you guys out west don't know how good you have it

you think you've fixed some rust??? i doubt it. check this out...
i've been workin on this 56 Chevy 2 door post thats been occupying space at my house for quite some time now. it belongs to a former boss of mine who is, thankfully, not in a big hurry for it to be done.
well i finaly decided that i've been putting it off long enough, so i recently got back to work on it. thank God for the body rotiserie or i don't think i'd have it in me to do all this.
it needs new floors from the firewall to the package tray, inner and outer rockers on both sides, new ends on the rear most body brace ahead of the rear wheels and new short braces towards the front. not to mention lower quarters and a few inner panels that i don't even think are repopped so i'll have to fab those from scratch.
it took a few hours of carefull disection to get the right rocker off the car, even though a good majority of it was rusted away from the floor. the aluminum flashing and roofing tar used to repair the floor, at some point long ago, did'nt make things any easier. lots of drilling out spot welds and wire wheeling away rust and undercoating to find them.
i'm going to do the rockers one at a time so i can use the opposite side as reference when putting it back together. i'm also doing the rockers before i even take the floor out so that i can minimize anything moving on me. the doors fit and worked good (believe it or not) and i did'nt want to have to fight with them later so before i even undid the body bolts from the frame i welded braces in at the bottom of the door frames and then put a brace in across from side to side at the rear of the door opening. the firewall is staying in place and will keep things in place up front and the trunk floor (if you can believe this) is friggin PERFECT so there was no need for bracing back there.

i've got a friend who is a tri-5 Chevy fan and has had at least a hundred in the 15 years i've known him so i've seen where these things usualy rust out and this one is strange in the way that the trunk is absolutely perfect without so much as a pin hole around any of the edges or seams. but as you can see the interior floors and lower parts of the body did not fair so well. weird!!!

 

Ack! I had one of those, only because that's all I could afford at the time.

I dont envy you at all. I would have put it off for a while myself.

Can you keep us updated on the progress?

Good luck!

 

DAMN Mike, that body looks pretty gnarly! that'll keep ya busy for a while.

 

That's a project for sure! keep us posted with more pics!





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GOOD MEN DO GOOD WORK

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ya think?? LOL


i'll keep ya updated from time to time but don't expect the updates to come very quickly. i'm gonna keep pluggin away at it a little at a time but i'll likely get sick of it and work on one of MY projects from time to time. i'm alos helpin Sephgato bag his shoebox over the next month, as time permits, and the week we have off for Christmas GMgrunt and i are gonna do what we can to help out our pals at the Ionia Hot Rod Shop.

thanks for lettin me break in your new rotiserie Jeff.

 

He'd have been better off to have started with a decent body.

Some folks.... I don't understand.

JH

 

thanks for lettin me break in your new rotiserie Jeff. [/quote]

Hey thanks for storing it for me Mike! HEHEHEHE

 

HA! Quit your whinin! I know you've seen my Impala project.
I spent today blocking on that bitch...again.
On a good note, It's proof that anything can be saved!
I know you can handle that one. Do yourself a favor and brace the shit out of it,(even more than you have) cut out the bad stuff, then get whats left blasted. It's soooo much nicer to work on then.

 

Well, I know it won't make you feel any better but that's about twice the car my 55 started as.Everything from the firewall back including the trunk floor, inner and outer rockers, rear bottom half of both quarters and inner fender wells as well as all bracings needed replaced, but being in NY I guess it would be expected.Only took 1 year and I'm driving it now but I didn't have the rotisserie to help. Good luck and have fun

 

i bet they have perfect 56 Chevy bodies scattered all over the place in good ole Tennesee but not so up here and if you do find one it's gonna cost ya. besides. it's not beyond saving and somebody has to do it. sure it woulda been EASIER to buy a perfect body but the up front cost would have been much greater.
besides that he did'nt want some hacked up, patched up bondo bucket. he wanted a car that would look good under the utmost scrutiny. he could have paid a ton more for a car that SEEMED nicer. till we got it apart and found out that even though it was'nt AS rusty as this one it still needed all the same pieces.
i'm not bitchin. the car is way savable, in my opinion, and should look pretty damn nice when it's done. it's gonna be a stock restoration for the most part. other than a lower job, a hot small block and some mag wheels that is. it's gonna be black with all the stock chrome back on it. it should look pretty sweet that way. i wanted to shave the hood bird and door handles but he would'nt let me .

 

I always laugh when some of these guys bitch about a car being "rotted out" and it'll have like a fist sized hole in it somewhere. And it's not like there's tons of '56 Chevys laying around so that if you have a bad one you can just pick up a cherry rust free one.

I have a '52 Ford coupe that's the same as this '56. Has a near flawless trunk pan, but the rockers and front floors are completely gone. I still consider it an easy fixer compared to some of the other stuff I've worked on.

When you finish up that '56, I'll run this one over for you do to. I figure a couple good weekends and it'll be ready to go.

 

I feel for ya. This is a Vancouver, BC (wet coast car) that I am doing for a friend. I had to replace the front half of this 55 2-door wagon because it was too far gone rust wise. I am at the point of stitching it together. It also needs all the panels that are available. Glad I am not paying for this. Pat.

 

YEAH. the pics of that thing all cut apart made my butthole pucker up!!

i'm plannin on havin it blasted as soon as the rockers are on and the old floor is removed. at that point the floor braces will all still be attached to the car at the inner rockers so i can get the insides of them blasted and repair any thin spots that show up at that point. i will also be able to prime and paint the INSIDES of everything where the paint never made it from the factory. it should last ALOT longer this time around. they have ALOT better paint processes nowadays with the E-coatings and dip tanks. these old cars never got any paint or primer anywhere other than where it landed when the body was sprayed.

 

ok, you win!!!

 

Hey, i say thumbs up to you guys that are "saving" these things.

 

that was what i was getting at.

i'm pretty particular but i'm not that fast. if you bring it over here i hope you don't want to see it again for quite a while. it might take me a couple years to get "in the mood".

 

yeah, I DO know how good we have it!

the only cars I've seen from here that are in that bad of shape are convertibles that set out in the desert for a few decades. here's one I had and sold to a guy in illinois who figured it was restorable. this is a shot that makes the car look nice, the whole floor is gone out of it


also a friend restored a 54 olds convertible, same situation, he had a donor to replace the floor, rockers, trunk, lower half of the firewall and quarters, etc.

 

The annoying thing is that when I lived out west, my rust belt friends seemed to think I lived in an ocean of cheap rust free 32-4 fords and split window vw's.

 

I've got quite a few on the back burner right now myself so don't feel bad. My '56 could be fixed yet but I actually bought it to make my '57 into a two door sedan. I also have two door sedan cutoff sections but I figured it'd be easier to do the conversion with a whole 2 door car to work off of.

This is the '52 I have that's just like your friend's '56. The trunkpan and frame are really solid but the rockers and floors in front of the seat are totally wasted. It'll take some work to fix it but I'd rather fix this one than search the world over to find a better one. Anyway, what's the fun of restoring a car that's already nice? There's no challenge in that.

 

HA! That thing looks cherry compared to my buddies '49 Caddy I'm helping him re-build, and it's been a west coast car all its life. Also no one makes patch panels for those Caddies like they do the tri fives. Good luck on getting that thing pieced back together.

 

i don't care if i never fix a rust hole again. i know why the big dollar guys start with the nicest car they can, even when they are cutting most of the body up anyways and i don't blame them. if i could afford rust free cars i'd buy em but thats not the reality of the situation and that is the price I have to pay to play with these old cars.
it's not all bad though. thats how i honed my sheetmetal working skills. by repairing rust.

 

Agreed...glad there are people that don't think that projects like these are too much work.

I wanted to make sure I wasn't spoiling myself by finding a west coast car...my '51 came out of Michigan

Nice work Mike.

Bryan

 

out west we call that a donor car...

 

you think thats bad, try a 56 lincoln where the only patch panels i could get were the rocker panels, EVERYTHING else ive had to fab by hand.

 

I still think a better car could have been found & saved for less $$ - even if you did have to travel to get it.

I'm glad you're saving it though. Someone needed to.

Keep us posted. It sounds like a really cool project.

JH

 

Me too. The only cars I could afford were rusty. Scott

 

Looks like you gotta lot of work ahead of you, have fun. You gotta love those midwest winters to f up a car like that. By the way kustombuilder are you working out of a shop in Chartucky or your garage?

 

Just have to toss in my 2 cents.

Here's my Merc. We call this "cherry"


-Abone.

 

Ahhhhh come on, I saw Boyd and some guys on TV fix one of those in one day. It's a piece of cake. hahaha. LOL

 

my garage. in fact the 56 is under a tent in front of my garage. it's not even indoors . too much shit and not enough space.