Any 53/54 Pontiac Owners?

Need help & quidance on putting a 54 back on the road. Would appreciate learning from those who have been there done that.
I am going to pull the straight 8 and put in a sbc & camaro rear end.
Should I clip or not? Where to find front floor pans? Floor braces?

Holy shit, where's the asprin.

 

Pontiacs around 49-53 are pretty similar, so....one thing you might want to get is a CD of 37-56 Pontiac parts, I got mine off (that wicked) E-Bay and have found it very helpful for finding part numbers and diagrams of "how it goes together". Floor Pans are available from California Pontiac Restorations, but I made my own out of 18 ga cold roll steel. I put a 81 Monte Carlo clip on my 50, I think it came out fine, but fatmans has those stubs available, too. It's just a matter of how much time or $ you want to spend. When I put the Monte clip on and plunked the 350 mockup motor in place in the stock motor mount position, it was 11" from the back of the motor to the firewall, so I fabbed up new mount positions and slid it back 6". Some stuff from Chevys of similar years works, but some stuff is very Pontiac specific. Pretty much anything chassis wise is Pontiac specific. Good luck.

 

I agree with NMPontiac, I've gotten great service from California Pontiac Restoration (http://www.pontiacparts.net/). They've got loads of parts for the early cars and can definitely hook you up with what you need.

I'm keeping the straight eight in mine so I can't be of much help to you on the engine swap although several companies do make engine swap motor mounts for putting an SBC into a '53 Chevy so that might be a good place to start. Classic Performance Products (http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZclassicperformanceproducts)sells these kinds of mounts and tubular crossmembers and other swap stuff that might help you.

 

Thanks for the help.

Greatly appreciated.

 

I replaced the S8 in mine with a SBC and TH400.
I kept the stock front suspension and the stock rear axle.
Made my own mounts and mounted as far back as I could.

 

WOW Thats beautiful. Did you have any trouble with the motor mounts getting too close to the steering box. I am planning on running a set of long headers & I hope I have enough clearnce room.Where did you find your bushings and front end parts.

I wish mine was as far along as yours. My engine is presently a bare block on my engine stand.

 

The headers were tight but cleared the steering box OK
All the front end parts were got from Kanter.
That pic was taken a long time ago the body is now off the chassie and i have put a 4 bar and air bags on the rear.

This was taken about a month ago, I will have to get some updated pics

 

Thank you for the pic, I'm in the very early stage of putting my 54 on the road. I have a thousand questions I would like to ask you, would it be possible to email you and get some answers and advice to these questions?

 

Yes no problems
PM me any questions you want

 

Went home at lunch and took some pics of the monte carlo subframe on my 50 Pontiac. I live in rural New Mexico and wanted to put a front end on the car that had readily available, get em at any parts store parts, disc brakes, powersteering, and I found an 81 Monte Carlo here for $200. So I wasn't in it deep money-wise, but you have to pay with time to accomplish these things. Sorry I took the mock up motor out, but believe me the steering leaves plenty of room for just about any header / manifold setup you might want to use, and yes, the front-steer box intrudes into the core support a tiny bit, but that's easily cured with a little sheet metal fab.

 

I used the stock Pontiac frame horns and radiator mount parts to simplify mounting the front sheetmetal and bumpers, and with a little work managed to tuck the Monte sway bar up into the Pontiac radiator mount. I used a 77 Cad Seville tilt and telescope column, and a Borgeson U-joint and some 3/4 DD shaft got it hooked to the PS box.

 

Floor pan stuff....I made my own from 18ga cold roll, put some beads in, and plug welded the areas that were over the floor braces. While I was at it, the passenger side sill plate area was pretty rusty, so I replaced that area, too. Hope this helps.

 

might want to look at this wiki. Pretty long, but all relevant to your poncho
http://www.crankshaftcoalition.com/wiki/37_-_57_Buick_Olds_Pont_suspension_upgrade

 

Thanks so much for the pic's, this leads me in the right direction.