Projects 53 Chieftain floor braces

Got started looking at the Pontiac last night. Overall no real surprises yet, needs drivers side inner rockers and floors. Also needs most of the floor braces replaced, plus the frame mounts for the front body mounts.

The car came with a replacement inner rocker panel (bonus), I can fab up floor pans and frame mounts easy enough, but the floor braces are going to be a little more trouble for me I think.

I've done some searching on the interwebs and I'm not finding floor braces for a '53 Pontiac. I've found some for Chevys, would these fit the Pontiac? Maybe with a litle modification...

The other option I've been thinking of is to fab them up out of 1x2" square tube. I did this on my old Jeep and worked great, just didn't look all that hot.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I'm totally new to these cars so forgive me if I'm missing something totally obvious

Phill

 

Has anybody replaced the floor braces on a '53 Pontiac? After taking another look I really don't feel like fabbing those things up.

I called up a company called EMS who makes the Chevy floor braces and the guy wasn't sure whether or not the braces would fit the Pontiac. He said either they'd be an exact fit or they'd be completely different so now I'm back to square one. I might end up ordering them and just returning them if they don't fit...

Phill

 

I am having some channel bent up at the tin shop for my 48 chev floor braces. $60 will get me enough channel to do my 4 braces and spare channel other stuff. there will be some cutting to make it fit.. I also had the same shop make me up rocker panels, perfect fit..I dont know what yours look like but I'm too cheap to pay $80.00 for a foot of prefabbed tin. I started fabbing one floor brace and it was going to take many hours to replicate just one,, the only person who knows/sees this stuff is you...the builder...

 

Good point about only the builder, Jazz1. Just went out for a roll-around on the creeper and the 1x2" tubing idea is looking very do-able, especially once I considered that it's about 1/10th the cost and I can get started this weekend.

Next thing I'm wondering is how much clearance I should have between the frame rail and the floor board. I'm pretty sure there's quite a bit of sagging going on with the floor supports and body mounts being so rotted.

Phill