Just want to get a general consensus of what the ride height was back then. Doing the google search, ride height is misleading as many are using air ride. I am currently dropped so that my frame is 6 inches off the ground. I have a 51 Buick special 2 door. how low can I go before i have to notch the rear or use dropped uprights.Pics are welcomed and all opinions. Thanks guys
Nothing beats old magazines to find out what was going on then. Rikster even has them sorted by make: http://public.fotki.com/rikster/ I looked at the 50's built Buick customs and didn't see much but I would suggest looking at similar body styles; Olds, Pontiac and such. Take this Oldsmobile for instance:
Old magazines are certainly a decent place to start, but they are in no way actually accurate or indicative of "what was going on then". For every car featured in a magazine, there were thousands of other hot rods or customs out there that were NOT in a magazine. Magazines were very limited as to how many cars they could feature in any given month, and by the time they hit print, the "trend" had frequently changed.
I agree: Looking at the old magazines to learn what cars were like is the same as looking at Playboy to learn what women are like! It is a highly selective sample, representing only the narrow range of features considered "hot" at that moment by that magazine's editors. However, very few of us were actually alive at the time to remember so the best I have to go by are the "reader's rides" that appear in the back of many little books of that time. Those are actual cars actually driven by their owners. They never sit as low as the cars featured in the main pages, and there is tremendous variation in ride height even in the same region and time period. I believe 00mack is the one who describes having his buddies stand on his bumper so he could chain the suspension down to make his Merc sit lower in shows. In other words, at least some of the cars in the little magazines and vintage photos did not actually drive at the height they were photographed. I believe some of the photographers mention putting sand bags in the trunks of cars they photographed as well. So...old magazines are filled with photos of cars that didn't really represent the common customized cars of the day, and many of them didn't really sit quite as low as they do in the photographs. My '53 Chevy sits about the same height you describe, and it looks high in photos because so many kustoms are so low these days, but in person it looks really good. In fact, I lowered the rear end 1 inch last summer and immediately raised it back up because it looked broken to me. Bottom line is if you think it looks good then it is "right." If it looks too high to you, then go lower but don't let someone else dictate how your car should sit. And how it looks in person is more important than how it looks in a photograph.
Different areas of the country seemed to have different concepts on loweri. ng the cars too. Some lowered them evenly front and back, some still ran the tail dragger look that was the hot lick in the 40's and early 50's and some were low with a rake to the front like my 51 Merc was when I bought it in 1963. It had 6.50's on the front and 7.10's on the back with heated coils in the front and blocks in the rear. The Buick looks good the way you have it from what I can see in the photo.
Local drive in lore around here always said :If you can't fit a pack of no filter Camels under the rocker panel; she's to low. lol!
I'd say your pretty close... guys would do it a variety of ways depending on whether they had trailing arms or what ... no bags Tail draggers that were much lower in the rear; pretty close to stock height in front; lake pipes; ditch the hood ornament; wide whites; stock wheels with moons and rings or "Tri Bar" spinners; was a popular kinda look for the "greasers" in the 50's, where I come from. The next step from there was drawer knob grills; 'course Buicks all ready had cool grills I dig your car... have fun!
How low can you go before you need a c notch ? Measuring the frame to axle distance now will give you a good idea.
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