Projects Finally a HAMB friendly ride.

Nice 54 pontiac, doing one myself. The rust on that 10yr old truck is UNBELIEVABLE!!

 

Nice Poncho - good luck w/the build

 

Finally got a chance to get a good look at the Pontiac today, I do snow clearing and have been super busy. I wanted to see what the brakes looked like, and get a good look under it. The rusty wheels were also bugging me, so I cleaned two up and painted them with some paint I had leftover. I like the tealish color the front one was though so i'm thinking I will still paint them like that. The brakes wernt much of a suprise, broken shoes on the front and leaky wheel cyls on the rear. They will be getting new shoes, wheel cyls and flex lines all the way around though, drums look pretty good. Suprisingly the joints all took grease too.


I found some previous shoddy repairs. No big deal, but it will have to be replaced.

Rear brakes look better then I expected, leaky wheels cylinders, but not too bad.

These fell out when I took the front drums out, both shoes were split in half, and half broke off of the steel.

White was the color of choice for my test, which was lucky becuase I had a bit left over from doing some rockers on my grandparents camper van. I didnt mask the tire very well, but you can see the huge crack in them in the picture, they are garbage.

We got a 6volt battery, and connected the electrical system, nothing works... well the headlights and taillights do. The generator isnt charging, and we tried to flash it, but nope.. So i'm going to pull the starter and generator and my Dad and I will be rebuilding them.

Gave it a bit of a clean.

 

for a second I thought you were gonna put something on the truck frame

 

Good for you, great trade.

 

Congrats!!!
Best of luck with it

 

LOL, that was my first thought when we saw how ****ed the body was, but this was a better route I think. I was thinking of an older truck on its frame, and selling it off so we could get a 50's ford truck with a flathead, which I still want.


Anyways thanks guys, I cant wait to start getting some clams again so I can buy some new parts for her.

 

Today my Dad and I pulled the generator to see what condition it was in, and if we could fix it. We were quite suprised to really only have to clean it, and clean the comm, the brushes were alittle seized up, but in good shape. When we bolted it all back in it seemed like it was all for not, becuase it still was not charging, but we looked online and found we were flashing it incorrectly, and when we did it the right way, it worked great, Sweet

What we started with

I took the fan and pulley off to make getting the generator out easier, notice the red water pump pulley from the previous owner, I thought it was funny, and I cleaned all of the paint off so I could re-paint them gunmetal grey or something, but the more I thought about it and the 90yr old previous owner painting it red and thinking it was cool, the more I knew I had to paint it red again...

Primer

Ok with that out of the way..


I wire wheeled the case, I tried to be carreful around the tag.

Blasted with some walnut shells

Cleaned the comm

All painted and back together, looks good, and works great.

So I used some old paint I had, and tools I had, and spent $3 on some electric motor oil. Not saying its rebuilt, but it works for now.

 

I'll have to take some pictures later today but Saturday I pulled the Pontiac's front shoes off, and brought them in to get re-lined, and while I was there I ordered new wheel cyls for the front, and then yesterday my Dad brother and I pulled the horns and the horn relay to see why they didn't work, seemingly they were alright becuase they worked after a little walnut shell blasting, and a little adjusting. Now we need to see if the horn ****on is working, and if the wires going up there are any good. I also ordered in some plug wires and put some new NGK plugs in it.

While the wheels are off the front I wire wheeled the inner fenders and painted them, and I took off a panel that goes infront of the rad, becuase it had like an inch of paint on it, so I wire wheeled it and painted it black for now. Then I dug out the trunk emblem, its pretty beat and real pitted, but the trunk looks like **** without it. Thankfully I found the plastic piece for the center of it. Someone had already sanded it, and primered it, so I just sanded off the primer and shot a few coats of clear on it. I'm going to take the plastic piece and sand the white and blue paint off of it, and re-do it.

So after my job interview today I'll take some pics.

 

Did more work on The Pontiac today, the brake shoes will be ready Friday, so I have been trying to find little things to do without taking the car to far apart. So today I worked on a fender skirt, they looked in nice shape but when I pulled them off they have a few small holes in both of them. No biggy. I stripped the paint off, wire wheeled and ground down the rust on the back, and cut out the rust, 3 small holes so no biggy. Unfortunately its just the start of the cars rust repair. After welding it up I painted both sides with POR-15 and primered the front. I only had red oxide...
Anyways the backside looked like this.

The front after I stripped the paint.

One of the patches

Finished welding, and cleaned up a bit.

Test fit on car, the front mount that it sits on is rotted off, and the replacement mount was welded on without thinking about the skirt fitment, and the QP behind the rear tire had been patched over the steel, and it sticks out quite a bit... A project for another day, and hopefully in the garage.

Horns blasted and I painted one top gold, I think I'll paint the rest of the horn black. I like the gold

I also found a little mirror in the trunk, this would not be stock would it?

A side shot with the drums off, just a few more days and we should be able to go on a longer drive.


I'm not sure whats up with me posting pictures though, I re-size them to 640x480, but when I post them they are much bigger, then when I look at the post later, they are small again..... hmm

Thanks for looking. I'm doing a complete resto on a 73 Beetle for my sister that takes up alot of my time too, along with work and ****. So more interesting updates will be coming soon.

 

Forgot about the trunk emblem. All of the chrome is really pitted and the emblem is no different, I just sanded all of the primer off of it, and cleared it. I dont mind the kinda pitted chrome look, but I cant take the primered chrome look... The rear bumper has been completely done like that too, awesome....

The exhaust tip is NOT staying, that was for a joke, I bought it for my first car and its sat around since. I spied it and pretended I was going to put it on for real.


Primer-ed taillight trim...

This side I cleaned the primer off and cleared, its real pitted too...


Does this stuff pit this bad down south? Maybe I can pick some up in better shape, or see about getting it redone by a chromer...

More little bs, but just excited about gong for a drive in it...

 

Looks good

 

Thanks man, its getting there. Its not pretty yet, but everything will work.

 

Looks like you're doing justice to a nice old (albeit a bit neglected) old car. Keep the updates coming.

 

It's nice to see a young man in his twenties want a HAMB friendly car in the first place. Enjoy! You will look back in 20-30 years and always remember this car fondly.

 

Thanks guys, I've always loved 50's cars and its great to finally get one. My Daily driver is an 81 Fairmont wagon, and thats as new as it gets for me. Of course I've had to swap a 5L into it, along with the rest of the mustangs running gear, its lowered and goes around corners fast. Really all I do is buy other peoples old race parts, fix them and put them on my cars, and then beat them with the same junk they got rid of .

I just hope to keep this car together for the summer, IF the engine is full of cracks and cannot be trusted were going to find another to swap in that has alittle better JB weld to cast iron ratio. Or at worst case senario, a Pontiac V8 from a newer(then the 54) car. Even so, I hope we can do that without it *********** into a full resto like my race car, my brothers car, and my sisters bug all did. lol My Plan is to fix the rust a bit at a time, with very little time off the road, and pull the body off of the frame next winter. That way it will get a nice paint job, everythings easy to access, and I'll be able to see any and every hole or soft spot. As well as paint the whole bottom of the body, and have it look like new.

So this weekend we should hopefully be going for a bit longer drive, I will take pictures, no matter what happens.. lol I really look forward to being on the open road, not just alleys and side streets . I might pick up a set of wheels and tires for it this weekend too, the ones on it are frigged.... I need to find some clean OG steelies. Are chevie ones the same?

 

U traded up!!! Great work.

 

The trade seems to be a good deal for you and you will have the car running soon enough. Keep it up!

 

Coming back to life one day at a time, good progress,

 

Thanks guys. We've been working on the Pontiac a good bit this weekend. We got the front brake shoes back from getting re-lined. We got them done at Industrial Brake, here in Hamilton. They fit great and look great, I have to adjust the brakes so I'll pull a drum and take a picture(I got in the zone and had to have it all together lol) So we got to drive it with decent brakes.

After a nice drive around, we were looking at the engine, and it runs so good, but looks so bad. I'm going to pull it in the winter, to clean and paint the frame and clean and paint the engine properly, but we decided that for now a quick wire wheel and paint would help the looks. I duck-taped every orifice and wire wheeled as much of the engine as I could get, I decreased it, and let it dry. Then we painted it with POR's engine paint, we have had great results with it on my brothers 5.0 thats been in his car 2 years, driven every single day and still looks great.

Anyways Pictures, Even though i am going to replace all the hoses I taped them off, but I still managed to get paint on a few spots...



I still have to put it all back together, but it looks alot better I think..

I also found out it has a HIGH COMPRESSION head. Sweet 3 more hp

 

My Dad also wire wheeled and cleaned the battery tray, and I painted it with POR-15, then a coat of spray bomb black. I found a few other things to wire wheel and paint too.



I fixed the other skirt too, there was one big hole in it, but not a big deal. Same as the first one, I POR-15'd it and primered it.

 

I meesed up the pictures on the first page, and one was the engine when we first got it. This pic still has the terrible 12v "Conversion"

 

Did some more small stuff to the Pontiac yesterday. I cut all the plug wire to length, put the wiring harness back in its clips. Then I re-installed the battery box and put the battery in. I bungied it so we could go for a test drive. The car ran alot better, no more miss firing. It still has an oil leak from somewhere so thats next.


We installed the horns too, and they work! The horn ****on in the car works too, amazing.
I also installed some hood pins, as per another hambers post, who had a great idea for hood pins that are not seen. The rust in the pic is work for another day, soon.

Then before bed, I started on the battery box top, we were missing one.

Now that the hood closes we need to get the brake lights working, and we can maybe go for a drive out of our neighborhood.

Someone also suggested that the lion on our dash and the V on the glove-box might be off a desoto? I looked online and couldnt find anything to confirm that. I think the 90 yr old guy was a kustomizer... lol




The pictures still come up large for me when I first post them, so I'm sorry if they are huge, I re sized them on photobucket to 640-480... ?

Anyways thanks for looking!

 

Your dash pics aren't showing up for me, but I can tell you that the grille mesh in your car is a '58 Ford p***enger car grille flipped upside down.

 

Sweet dude keep it up... I wish more younger guys would get involved!!!

 

Yea, I moved a few pictures so they were all in the same album forgetting that that messes everything up. Its kinda hard to see the lion, but it doesnt look like the 1960's chrysler one I found, its more streamlined, like its moving.




Thats cool about the grill though, its cool finding out about everything on it.
Thanks for looking.

 

I worked most of the day today, but I still got the battery tray holder welded up, cleaned up and painted. I mounted it on the car and the battery is rock solid.

 

Great deal, any time you can trade off a ford for any GM is a great deal

 

Salted roads is just another reason I won't return to the north to live. I grew up in that stuff but I forgot how quickly it turns a good car into a pile of rust.

 

Yep, but I keep on top of it. I couldn't own old cars here if I couldn't weld thats for sure.

My brother and my OT daily drivers are 30 yrs old and we have replaced almost the whole bottom on each of them lol.