Hot Rods My 1950 Styleline Deluxe Makeover

Well I guess I’ll start this from the beginning. For years I’d been looking for a project car, and almost pulled the trigger on a few but things just never worked out. Then, about four and a half years ago, my wife came home and told me she had to show me something her and our boys had found on their way home. I was almost afraid to see what they had found. We jumped in the truck and headed out. To my great surprise, about a mile down the road from the house, sat a 1950 Chevy Styleline Deluxe for sale. The car looked pretty clean from the outside. I could tell someone had made a few ‘improvements’, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed. It turned out the guy selling it (a big car guy) was selling it for his son (not such a big car guy) who had bought it a few years prior but I don’t think he ever got it registered. So after going over it, I quickly realized this car was going to need a lot of work. I mean the rocker panels were basically formed out of expanding foam and finished with liberal amounts of filler. On one hand, this was a complete running driving car and the price was not out of line, but on the other it was going to take a lot of work and money to fix it properly. I told the guy I was going to think about it and would let him know. What happened next I never saw coming. The entire ride home and the rest of the evening my wife basically kept calling me an idiot for not buying it on the spot. I told her that it needed a ton of work and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit to a project of that size knowing that my time and money was going to be really limited with a family and young kids. Then, she put it into perspective for me. She asked me why I would consider buying a shell of a car that is missing half of the pieces, but you are dragging your feet on a car that has everything and runs and drives for almost the same price. Well that’s the kind of logic I couldn’t argue with. So the next day I went and got.
I actually was able to drive it on a regular basis for almost five months before I deemed it no longer roadworthy. The front end felt like it might come apart at any time, and I felt like I had pressed my luck far enough. It was also November in Wisconsin so the season for a car with no heat or defrosters was just about over anyway. I slowly began stripping off the paint, grinding away layer after layer of bondo to reveal some of the most creative bodywork I’ve ever seen. In some places they used a combination of window screen, ripped up sponges, newspaper and expanding foam behind what I think was paper towel mixed with fibergl*** resin. As if that wasn’t enough, there were pieces of galvanized steel pop riveted to the previously mentioned mess before being buried in filler. I worked in body shops and restoration shops when I was younger, so I've done fabrication and repair work before. This is what I wanted though, a project I could build the way I wanted to without having someone standing over me asking what I was doing and why it was taking so long.


Here is the car as I found it. The rear doors were welded shut to give it the 2 door look, but it was all there, and most of it worked!

The plan is to:
Replace the floors, braces and rocker panels
Return it to a 4 door, but shave all of the door handles
French the headlights
Smooth the hood and decklid
Do something with the tail lights (not sure about that yet, but they WON'T be 59 Caddy lights)
Design a new grille (Mine has a bit of rot under the chrome and I want to change it up a bit)
Replace the 216/3spd with a sbc/4spd (I already have a 283 out of a 58 Corvette for it)
Lower it with blocks in the rear and maybe cut springs up front.
Tuck the bumpers in. I'm thinking of using maybe a 55 bumper on the rear.
And whatever else I come up with. I want to chop it, but I think I'm going to wait on that for a little bit. I've never done one before and it's going to take a while for me to work up the nerve to attack that job. Besides, I've got plenty of other things to keep me busy. My goal is to try to keep it as traditional as possible.

 

Sounds fun, subscribed!

 

Good start and great reason for time with the boys in the garage.

Let me know what you come up with for the custom grill, I'm thrashing on a '52 Pontiac hardtop that will get a custom grill.

 

I like that car...on of my favorite past cars was a '49 Chevy..
Just curious though....it looks like the rear door welding was done nicely...so why go back to the 4 doors ?

 

Sounds good, what are your plans for your new grill?

 

Like a lot of things on the car, there is more to the welded doors than first appears. I also think it will be easier to get in and out of the backseat with 4 doors. It'll flow nicely with the handles shaves.

 

I'm still working on that part.

 

Speaking of the rear doors...

The driver's side was tacked closed maybe 6 welds. They must have used an entire spool of wire on the p***enger's side. I think I burned through two cutting wheels getting that one open.

 

The rear handle mounting holes were just paved over.

 

Panel alignment was achieved by covering everything in filler and cutting the doors open. The ironic thing is that I was able to get everything pretty close using a wrench.

This is what I got from sanding a front door and fender.

 

Go man go!

 

Here is a shot of the rear p***engers rocker panel. Yeah that's expanding foam doing what it does best. The other side looks just like it.

 

One of the first things I did was work on frenching the headlights. I figured I would start on something small and build momentum for the bigger jobs.
Well, I quickly found it wasn't going to be as simple as I thought. The tops of both headlight openings were rotted away. So first I had to make some patch panels before I could move on.


It may not be the prettiest thing, but it was the first patch panel I'd made in probably fifteen years and it serves it's purpose.

It's not slave labor if they want to be there right?

 

This is the mockup of how the headlights are going to be.

 

I picked up a 1958 283 I found on CL to replace the old 216.

 

Two different heads on there?

 

I don't know, I never noticed that. I heard it run before I bought it. It sounded good. I was told it blew a little oil up the breather, but past that it ran fine. I am planning on rebuilding it. Now I wanna go out there and look at the heads.

 

I'll be watching your build. I have a 50 myself (49 grille) that I've had for three years. I am beginning to do some upgrades next month. Front hydraulic brakes are going to be replaced by discs. I'm tired of having to avoid driving the car in areas with heavy street traffic and driving on the freeway with the current brakes is unthinkable. Good luck, looks and sounds like you're off to a good start.

 

@ev88f: Okay, there was no way I was going to sleep before getting to the bottom of this. So I went out to th he garage, pulled the valve covers and got the casting numbers.
As it turns out both heads have the same numbers (3748772) along with 'X 58' which translates into 1958 283 heads with 69cc chambers and intake/exhaust valves of 1.72/1.50.

 

Strange. But they can't be that different with the same chamber size and number.

 

The thing I did notice was that front of the left head has a raised section and the back is smooth. Now the front of the right head is smooth and the back of it has the same raised section the front of the left one has. If that makes sense...

 

Go man go.....looking good

 

Thanks, I'm trying to get as much done as I can. Things are really starting to move now.

 

Well I decided I needed to start getting serious on this thing and tackle some of the hard parts instead of playing with the headlights and other little things. The floors and rockers are horrible, so that's my next mission.





Yeah, there's a little work to be done here...

 

With the help of some hammers, a sandbag and a beadroller, things are starting to take shape.

 

Here is better shot.

 

Looking good finally got over to your build and got up to speed. Did you make the floors from scratch. It sounded like it but you didn't really say so. They look very nice I'm goi to be doing some of that.

 

Thanks leadfoot. Yeah, these were my first attempt at making floor pans. I think they turned out pretty good. I still have more to go before I move onto the braces and rockers, so hopefully I'll get quicker as I go.

 

Sweet are you going to buy the rockers? Did you get one of those Harbor Freight beadrollers. Been looking to pick one up some of the guys on here have reworked them and made them stronger.

 

I've actually got one of those Eastwood economy beadrollers, but I think it's pretty close to the Harbor Freight ones though. It's a pretty nice little unit, I just wish it had a deeper throat.

I plan on making my own rockers. They may not be exact replacements, but they will work. That's the beauty of making a custom.