Hello, I just recently purchased a 39 chevy coupe and noticed it has knee action schocks and coil springs. Can this suspension be reused? I am going with a bbc and ford rear end. is it worth it to clip and get a more modern suspension or is it feasable to reuse the orig suspension. I have a rear steer clip from a 72 nova. I just like the idea of keeping the frame stock.....Tks...............Troy
Frame clips are frowned upon here. You will catch flack, or have your thread deleted. Knee action suspension can be made to work. Very carefully inspect the frame rails around the cross member. I have seen a numbet of these with substantial cracking in the rails there.
is there any way to replace spindles to get disc on front , a different steering box to be used, drop spindles........something/....Troy
Discs, yes. Steering box, maybe. Drop spindles, nope. If you clip it, or go MII you lose the radiator support mount, so you'd have to fabricate that. Nothing about a later model GM clip lends itself to attaching it to this frame. Late clips are double-c-channel. Your car has a top-hat style frame. Not a good match. Also, I believe that the Nova clip would be too wide to line up the rails. In any case, clip-jobs are not for the faint-of-heart, and are the fast-track to ruining a good. You MUST be a qualified fabricator and welder. Cut and weld wrong, and you might not recover. How about this: Find someone who is selling off the front suspension from an early 50's Chevy car? The whole thing is stand-alone, and goes under the frame. A lot closer to traditional.
I used a Jim Meyer Racing front suspension under my '40. It bolts in, has great brakes and very adjustable. I think Art Morisson and some other ch***is builders are making bolt in units also. It might seem pricey but you get very good stuff for the money and down the road you will appreciate it. Do not try adapting the Nova clip to the top hat frame.
I tried using the stock stuff on my 39 years ago...didn't work out too well. I know more now, I could probably make it work, but I'd also be more inclined to use either a 38 type axle, a straight axle, or an aftermarket independent suspension. I would not try to use the nova clip, it's too wide, and you need to narrow it to make it fit half decent..and then you have to cut off the frame, which isn't a good idea.
Plus you can tell people it's out of a Corvette! @aagie Not Ron, it's Jim Meyer Racing Known Jim for 35 years.
I had considered one of the aftermarket disc brake kits for my 45 Chevy Coup - It has the same suspension you have - & they only come with 5 lug hubs & I wished to keep my original style 5 lugs wheels. If I went with this kit I would still have to get a 5 to a 6 lug adapter & move the wheels out. I chose not to. On this independent front suspension on these Chevie's the upper knee action part of the front shocks is actually the upper control arm and it would be very involved to remove & replace it with something else. So what is in the works for me very soon for the front is to just leave original poorly working front shocks alone but weld a mounting bracket off the bottom of the lower a arm OR see if I can just use a longer bolt on the lower arms pivot bolt for longer tube shock mount bolt (plan A) and fab a weld on upper arm off the outer side of the frame for which ever lower version mount I use. One or the other should work. This way the original shock will not be doing any work other than still being the upper control arm. For the rear I will fab a frame cross member for the upper shock mount and a new bottom spring bracket for the lower tube shock mount. With either of these tow shock conversion methods it will not look original with the tube shocks BUT it can easily be done cleanly and not have any scabbed in or rat rod look. If you are going to put a lot more weight up front with big engine you could do as I said above & use coil over tube shocks if needed as our original front coils are a small diameter compared to later model coils. For the rear you could add an extra spring if needed but I do not think it will be necessary for me. Again coil over shocks could be used. Coil overs will be plan B for me if I do not like what I get with standard tube shocks. I kept the original torque tube rear end and just changed the ring & pinion from the 411 to a 355 for a better Hwy ratio. I wanted to keep outside appearance of the car as original as possible with just a little bit of sneaky under the hood with the 1957 Chevy inline 236 six as shown in my avatar here. Internally it is bored 0.060 with a good street cam. Has two 2 barrel Webbers & HEI ignition, headers and a few other mods. I am building if as a daily driver & it will never race. Do a build thread as you go. Jimmie
After re reading DDDennys comment about tell them it is a corvette I used to get comments of why did I do the 6 cylinder engine & why did I not use a Corvette engine. When I had the other air cleaners on it I added an old style Corvette decal & just began to reply that heck it IS a 54 Corvette. It worked as they seemed to not notice I did not have the 3 side draft Corvette Carbs. Jimmie
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