Don, I like it, that bumper has been hanging in my garage for 3 years! It looks better hanging on that Olds! Post the photo shop version!
Cut the surround from an Olds and weld it on to fit the bumper. All the hard work for the gap is already done. Probably the hardest project one can tackle is a project started by someone else and you have to go back and correct the mistakes. Looking good Don! Mike
I love the '56 Olds Bumper and It looks like to me it will work. You will need to do a little tweeking but that is why it is called a kustom. If it was easy everyone woud have one. Trim the top part off of the bumper and french it. I have a picture at home of a early 50's Olds 4dr that was built in the 50's. If my memory is correct it had s 56 Olds bumper. It is very kool!! Rikster may have a picture of the sled but I couldn't find it on his site. I'll look it up tonight and post the picture tomorrow. Good luck with the project! Happy Trails, Mick
damn that will look good with a little cutting. i like the way you take all the pics to document the build. looks like your shop does nice work. where are you guys at in visalia?
Thanks, We're on the NW side of town. 8226 W. Doe Ave North of Goshen, West of Shirk. The customer decided against the '56 bumper. He's been looking at a lot of pictures so, we'll soon see what he wants to do. The car is all apart again and the chassis is at the powdercoater's.
[ It's actually starting to look promising. [/quote] Very nice Don. I love when the project is at this point. Your vision finally gets understood by everyone else, when you had it in your mind all the time. Brian
We got a few more things done on the 51 Olds. When we dropped the body back on the chassis after doing the suspension mods, we had to cut the floor under the rear seat area to clear the upper 4-link bars when the suspension is dropped. So, when we took the body off the frame again for chassis powdercoating we patched the holes in the floor like this. First I made some patterns out of some recycled cardboard. The I transferred the patterns to 18 gauge steel and bent them in the sheetmetal brake. The outside was tacked and then we welded the whole thing up from the inside. Before we put the body back on the powdercoated frame I shot some more 3M Shutz over the bottom.
The next task was to fix the pointy rear corner on the quarter windows. With every other window corner having a nice smooth curve, that pointy corner really bugged me. Unfortunately there were no spare pieces to use to make the window corner round and the bent piece of tubing that we tried to use had a radius that was too large. So, we decided to try out hand at hammerforming. I made a pattern for the curve by tracing the window opening and then transferred that to a piece of scrap plywood. A router was used to cut the radius on the plywood form. I also cut a second scrap of plywood, with a slightly larger curve, to use as a clamp to hold the metal. Once the metal patch was cut to the general shape needed, I clamped all three pieces together by screwing them down to a wooden bench and then we started hammering. The first one was made from a scrap of 18 gauge and it took a fair amount of hammering to get into shape. The second one was made from a piece of late model Chevy truck bedside from the scrap pile. That one went much faster. Here's what it looked like before we started trimmin it to fit. Trimmed to fit. Here's Rotten putting the finishing touches on the final piece. Here it is welded in place. We also made some patches to box in the back side of these pieces. I also got the door frame and the B-pillar finished up on the driver's side. Between that and the curves at the rear of the quarter windows, the raggedy top chop is just about saved.
Before I sent the chassis off to the powdercoater I changed the lower 4-link brackets on the axle to mount the bars 2" lower. That should alleviate any possible problems in this area. Thanks for the input.
Those suspension pics really get the creative juices flowing. Love them Olds, has a similiar feel to my heap.
Nice documentaton Don...guess I missed this one first time around...Car's looking good too...I'll be interested to see what you come up with for a grille...I felt the '56 Olds was way too heavy for the car. R-
We're going to use the stock top grille bar with a bumper something like this: I liked the idea of the 56 bumper before I actually mocked it up. Then it looked too thick and heavy to me. It would have taken a heap of work to make it fit & flow with the car.
It's been a while or two since we've had an update. Rotten has been working on smoothing out the knots in the roof. I've been working on the tail lights. I'm not even half way done but, I think I've got enough for an interesting update. The stockers aren't going to mutt the custard We want tail lights that look something like this So, we're going to start with this 54 Merc lens Here's where I made the first cut The lens looked pretty good in the hole Then I put some duct tape on it to simulate the finished product The customer liked it so, we're moving forward. The first step was making some reflectors for the lenses The next step was to bend some 3/16" rod to form the top and bottom edges of the opening. Then I made some side pieces from 18 gauge steel
The rest of the shots show tacking the rods in, forming some sheet metal panels, tacking it all together, and then welding it all up. There's still a little welding to do on the right side and then I have to do the entire left side. The right side was easy by comparison because I was sort of making it up as I went. On the left side I'm going to have to make it a mirror image of the right. That's going to be a little harder.
LOL...that is always the hardest part, making a matching pair, especially if you can see both items at the same time... Looking good tho...I like the taillights. R- Here's my build: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=329070&highlight=the+best+55+caddy+build
Doing the 2nd tail light was easier than I thought it would be. Still a lot of work but, not as bad as I expected. First I tacked in the bent rods that made up the framework for the lens. I measured several reference points from the other side to know exactly where the ends and intersections of each rod should be. Next i mocked up the lens to see if everything looked right. Here's where I did things a little differently than before. On the first side I did the sheet metal before I figured out how I was going to secure the lens to the body. Because that was such a pain working in the tight confines behind the sheet metal, this time I decided to fab the mounting tabs before the sheet metal went on. Way easier!. Here's a shot of the tabs that hold the whole unit in place. there are tabs that attach to the back of the reflector and the tabs that are welded to the curved rods that go around the lens. The two sets of tabs are bolted together from the back. The lens is sandwiched between the reflector and the body. Then it was time to bend some metal. The bottom pieces were just bent over a big piece of pipe since they didn't have any compound curves. The top pieces were hammered over a sand bag and then smoothed out with a power hammer. Here it is mostly done. I still have to do some slight adjustments to the first side and I have to work on the sides of the openings around the ribs on the lenses.
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