Hey guys hows everyone doin? Heres what i've been up to with my bro. been really wantin a late 40's/ early 50's style hot rod. and i finally got the opportunity to start one a couple months ago, once again i cant thank Mel enough for hookin us up and lettin us work on this thing at his place! thought you guys will enjoy this, here ya go: this is what we started with... Our new buddy Mel hooked us up with a complete A chasis and a 27 T cowl. we had a 51/52 chevy sedan trunk that we had an idea for.... So we had a vision, and a sorta direction the next thing we did was wack the cowl in half... ...and we sectioned about 3 inches outa it... Well we had this super rough 50 chevy layin around, so we decided to put it to use hahaha... and this is what it looked like after a nights work. Big ideas here.... this is the former trunk from the coupe narrowed 10 inches... But first we had to put the cowl back to stock height.. It looked all goofy, someone cut like 5 inches off the bottom Just did pretty much the same thing on each side... we had to replace a strip in the cowl on one side though... and the pillar needed a little more work.. back on the frame... looks sooo much better. especially now that you can tell its narrowed... looks bad ass. here is the first mock up with the deck lid...
then we sectioned the 52 trunk 10 inches... and mocked it up... the next day we sectioned it 5 more inches and mocked it up with the quarters from the 50 chevy... the ultimate goal here is to make it look less like a 50 chevy, and more like a 27 roadster/ homebuilt deal. it needs to be narrowed a little more, and we are going to add a taper to it. making it narrower as it goes back, all streamlined and sexy haha. then we cut a pleasing radius into the rear tub section, and it reaaly stated to come together... We got super stoked at this point and decided to tie it all together with some paper and a cut down deuce shell And thats where we were at last weekend... our plans are to get the banger runnin over the winter, bore it out, hop it up a little , run mechanical brakes for a while. we have a sweat dash out of a 50's austin heally to put in it. We are probably gonna run some little fold down half circle windshields, and a tanau cover... whould be bad! haha we got plans to run the exhaust up the passenger side, straight through a chopped up torque tube. Section in a t roadster door on the drivers side. should be a sweet little period Hot rod when its done. This weekend we started on the body sides... It was kind of a bitch to get the panels to line up, since the peice from the hood was such a weird shape... but it came out pretty cool in the end. we just took the hood and cut it in 4 peices. took the back drivers side peice and used that for the passenger side on the roadster. we trimmed it down to fit a little better, and overlapped it over the back of the tub. we welded it there then trimmed the extra off the back part of the tub (50 chevy trunk) so it lined up flushed then we welded it and just worked it into place as we went... Kinda hard to explain, but i think you guys will get what im saying. Braced up and square Pie cuts for shaping some hammer and dolly work stopped takin pictures cause both me and my bro had our hands full... squeeze together, line up, tack, hammer, squeeze, tack, hammer.... we made up a patch for the area in front of the former hood piece. we rolled a nice edge on the top too, so it looks more legit, and isnt just sheet metal welded to square stock.. made another patch to fill the rest in heres a little detail of one patch...
more hammer and dolly one side roughed out, needs some inner structure. Other side, we started out doing the same thing, but just tryin to figure out how to put a door in the middle of it hahaha. Needs a lot more work... thats where we are at now... progress is kinda slow since we are in college and can only work on the weekends, but its comming together. Look for updates next weekend...
Worked some more on the T this saturday... Didnt get as much done as we wanted, but we got the trunk sectioned down another 4 inches and then tacked the trunk into the channel on the quarter, and narrowed the quarter another 2 inches or so. Now the Back half is mocked up in its permanent place. We also added to the quarter to connect it to the tub. Its commin together slowly but surely! lookin pretty sweet now i think. Next time we will take more pictures. next weekend we will try to get the drivers side quarter put in place. The door is bein a bitch haha, its tough to section into the side, but i've got an idea to make it work. Enjoy! sectioning the trunk quarter narrowed and mocked in before welding. the back is tacked in place with some conduit now. profile Pretty stoked on this thing now, its startin to really take shape.
hahaha thanks dude! What do you guys think of the proportions of this thing? are we on the right track or does it look goofy? I like it a lot personally, but i might be kinda biased...
Personally I dig that you guys are using all scrap stuff...but I think it looks best without all the stuff on the ass end... I would just add a "T" tank in the back and get rid of the back part..its overkill... my 2 cents
The front "tub portion looks great. Not sure about the turtle deck. But I was thinking wtf at first, but then I was suprised how it came togehter.
Also I love the setting you have. That garage has that old time feel to it and there are hotrods everywhere! How can you decide what to work on?
thanks for the input guys, i appreciate it... I to think the tub alone looks pretty bad ass, but we cut the entire back half off our 50 chevy to do this so i at least have to try it hahaha. who knows maybe it will end up as a modified down the road...
Thanks! Hell yea labrat we are learning so much! Never would have thought i could build a car from pretty much nothing. Just tryin to do somethin different ya know? There are tons of modifieds runnin around i wanted to do somethin some good ole boys might have done back in the day, dunno if its conventional or real traditional, but its cheap and its fun hahaha this car was a major inspiration for us... somethin about it i just loved since i first saw it...
Try pancaking the 'turtle' deck some. I think that will help with the proportions. Good job and great vision. r
thanks raven... We are definatly considering pancakeing the deck lid once its all tied into the tub. We were up in the air about that.
Check it, this weekend we lowered the rear section. It flattened out a little and it makes the back look a little more streamlined. I dont think we are going to pancake it, off the bat at least, if we feel compelled to later then we will i guess. I like how it isnt perfect, not necessarily thrown together, just not completely planned out haha. I want this thing on the road! no time for pancaking!! We also used the old peices from the 50 chevy's catwalk to join the deck to the rest of the body, needs some more work and a peice that flows up into the tub.
I like it!!!! I had my doubts from the start. Then was sold on the tub. Had more doubts on the rear. Now i'm sold on the whole project. That thing looks great and I still can't believe how it all came together so well. I've got to go back and scroll back through the pics for the 5th time.
Impressive. I'm glad to see some guys just get in there and do it. Ya can't buy everything. Looks like you're doing some grinding and welding over dry hay? A bit of a fire hazard, so be careful. You - and us - will be able to tell more about how the design flows when you get to the point where you can rattlecan some color on and tie the whole thing together. Made a big difference in how my car looked when I rattlecanned some red oxide onto the gloss white fenders so that they match the red oxide body. Not so glaringly obvious and all that. Do you plan to get the chassis down low a bit or will it stay where it is?
thanks for the compliments guys... its going to get lowered a little bit probably. 34 front axle, maybe take out some leaves in the back. We are going for a real bare bones, take the fenders off and run it kind of look, so whatever we do isnt going to be severe, but just enough to be less than stock.
This build goes into my "might clone one in the future" file. Your tack welds remind me to get a mig, retire my flux-core wirefeed. Good show!
good job thanks for posting the pictures of the build i enjoyed them man thats a lot of welding and hammering but gonna be a cool ride
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