Hot Rods Project X project

Well i had to spend more money at Rex's,Needed the dizzy so the blower would fit(The pertronix was too tall).So i had to go with msd stuff.Anyway Thanks again rex,When my coworkers ask me what i do with my money i just whip out my phone and show them the pictures of the NEW to me engine in my car. So close to running now just some wiring to do and a custom upper radiator hose

 

Two more pieces to the puzzle. I scored a set of Del-Ray door panel trim on E-Bay, and although they are not appropriate for this car, I picked up a pair of 1961 Corvair bucket seats. Now you may be wondering what the heck is he gonna do with those? Well it's simple. The odds of finding a 57 split bench around here are pretty slim. however, I have a good friend that has a nice 57 core that told me he would trade it for a nice set of mid 60s GM buckets. They used these same basic seats from 1960-1966 in all 4 divisions. My odds were tremendously better to find these. I paid $100 for the seats and ordered a set of covers and new foam for $630 ish. $750 for a 57 seat would be a good deal around here. If you could find one, which you can't. 2 less items to round up. The next big obstacle is the Cal-Custom tube grill. Not sure what I'm gonna do for that.

 

I didn’t see any. Most were t-bird, late 50s fords and Corvair.

 

http://customgrills.com/chevy/1957-chevy-bel-air.html

 

Those Corvair buckets look great ! My bud had a set & they were also very comfortable. If I could find another set Id buy em in a heartbeat.
Also thankyou for that link @34Phil . I contacted them this morning about a custom made grill for our 64 Elco. They make some very cool "correct" looking stuff to my eye. @Utahvette you should check out the link. They already have a template for 57 Chevys.

 

The latest scores. I won a beautiful Auto Meter Tach on E-Bay. Recently got 2 of the correct Eelco gauges from a fellow Hamber. Having a little trouble with a water temp gauge but have a temporary one that's close for now. Bought a 3 gauge panel off E-Bay. Have friend that bought a bunch of Danchuk stuff 15 years ago and he's trading me a rear bumper and 2 lower rear quarter moldings, a trunk "V" and a few misc. parts for doing some work on his Dads 61 Vette. The previous owner found a body mount kit and dropped it off the other day. Things are coming together nicely. Most of what I need now are readily available repro parts. Except for that grill. I still need to check with Custom Grills, I think they can do one. At what cost though?

 

All of those Cal Custom grilles are pretty similar, they're not actually tubes but like a half-shell of stainless that looks like a tube from the front, and they have very thin brackets holding them from the back side. It would not be hard to rearrange some bars from a grille from a different car to fit them inside the '57 grille opening, as long as you had the right widths and the peak in the center was about the same.

I've got a pile of Cal Custom grille bars that are just loose, not sure what they're for, and a pretty complete one from (I believe) a '62 Impala. If you get hard up for a grille, I'll happily sell you my Impala grille and my pile of loose bars so you can make one up, I could pre-fit them in my own 57 to see if the widths and angles would be right.

I like this project. That comparison shot of the engines is dead-on accurate, looks like you're really doing it right.

Also, that's an insane good deal for a '57 front seat, bare frames that aren't rusted to death sell for a grand around here, if you can find one. I have like 40 hours rebuilding the seat frame for my '57 and I felt lucky to find even a totally trashed one. The repop seat frames are not even close to correct.

 

I'd also mention that the tubes that those "Glory Grilles" use are a bit thinner than the Cal Custom ones were, and also I think they're actual tubing as opposed to the half shells that the old Cal Custom ones used.

 

Wouldn't by chance set one of those corvair seats in the 57 and take a pic would you? I've been hunting early sixties buckets for my 54 and anything near me they want $600+ for junk. But oddly can get corvair seats relatively easily. Just want to make sure size is right visually before I snag a pair lol

 

For reference, 62-64 Corvair used the same width seat frame as full size GM like Impala, but without the hoop trim that goes over the top or around the back. Basically identical to what the '63 Nova SS used. 62 used the track with bolts in the rear but with a fork part in the front that slid under little floor brackets, like what the 57 Chevy bench seat used, I believe in '63 they went to bolts front and rear. 65-66 Corvair used a seat basically identical to what 64-65 A-body cars like Chevelle and GTO used, but with painted seat side trim instead of chrome. These are a bit narrower than the early cars even though they look the same, they are not interchangeable. From 67 until 69, Corvair shared its bucket seats with the F-body cars (Camaro and Firebird).

 

Spent the day cleaning up trim. I had an assortment of tail lights to chose from and was able to come up with 2 pretty nice ones. No blisters or pitting, bright chrome, new lens and they were ready to go. Then on to the stainless side trim. After some straightening and buffing I have everything except a good left front fender strip. Mines been flattened and if they were unobtainable I could, with enough time, fix it, but they're only $60 so it wasn't worth 8 hours fixing the mashed one. Like all of my stuff, nothing is perfect, but it will have an acceptable overall look to it when it's finished. I've found that if you can settle for second best you can save a ton of money, lower your stress, finish the project much quicker and still have an attention getting car. The older I get the sloppier my work becomes and the more I enjoy it!

 

I'm trying to complete some little sub assemblies so that when the time comes the car will go together quickly. I took the instrument cluster apart and prepped a few other things so I could paint and get them ready to go back in. I cut off the shifter boss on the steering column and filled the hole. The painting turned out well.... except that the glove box and ash tray are supposed to be BLACK ! To busy to look at the pictures, that's me. Duh. It'll be a simple scuff and shoot to make them black but I feel kinda stupid.

 

Think of the white paint as filler primer. Make the black paint extra slick

 

I just sold on E-Bay one of the three aluminum 3rd members that came with the car. That's another $845.82 off the purchase price, bringing the total down to 17,319.18. I'm shooting for less than $5000 for the body. Still have that race 555 engine to get rid of. Man, if I could dump that I'd be home free.

 

News flash! I just sold the wheels off the car on E-Bay. That's -$1344.41. I'm under 16,000 now at $15974.77. Getting cheaper all the time. Maybe I'll make my goal.

 

The sales tally is as interesting to me as the build, I am really curious what your final total is going to be.

I did something kinda similar a couple years ago with a 60's C-10 truck and a load of GTO parts, I bought it all from the same guy in the same deal and figured I could sell off the GTO stuff over time to pay for the truck. Sold the last piece a couple months ago, I think the truck ended up costing me like 12 bucks.

Selling stuff involves a lot of work, and quite a bit of fees you have to factor in, but it's a fun way to fund stuff, and it's a way to move the project forward even when you're not actually turning a wrench.

 

Any updates?

 

I haven't had much chance to do much on it lately because of work getting in the way. Went to Mutton Hollow Chevy parts up the road from here and bought a bunch of stuff like weatherstrips, trunk "V" , arm rests, wind-lace, turn signal lever, and some other stuff. I will soon get back to it. Next is cut off the ladder bar stuff from the frame and return it to stock configuration and run new brake lines and fuel line.

 

Used Mutton Hollow for the first time on account that Danchuk went to Woodie’s.

Mutton Hollow went all out to be sure I was taken care of after my call wasn’t answered due to them being busy. They called me back via caller id since I did not leave a massage.

 

Iv'e had good luck with Mutton Hollow.

 

Back to the cal custom grille, I was looking into it too and remembered you can buy half roundstock in aluminum and polish it to a chrome like finish. You can round off the ends just like the cal. Just make up some flat stock brackets for mounting, and drill and tap the back side of the grill with like 10-24 about 3/8" deep to mount it.

 

My "traded for " bench seat arrived. As far as good cores go, this is really good! However, the car would no doubt be a tenth or so quicker with some light weight buckets. This thing is a tank. It is missing a side shroud, but I have some 4 door seat parts that I think can be altered to work.

 

That seat is a nice piece for sure.

 

Have you found pictures of the roll bar hoop used in project x and did it have a 6 point with the original bench.

In the 56 we are building had to use a narrower 64-67 Chevelle bench to be short enough for the bottom to fit between the door bars.

I didn't have an original bench, so it's possible it might be narrow enough

 

The seat shell's are avaliable aftermarket, if that helps you any.

 

Spoiler alert! I'm not going to use an L-88 427. I know, blasphemy. First of all, I don't have one sitting around and this is a budget build. Second, I've actually had some experience with a few genuine L-88's, and was not impressed. Yea, I know, "they ran 10's right from the factory." But my impression was, for an engine with a 1200 rpm idle and 12 - 1 compression, no bottom end power and miserable street manners, they just didn't run that good. Yes they made 560 horsepower stock, but really, that is small block territory now days. I have an over load of 454 stuff so it doesn't make sense to me to build anything else. It will look the same and run as good or better than the 427, and do it with better drive-ability, on pump gas. Another thing I have in my favor is that Project X didn't run that good with the stock L-88. According to the Magazine high 11's with a tunnel ram was about it. In fact, with the 3 barrel like I'm going to be using, it only ran low 12's, so duplicating it's actual performance won't be to hard using more cubes and better tech.
For the engine I have a beautiful standard bore 454 that I got back in the late 80's and saved all these years. Chevrolet was having warranty nightmares with the 454's in the new trucks. I had a friend at the local Chevy dealer that was the heavy line mechanic in the service department. He was replacing those things weekly it seemed, and rather than scrapping them, as he was supposed to do, he was selling them for beer money out the back door, to me! I generally paid $150 for each one. I bought about 10 or 15 from him. It was a good time to be alive. The beauty of it was they had virgin standard bores and 4 bolt mains. At the time I could resell a bare 4 bolt main block for $500 so it was a win for me. The cranks were usually good and they were still the gen 4 style blocks so they used everything the old engines did. Who wants a standard block you ask? Well, I had collected some mint standard forged 454 LS-6 take out pistons from some racers that bought a crate engine and swapped out the 11 to 1 pistons for 12.5's. I got them for free! Because, who can use standard pistons? Everybody's block has to be bored(except mine). They even have the factory ink numbers on their domes still. Those coupled with the perfect bore block and some good aftermarket rods and I've got the makings of a killer short block for minimal outlay. The oil pump is a good used one. Yeah, I know, buy a new one, they're cheap insurance. It is a real nice used pump. High volume and looks good inside. I built a pressure testing fixture and it provides 70 pounds of pressure. I feel it's been tested over time and proved itself to be reliable. Why spend money to try something new and of unknown quality and made in china.The oil pan was the cleanest of the three I had to choose from. It did show signs that a few rods tried to escape out the side at one time but they didn't make it through. Any pan good enough to keep the rods inside is good enough for me. This is the basis for my engine build.

 

I got a couple of warrantee 454s out the back door of the local GMC dealer due to wiped out thrust surfaces on the crank from the T400 trying to push the converter out on some defective front pumps. Dress it like an L88 no one will know

 

The four bolt truck 454 Mark IV blocks were used at the very end of production, late 80s to very early 90s, eh? I had one that I turned into a 427, it worked pretty good...the blower let it make power without a lot of cam or compression

looks like you have a solid start to the engine

 

look up in the sky...its a bird...its a plane.........its......super gasser,,,,,,,