're just messing with our heads?? ...that's means it's definitely channeled. Looks great BTW.... I love the Polaris mod.

 

actually F&J, I'm not sure . We talked about channeling and thought it was where you cut channels in the floor pan and lowered it all down but did not remove the floor pan. Since we raised the floor up in the body we kind of figured it wasn't channeling

 

Subscribed!

 

You may not have many tools but you've got plenty of skills and a nice shop.

 

The top chop is where we just got real strange. Since we were going to do a 2 3/4" chop at the front to nothing at the back, we were terrified about flexing the roof out of shape. We ended up building something akin to the Brooklyn bridge inside the car. There were several points the needed to rotate slightly so we added them in. To make it all work, we had the roof braced up and sitting on a bottle jack. Once the cutting was through, it was a matter of lowering the jack to it's stop. this is what we did.

You might notice the hinge bulkheads at the back side of the door...…...we did suicide doors from scratch

 

rather than a rehash, here is the suicide door post
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/suicide-doors-from-scratch-sure-you-can.451530/

 

I like
Just call it a body drop
That suspension graft looks clean from my phone

 

on board w/this !...nice work fella's !.......consider me a student, as I have been considering a build myself.....lookin' forward to the whole build on here...charlie

 

Title is perfectly correct...
You're building a custom '51 Chevy when I don't know what I'm doing.
Channel = raised floor and lowered body.
You guys are fearless. Nice work! Cool project!
Chop away!

 

Maybe it's time to add to the saga. As I mentioned before, we did our own suicide doors as mentioned above. While building every piece of the hinge from scratch along with the door jam, we knew keeping the doors from drooping was a major undertaking. To keep the doors on the level, we beefed up the inner structure as you can see here.

 

Other things were tried and more original metal was cut away from the door


At this point, everyone in the room was suffering from some severe butt puckering. but we were just getting started

 

We discussed the safety factor needed for suicide doors. We felt there had to be a way for the doors to be opened from the outside incase of an accident. WE could not figure out a way to make that happen with the lock mechanism inside the door. The answer was so simple. We moved the lock mechanism into the door frame and the catch to the door face

This allowed an emergency access to the lock. The door does not droop = SUCCESS !!

 

I think we might move on to the trunk. When we started this car, every piece of inner sheet metal was cut out. we ended up with a shitload of this

Just a whole lot of empty

 

Like all the rest, we built 1" X 1" square tubing frame including what will become the wall between the interior and the trunk.

We cut the spring perches for the trunk lid...…...more on this later

All of the clamps shown were holding the basic structure of the trunk together for tacking. Shown below is that welded structure

 

Just like on TV, we got everything welded and installed. We over engineered this thing like nobody's business.
The big hole you see is where the gas tank is going. We choose to use a marine grade aluminum tank. About the thickness of copier paper. So we built a steel container to protect the aluminum tank. Around the edge of the hole, you can see bolts in the structure. That is so we can drop the tank out the bottom.
The 2 eye hooks allowed us to lift the body off the frame with a modified engine hoist

 

AS I said before, we just over engineered this beast. This picture shows the raw finished trunk. You can see the removable panel to access the fuel tank and tank sending unit without dropping the tank. You can also see the black fuel fill hose running from the sail panel to the tank. The fuel filler turned out cool but that can be for another day. I mentioned the spring perches were cut out. We replaced them with gas shocks. We plated and enclosed the entire trunk area

 

we painted the trunk area, added a seal mount and made our roll pan and this is how all that turned out. The small slot near the very back of the trunk is for the catch on the trunk lid. The lock mechanism is down under the floor under a removable panel


Neither my buddy Doug or I are metal guys. This has been a n interesting learning experience. Next time, I'll add the @*^%$@&$%$ tail lights

 

subscribed...just plain cool

 

Just plain WOW!!! For not being metal guys you are doing one hell of a job. It would be interesting to see how much weight you have added to the body from stock. Please keep posting this is great.

 

What is so amazing is: you guys seem to be doing this without drawings, plans, cardboard mock ups...with the eye of a true craftsman. 1,000,000 times better than anyone "on TV"....

 

Thanks BJR !!! We ended up plating the top and the bottom of the floors with 14 gauge and 16 gauge steel with rigid insulation in between. We joked that we probably didn't need a frame.....could have been a uni-body build. It is gonna ride like a Caddy

Thanks ,man. Really one hell of a compliment !!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are correct, no plans, no drawings but we do make cardboard templates that we make. My buddy does Stained glass for a living and , before retirement, I was a printing salesman

 

Like where this is going, guys !

 

Very cool build. seem that you have youre finished plans in youre mind and just build it so. Perfect. Remarkable handwork. Not much people I know wich can see a finished project just in their mind and how to solf it.