I'll explain the story here first, when I was 12 (I'm 37 now) my dad dragged home a 28 Chrysler Business coupe, it was a big contention between him and my mom but I thought it was pretty neat. he messed with it a bit, Finally him and my mom split up and he moved to Georgia taking it from Ohio with him. After he got it to Georgia he finally got it in a rolling running condition. the car was complete, but original parts weren't available then, so he decided to make it a hot rod. He ended up selling off the original running gear and wheels to a Chrysler restorer, so nothing was wasted, he ended up with a 350 smallblock from something, I can't remember exactly what all is in it off the top of my head, I know it has suspension parts and a rear end from a dodge van, it was a decent roller for a little while, until he discovered the body was flexing. It's apparently wood with sheet metal formed over it, and the wood is about gone. He's getting old and he's more then likely going to p*** the car on to me,his health is making it very difficult for him to work on it. and he understands I want the car. I would end up with the car and a bunch of old speed parts for the SBC that he has ac***ulated, I'm really looking for input on this car, anyone who knows anything about them has restored them, hot rodded one,etc. It will be a major project to fix the body, I've had some people say some had steel bodies also.
A good metal guy can replace the wood with steel. Is the wood literaly gone or just rotted but still there? If wood is dry rotted the is/was something called Git Rot that's a resin that you inject into the wood, it fills the pores & basicly turns it to resin. It's for wood boats.
These cars are full of wood;like a pre'35 GM. I have the same car that I'm going to attack with a pile of square and rectangular tubing,a mig and a lot of patience. I need to find a restorer that wants the driveline. A source of weird sized rectangular is the skids riding mower and four wheelers are shipped on. The are usually free at the dealers.
Lots of posts on this subject here, Chevies are another car with this problem. I'd say buy yourself a shrinker stretcher, and maybe a brake...that's all you need to form the pieces to replace the wood in the car with steel. Maybe not even the brake, you can bend metal over the edge of your workbench, if you have to. These will make any sort of curved braces you need, even if you have to make a Uchannel, or square/rectangle tubing with them...do it in 2 pieces and weld them together. Also look up 'hammer forming'. You might want to make odd shaped pieces with a form. I did this on Edmurder's rear firewall, using the original wookd piece out of the car, on his 31 Chevy. Just seemed to be a nicer looking way to do it, but tubing would have worked, as well. 1 x 1 tubing (16 or 18 ga) is cheap, and will do a lot of the reinforcement, as well. And since it's going behind the sheet metal, you can just stick it in a vise and bend it, don't worry about smooth bends, a series of small kinks won't do any harm in this situation.
thanks for the replies, I wish the plant wasn't going out of business, we have an entire sheet metal shop and weld shop. I'm trying to look into the future on this car, I want to make sure it gets down here when he is ready to p*** it on, and there's a safe place to put it, This is my dads car, so it may take a while but it will get finished. I don't want anything to happen to it. there are a lot of logistics to a project like this. I know one thing my welding skills ****, So it's a good time to sign up for a welding course at the votech school. I was going to anyway, so this will give me the kick in the but i need. I can fabricate stuff all day, machine things,wire, even upholster, and paint and body work, but the welding is the key i'm lacking.
any pictures of the ones done? i'm going to print them and send them to him,he's not good with computers, trying to get him motivated a bit to maby do something on it
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