Ha ha! Did some more work on the '51. Check it out We deleted one of the spears, and it's looking pretty good. Here it is all cut out: Then we filled it: We did a bunch of other little stuff too like working on the a-pillar and taking out all of the inner bracing and generally filling in gaps, but this is where she is now:
Oh, and I got on of the rear doors open, so I got better pics of the hinges. Here are some of the rear door open:
Here is what I was thinking for paint: I am gonna go with a dark royal blue, with a white (possibly pearl) top, and engine-turned bare metal scallops on the sides.
looks awesome what did you reinforce the car with if your completely taking away the b pillar ? that is going to look great with no b pillar when its all finished keep the pics coming
The top has some bar stock that runs front to back and side to side like ribs, and underneath the new crossmemeber for the truck-arms is mounted mid-body and is super heavy duty. Those together should work pretty well. I am gonna cut off one side and do some stress tests before I cut off the other side though. on the victorias (the hardtop in '51) and on the convertible they used an x-member in the mid-body, but I think my cross member is as strong as their x member.
Looks great w/o the spears. I also like a long, slim Caddy style Taillamp with the tail treatment you're doing.
ooh i just loove chopped four doors, planning on doing a chop on my -51 buick special four door and do suicide doors in the rar also. great work !
Sheesh. It's been too long since I posted. I accidentally bought a '49 chevy truck and have been gathering parts so I can sell it at the swap meet in April. The old man and I went up to a crazy junk yard near canada and got all the parts for the truck, but we also scored some inner fenders for the 51. I finally got around to chopping out the other spear, but when we were stripping paint to weld in the patch, guess what we found. BONDO. Not to worry friends, with a little grinding, some heating, and a lot of whacking, its all right as rain. The patch is in place and she's looking great. I'll be posting pictures of the whole mess on saturday.
Awesome job with such a huge project. Your right-on with your mods. Looking forward to the pics. Thanks for sharing.....
Congrats on having the guts to stick with a 4 door! It's hard to take the path less travelled sometimes but usually works out in your favor in the end. I DO hope your covering your glass while welding though!
You know That was a lesson learned the hard way. Luckily I've got a bead on an old boy with a big junk yard and reasonable prices
Man, you make it look sooo easy. I too don't have those fancy tools or skills, but so far I've done everything by myself (in the middle of re-wiring it now). I'm going to watch your work real close...it's really looking great. Thanks for sharing with us.
You know we video taped the whole chop process (or most of it, we ran out of tape half way through.) If I could figure out how to edit the video and post it, i would totally put a link up. I'll have to ask my wife to help me, she is techno-savy. (that is what she says they call it at least.)
As to the taillights I am gonna use those ultra slim 94-99 Cadillac taillights and french them right in to the "fins" But I am gonna wire them in such a way that they will light up the same through all three segments, cause I think the way that they have the middle light up for the brakes, the bottom for the runners and the top for the blinkers defeats the purpose of having long slim taillights in the first place.[/QUOTE] NO NO NO NO!!!!!! Tell me you aren't gonna use those fucked up Caddy taillights!!!! Why would you want to do that? Keep the stock ones! There's a BADASS chopped,copper colored Merc her in SoCal,and he fucked it all up with those taillights!!! That's Street Rodder shit... I won't waste your time with the shitty back end...
The Jalopy Journal
