Finally decided to do a build thread on my bel air daily driver four door. After it being my daily driver rain and shine for 3 three years and over 30,000 miles the timeing gear in the original 230 Inline six decided to go. With the car being down i decided that after much neglet it was finaly its turn to get worked on. At 22 Ive been doing body work and restos on classics for 5 years i was finaly getting a chance to do some cool kustom work and on my own car none the less. Now heres some pics of my progress over the past 7 months, and yes i know its a four door but it is also my first car and love it so!!
First on the agenda was Lowering the stance with some cut coils and lakes pipes. And some frenched tailights, i fabricated some buckets and modified the old houseings to hide behind the lense and mount in the bucket, at the same time i shaved all the rear trim around the trunk lid and quarters as well as the trunk lock with a hidden pull cable to open it
Fixed some body work and shaved the trim on the sides and smoothed seams as well as shave the door handels and install manually operated poppers
I decided to build a custom grill which ment shaveing the hood and fender trim, i also molded the fenders and trimed to grill mouth. The teeth are 56 ford bumper guards flipped upside down, test fit the brakets and bolted down, looks good but thinking about more teeth
We pulled the motor early on and decided to rebuild the whole thing versus just replaceing the timing since it had 135,000 miles on it. Me and my wife rebuilt it after we got it back from the machine shop after being bored out .030 over. We installed a progessive cam and a dual carb intake and stuck with the factory three speed trans
Now that we had the motor back in and the car running, i had other projects that needed the space so i decided to go ahead and paint the roof and leave the bottom in primer and get it back to its daily driver status, and after much thought i decided to go with a lace paint job, but keep it simple by doing one panel and keeping it classic solid colors, and i decided to do some pinstripping on the sail panels to spruce it up a bit. I was nervous with the pinstripes since i had yet to do any on a car but i am satisfied with the out come as well as with my first full size lace job. it had just been skate boards and motorcycle tanks before this
Lookin good mate, but that teeth grill just does not suit at all in my opinion. If it was mine, i'd use stainless bar and have a horizontal grill. I'd also lose the daggy mesh stuff.
You clearly have skills and not just fab...a good eye. I gotta agree about the grille. It does not look right for some reason. Please don't take this the wrong way. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Here's some better shots of the grill, its hard to see in a picture. Thanks for the comments your input is much appreciated and I can see were your coming from with the grill, yes a tube grill would look good but I'm trying to avoid looking like every other early sixties custom. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Looking good. I actually like the grille but think it would look better with something behind the teeth or filling in the openings between. Looks weird being able to see through it to the radiator support/etc. How much did you cut your springs? I own a 64 and I'm leaning towards cutting the springs. Keep it inline!!!
I think I only cut out one full coil on all four corners and it is just right I wouldn't go much more its low, I plan on doing some more will the grill maybe some 60s Pontiac headlight rings and smaller teeth between the headlights. Ive been trying to find something better looking than regular expanded metal but that search hasn't been to easy. And don't worry I love the inline. Good luck with your 64 keep it in the road. Chris Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
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