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53 Belair conv rust repair

1M views 6K replies 111 participants last post by  Eduramac 
#1 ·
I just brought home a 1953 Chevy convertible Monday that is 100% there. 100% there except for the bottom 6 inches that is. I have always built rusty cars no one else wanted but have tried to do a quality job of repairing them on a budget.

The key wordhere is budget. I admit to being frugal but friends all say I am cheap. Whatever, for me to be able to enjoy this hobby I must be able to build the car and have my money invested, not just spent

The cost of replacement floor pans, floor braces, inner rockers, outer rockers, lower quarter panels, tow boards, trunk pan, rear pan extension, tail pan, and rear splash apron is well over 3000 dollars. That is money that will buy front suspension, rear axle, and good buildable engine. Maybe even a complete parts car.

I have basic sheet metal tools but nothing exotic. Small 3' brake, Shrinker/stretcher jaws, home made slip roll, and a home made english wheel and 110v mig welder.

My purpose here is to show the new hot rodder who is apprehensive about what he can do what is possible with a little time and patience and not much money.

Below is the patient. She has stage four cancer but we are going to try to save her. If we don't who will? :mwink:








So far I have stripped the inside, removed the front fenders and adjusted the doors. If the body shifts or moves during the build process I want to know it before everything gets welded together. Frequently checking door gaps will let me make sure it has not moved.




Tomorrow I plan to cut the toe boards loose from the front floor brace and expose the brace. The first job will be to remove the brace and reproduce it.

I hope you guys follow along and feel free to comment share thoughts, opinions, etc.

 
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#3,657 ·
While I am waiting for my accelerator pedal and cable I am moving on to the front body mounts that went away with the subframe installation.

I made templates for the gussets for the frame mounts today. I may not get them welded on until next week but at least I got a little done.

They will go on square but my magnet would not hold them at the actual angle.;)

John



 
#3,661 ·
I'll jump in because it's fun to hear how different guys would approach things. I think I would install a body bracket as close to the original position as possible, then measure height in relation to the rest of the body then duplicate the height difference with the frame bracket. Takes uneven squish out of the equation.
 
#3,664 ·
I'm curious, have you measured or squared and leveled the frame rails to be sure it dosnt have a twist or anything that'll throw off a nice snug fit at all mounting points? The reason I ask is when I did my Plymouth I didn't look for a twist and sure enough it had one. It threw my gaps off when I bolted it down. Just something to be aware of that caused me a bit of grief.
 
#3,665 ·
It does have a little twist. Not a lot but a little. Most of it appears to be slight movement when the subframe was welded in. I am pretty comfortable that it is correctable with shimming. I can't believe this old girl came from the factory perfectly level.

I have it sitting on the pads now and shimmed with large fender washers. At this point I have mounts with a minimum of pad only to one mount with 3 washers. As Pugsy said, I am trying to do my best to make sure each mount carries the same weight before anything is torqued. Bear in mind also, with the floor pans and mounts being hand made nothing is going to be exact on the body either.

So far I am pleased with the door gaps. The deck lid is not back on yet.

Wish me luck! :D
John
 
#3,668 ·
The accelerator pedal (Dodge Dakota) came yesterday. I kind of got sidetracked off the body mounts looking at whether or not it was going to work.

The next thing I know, I have reversed the bracket, cut the upper leg off and straightened the angle about 15 degrees.

We went from this:



To this:



I am pretty happy with the result. Both where the cable comes out as well as the final position of the pedal. All that is left is to drill two holes and mount it.




 
#3,669 ·
I started making my driver's side body mount. To begin I made a lower plate out of 1/8 stock that I won't have to worry about flexing. Next, I put one of my cushions on the frame mount and added 1/4" of shims to give me a little extra adjustability when it came time to shim the body.



Then I bolted the upper plate with shims to the body mount so I could mock up the body mount to it.



I love making patterns. The neat thing about making patterns is, you can tape fifteen pieces of posterboard together and no matter how ugly it is, when you take it off and lay it out flat, you have a great pattern.

Make sure you make lots of notes on it so you won't forget where it bends, needs extra material, etc, etc. I forgot to take a picture of the pattern before I took it off but I had written all over it.






Once I had a good "working" pattern I decided to go ahead and transfer it to a fresh piece of pattern material and make a final pattern before I transferred it to metal. This step really isn't necessary but it makes it more difficult to cut your metal out only to discover you forgot a flange or another modification that was only indicated by a notation somewhere.



Here is the final pattern. If you look closely, you will see where I indicated some beads in the front of it......We'll see......:confused:





This is as far as I got today. Time to cut some metal. Tomorrow is another day. :)
 
#3,675 ·
I checked for the Z-bar clearance before I made the final product. Actually it doesn't even come close to interfering.

I am going to tack the lower mounting plate to the upper part and then make the lower part that triangulates the mount. Once it is tacked together I will take it off , weld it all up and then weld it on to the car.









Here is the lower piece I put on the origional mount before I put the body on the rotissorie. I need to do something similar bur hopefully a little more pleasing to the eye.



This is the origional convertible mount.



John
 
#3,679 ·
It's not to late to fix that is it? :D:D:D



My left hand body mount is fabbed. Still some welding to do and holes to punch but I am about there.

I started off transferring my pattern to the metal.



Then I ran it through the English wheel under quite a bit of pressure. This stretches the metal along the area that I am going to put the beads in. That way the beads have extra metal to draw from. This makes a big improvement as far as distortion goes when running beads.

If those hands look a little dainty, I had to hold the camera.::mwink:



Notice how flat the piece lays. It truly makes a differance.



Next I bolted the plate and the lower leg together and marked it for the final trim. The next step was to weld the plate to the lower leg and dress the welds.



Once the lower pieces were assembled I was able to put the upper leg on, replace the drill screw to lock it in place and spot weld the whole assembly together.



It still needs to have the plug welds punched and complete the welding but this is pretty much the finished produce.

I am pleased with it.

John





 
#3,681 ·
LOL, I made quite a bit of room on my shelves by throwing away all the old paint products on the shelves. I still had cans of PPG K36 that had to be there for 15 years. Would it still work? Probably, but I am never going to use it.

I am looking forward to using SPI from the metal up on this one. So far, I have really liked everything of theirs I have used. I have not, as of yet, used any of the high build primer.

John
 
#3,689 ·
Thanks guys. These will pretty much "go away" after the inner fenders are fabricated I think. Strength was the main issue but obviously don't want them to be an eyesore either.

I have a man in France that is needing some parts off my Sport Coupe (hdtp). I may try to get them pulled. It is supposed to be really hot here. Maybe work some in the mornings.

John
 
#3,690 ·
"where to go from here"...seems the next step would be to lift the body off the frame, touch up all areas of frame and underside of body that were affected by the mount installs, paint the firewall and drop back on chassis for fitment of the clip.

Those mounts closely replicate the originals to the point that most people may not know they are hand fabricated...:cool:

Is your parts a car a manual trans ? I'm looking for the frame bracket and cross shaft for my '54 to go with the 5 speed I bought last week.
 
#3,693 ·
Mitch, I used the Z-bar from a 69 Camaro but it is pretty long. It worked well for me though because my subframe is much wider than the origional frame.

If you are going to run M-II front with a stock frame look at a tri-five chevy pedal assembly and Z-bar. The 55-57 Chevy has a clutch arm that operates to the right side of the brake pedal. That means both the clutch pedal rod and clutch release rod attach close to the engine allowing for a very short Z-bar. It sould be great for a stock 54 frame. The 55-57 pedal pads look very good too.

The frame bracket is super simple. The screw and ball on the frame end of the Z-bar is "keyed" with a sqare shaft. Just make a bracket out of 3/16 material, take a cutoff disc and cut a slot for the sqare shaft to slip in and you are done. That also makes removal of the Z-bar a snap.

Of course, if you are keeping your underfloor pedals, none of this is of any use to you:drunk:

John
 
#3,691 ·
It does look like the mounts grew there. Very nice pieces just like the rest of it. Silly me though, I think I would want to get it running. Imagine the motivation surge that might create for the front clip mounting finale. Thinking it might be easier to work on that way too. Plus you could stripe up the driveway or street a few times for added smirks. Great work John. Move at a comfy pace that suits you and the world around you. :)
 
#3,692 ·
You don't know how many times I have considered that Matt. I think I want to go ahead and pull the body back off and do the firewall at least though. Also paint the engine and touch up the frame. For one thing, the battery needs to be up front if possible. Being a ragtop there is not much room for a battery in the trunk unless I turn a Optima on it's side and that I don't want.

I will REALLY be psyched to make it drive when a bright shiney motor is sitting in front of a bright shiney firewall! :drool:

i would like it to "yard" drive by spring though.
 
#3,697 ·
You don't see being able to modify and adapt the original core support and inner fenders to the sub frame ? I think it would be easier to get the fenders and hood to mount keeping as much of the original configuration as possible...:confused:
Grab that core support, set it on the frame horns and start visualizing...you may well come up with an original idea and it will wham, bam, thank you ma'am...:D
 
#3,698 ·
I don't even want to Mitch. The origional inner fenders are ugly as sin and the core support will not let the radiator go as far forward as I think I need it.

There is 33+ inches between the front frame horns and I am going to fill that space with the largest cross flow radiator I can fit in. I will design a saddle mount system like GM used for years. A 71Camaro big block car uses a 26 1/4" core that should be about 31-32" wide.

The fenders will be mounted in the front on rubber biscuits allowing them to be shimmed independently of each other.

I did this on the '49 Merc with success. Always ran cool and made allignment of the front sheet metal a breeze. I will see if I have a pictures.

John
 
#3,700 ·
Ever since I replaced the LH Quarter panel there has been an issue with the area where it joins the rocker panel at the rear of the door. The problem is the EMS panels have a full quarter inch differance between the inner lower rocker flange and the outer bottom edge of the rocker panel.





I should have dealt with this issue before I welded it in but I didn't. Once I had the doors welded shut and the car on the rotissorie, my hands were tied to do anything about it. Now that I am getting close to taking it off the frame again I needed to address it before welding the doors shut again.

I split the door jam and the bottom of the rocker far enough that I could gently bring it out where it needs to be.





This leaves me with a pretty big gap on the bottom of the rocker but I am going to deal with it after she comes back onto the rotissorie.

For now there is much improvement in this area.

John

 
#3,702 ·
The remaining gap is along the bottom of the rocker where I sliced the bottom. I decided to wait and weld it later rather than lie down and weld it upside down.

I may have to replace a section of the bottom of the rocker. The gap is pretty big at the front.

John
 
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