How would they have lowered a car in 1954??

hey welder...

why not just call barris kustom city.
talk to whoever answers the phone and tell them what you're up to and see if you cant get an audience with george. maybe he can lend some insight on the car or the techniques. maybe even some pics and stuff...

EVEL here on the HAMB works over at barris...maybe shoot him a PM

 

This a great idea. I'll give them a call today.

 

Heating coils is still considered proper in some circles.

With 2" blocks in the rear you will have to pick up 4" in dearching the springs; that's a ton. You will probably also have to c-notch your frame if you don't have to cut a chunk out and build a different hump into it.

I would take some time to measure and see what you are up against with the 6" drop. It may be just as easy to Z it in the rear.

To ball park how much coil to cut to get a certain drop you can set the car on its tires and slide under there with a tape measure. Measure from the center of one coil to the center of the next. That will ball park you on how much drop you get from each coil that you cut.

There is another solution that I saw on a car built in the '50s for front end drop. You can take the lower control arm and cut the spring pocket out of it. Then fab a different spring pocket that is dropped lower than the original position the amount that you want to drop. The car in question was a '50 Chevy built in the Portland, Oregon area. It was in Danny Kilcup's shop in '69 or '70 getting an engine reworked.

 

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In San Jose, 1954, there was a Custom Shop off Alum Rock Avenue, Heinrich's Automotive.
Abe Heinrichs developed a method of lowering the front of coil-sprung cars, which he coined as "A-Framing".
The outer lower trunions (or on some, "ball joints") were disconnected and where the trunnion bolts went thru (longitudinal) got a pair of brackets welded on each side. These brackets looked like 2"X2" boomerangs, (1/4" thick)
When attached, they covered the original holes, and their vertical plane went upward, so when the bolt was installed thru the hole (now 1-1/2" up) the lower control arm came down 1-1/2", netting a 2-1/2" drop. (the spindle was simply 1-1/2" higher, lowering the car accordingly.)
It is 'period correct', and at the San Jose Autorame in 1954, most San Jose Custome were dropped this way. We looked under the Barris cars there, and they were all heated.
Remember the "Blue Mirage" '50 Merc, and LeRoy Gulart's '50 Ford? (Bailon cars)
They both had cut coils, and at the San Jose Autorama display in '55 I crawled partway under both to see how they got that low. I was surprised to see that they were also chained down! Both cars had lengths of 5/16" link chain looped around the frame and lower control arms, holding them down. (just for the show)
Sonny ('Blue Mirage' owner) told me later they had most of their club members (Satan's Angels) sit on the cars so they could tighten the chains with bolts & nuts)

 

Forgot to mention in last post:
Phil Machiarella had a chopped '49 Plymouth 4-door sedan that was "A-Framed" by Heinrichs in '54. It was featured in the "Little Pages", '55 or '56. HAMB member 'Rod & Wheeler' knows the story on that car, he sanded & prepped most of the San Jose customs at that time! He could point to the issue Phil's chopped Plymouth was in, lots of info there.

 

Mike isn't it funny that when someone asks how things were done when you tell them they don't want to hear it? A lot of shops heated coils and used any number of other solutions back then just like now.

I have seen the boomeramgs things but wasn't aware where they came from.

 

While many of these methods were used in the day the one thing not being mentioned in this discussion is the negative camber condition caused by dropping the suspension . Some cars may have had enough adjustment to reset the car to the correct camber angle but others did not. Need to see if I can get a pic from under Ina Mae showing how they did it.

The boys at Valley dearching a spring from Riks site.

 

Valley Custom marketed a kit to drop the lower control arms at one time. Moved the lower trunion pin mount upward, allowing the upright to be positioned further "up". There's some photos of the kit being installed in one of the little books, but darned if I can remember which one.

There's also a thread on the same thing...kinda...here on the HAMB by droplord, showing how a lower control arm can be modified to accomplish the same thing. It's a good how-to. Again I wish I could remember what it might have been called. Perhaps a PM to him would shake that info loose.

Repositioning the upper control arm to gain camber was a common need, as was trimming, or "C"ing, the front coil spring pocket to allow the lower control arm to pivot higher without contacting the frame.

I was aware that many of the early customs were allowed to ride on the bump stops when taken to car shows, but I never knew how they did it. Chaining them down makes perfectly good sense: easy, cheap and reversable.

Good times!

 

I'm not sure about your Mopar suspension, but I remember guys would STEP the ball joint end of their lower A-arms up a few inches.

 

In 53 I had a 49 ford coupe and ordered a pair of lowerning blocks from Honest Charlie speed shop as I remember (been a while) A deep socket/ratchett and some kerosene to lube the threads and I was in business. At that time we did not lower the front but later years it was in style and we removed the coil springs and cut them the desired length and thats how I and my friends did in in Texas

 

I have lowering blocks from my Chevy has 1-3/4 in leaf spring 3 inch drop, supposably fit Mopar as well. Let me know if you need em.

 

Cut about half coil at a time and try it out, not just looks but "drivability". Takes a bit longer, but still only a relaxing morning working on your ride. Really easy to cut too much off. Soooo, slow and steady.
Some of these cars that look "bitchen" are also a bitch to drive. Thats what I reckon.
Rod

 

I have seen the boomeramgs things but wasn't aware where they came from.[/QUOTE]

Australia mate
Rod

 

Australia mate
Rod[/QUOTE]

Not New Guinea?

 

best one i heard , was they drove it onto the rack at the guys garage....and started heating all the springs ....then let it down till it cooled. the guy said they had to raise the car back up and put wood under the tires to get it back off the rack. at that point the car was literally on the ground. best i remember , it didn't stay dropped for long.

 

I remember reading many times in the little pages and various books about old customs that they would "step" the control arms. I think that this was pretty standard for the time and I remember Car Craft had a tech article on how to do it, sometime in the mid 50s.

 

Use the search its titled like this

Tech month: Stepping lower A arms (kingpin style)

Its by droplord49
Its a pretty cheap yet effective way to lower just about anything, and would definately serve as "period correct". Save yourself a couple hundred bucks and do it yourself without buying a bunch of expensive parts!

sorry, I would have posted the link but Im not sure how.

 

But this guy is trying to do it the way it was done on a specific car - right? It's a clone so he doesn't want to step the arms if that particular car had cut springs or vice versa?

 

Excellent point, but I think the problem is that neither the original owner nor George Barris can be depended upon for accurate historical information.

So, in the absense of the historical facts, xxwelderxx is exploring all the period-correct options open to him.

Hopefully the true method by which the car was lowered will surface in time, but this car doesn't seem to have gotten anywhere near as much magazine attention as some of the better-known Barris customs.

 

What I also want to make sure is that the drop numbers are indeed 3-1/2" in the front and 6" in the back.

We can figure this out by measuring the car and with those measurements we can figure out the height of the car.

 

Well, you'll LOVE this one! Two guys came to my shop, they had a nice '55 Chev tudor post,
asked me if I could heat the front springs to 'raise it up'. I asked how that would work...
The main character told me: "You just hoist the car, and heat up the springs 'til the wheels drop. Then you let the springs cool, and it's 'raised up'. I asked how far the wheels would drop...
"Oh, you gotta measure 'em, you don't just 'let 'em drop'!"
I said, "My, my..." or "Get outa here", or some such.

 

Mike heating it to raise it is like cutting it off longer, right?

I have had equally interesting things asked of me, but yours is about as good as it gets.

 

with this.... lol

 

Your a funny guy huh?

 

Yep. Or coal. Or bags of cement in the back seat. We liked the 40s and early 50s coupes and such with lowered rear ends with fender skirts. Couldn't see much out the windshield for about a hundred feet so leaned your head out the window. I don't recall that lowering the front end was that popular in our little hick town, more of an 'up town' thing? Seems like lowering the front end came later............

 

Although their method won't work, I have seen springs that were "Stretched out" by heating them and pulling them with a come-a-long to make them longer. Let em cool, put them back in. The vehicle sits higher, they usually ended up sacking back down from losing temper, but if done properly with heating and quenching to re temper it can work.
This was at a tire store I worked at in the early 70's and Jerry was doing it on trucks and Vans to lift the front end for bigger off road tires. He could usually get about 2-3" of lift out of them.

 

youre a serious guy huh?

 

Oh, that wasn't all, P'n'B. I just always wondered how all the 'lunatics' found their way to MY shop!
One of my things was to replicate a car from magazine pics. (Control Line model airplane technology) Von Franco was constantly drawing the 'Kookie Kar', (there were sketches of that thing all over the shop when he stayed there, LOL) I finally felt relief when he came over with a '22 Touring front half.
But the 'scale drawings' are the key in replication, and our friend XXWelderXX must do some scale measurements from the pictures he has of the car: Granted, the clone car has 'settled' from years on those springs, but with an approximate size set of tires, the arithmetic can be done to get the proper height. But 6" in the rear sounds ambiguous.
I'd do some close measuring there, as I would under the driveline tunnel. I don't recall those cars as being real "lowering friendly"...

 

Ah... Not so fast, xxwelderxx.

As has been pointed out before, the numbers you quote are from stock height when the car was new, not after the springs have settled for 50 some odd years. If you take these numbers from the springs after they've settled, you'll have to dig a hole to keep the car from dragging the ground.

And, though I don't know exactly where you got those numbers, if it had any connection with George Barris or other magazine journalists of the period, you can bet they just grabbed them out of the air. This was very common back in the days of the little books (and not unknown in many of the lesser titles published today).

Go back and look for yourself. The early car mags were filled with errors of all kinds, but the amount the cars were lowered is at the head of the list. Some of the guesses were somewhat close, but others were outrageous.

Same goes for the methods by which the cars were lowered. Often the writers had no idea the actual method, so they just made them up. Again, check it out yourself.

Instead of relying on questionable information, your best bet is to do as Chip Foose often says, "build the picture."

Gather as many photos of the car as you can, and build the car to match the photos. Printed information and rememberances of the original owner and the original builder can be used to confirm what you see in the photos, but the photos should be your primary source of info.

The magazine info will almost certainly have errors and memories may have dimmed over the years, but the photos will not lie.

I'm really looking forward to meeing you at Goodguys this weekend, and sharing some of your ideas about this project. I'm really pumped about it, being a fellow Plymouth owner and fellow custom car fan as well.



Edit: Sorry Atwater Mike, we were penning the same stuff at the same moment. Didn't mean to step on your post.

 

This was at a tire store I worked at in the early 70's and Jerry was doing it on trucks and Vans to lift the front end for bigger off road tires. He could usually get about 2-3" of lift out of them.
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Don: I worked at Mark C. Bloome's in Tarzana, '67-'68, saw some funny stuff there...
like some bootlegged welded 'lowering' spindles to go on some mid-'60s stuff, you should have seen the welds! Never heard of stretching coils, sounds funny; but if quenched properly, they could last. (limited life, the way those guys get air...and 'land')