Chopping a '36 Chevy Sedan

Cutting the top and aligning the "A" pillars



obviously brings the rear of the roof forward:



so I cut the back:



and brought it forward the same amount



and fit-and-trimmed it many times before finally tacking it in place



I still have to curve the rear window upper-and-lower halves to make them match-up. I'll probably be trying my hand re-leading the factory seams where they meet the chop-weld:



Two-door cars have longer front doors than their 4-door counter-parts. To keep proportions right, it's not just a matter of "welding the back doors shut". The rear doors get shortened



and the front door can get lengenthed this week with the piece that came out of the rear door



The post on the channel is here.

 

Nice work, it's gonna look great.

 

Looking good

 

good work! i look at my roof all the time and wonder how i would do it.....

 

Nice work! Looking good.

 

interesting chop, i'll be watching this .I had a 36 2dr couch and often thuoght about chopping it.not easy

 

looks good, are you taking a little more out of the front than the rear

 

^36 chevys windshield is about 1-1 1/2 shorter in height than rest of window openings stock

 

You worried about how the fenders are going to fit?

 

Nice. Looks like a difficult chop.

 

I appreciate everyones comments.

I gave the process a lot of thought before taking the saw to it.
I first thought about how I would cut it if I were going to lay the back window down like when I did the '40 but knew that adding that much of a slant in the rear on this body style would make it look stupid:


Then I thought about stretching just the trunk. Something like this:


But then I decided to follow just above the fender-line and move the whole back of the body forward. It amounted to 2-13/16", which doesn't even take up the package tray behind the seat.

BTW, where on the Jersey Shore? I used to be by Vineland (more inland).

Good catch. The first photo in that post shows it with 4" verticle removed from the lid. I was originally going for 5" and have made a habit of marking two sets of lines (in this case 4" & 5") and cut the 1" less than I think I want on the premise that it's easier to take another inch out than to put one back in.

This one bit me and I put some back in for total of only 3-3/8" removed. Here's a shot where you can see the pieces added back in the pillars:

Nope, but I understand where the question would come up. I've got the look I'm going for in my head and it should turn out OK. We'll see.

Thanks. It's a model year I haven't done before and I'm enjoying it.

 

True. And you've got to remember that right now the windshield is fully framed-in while the doors don't have their tops in the right places. Putting the door tops on will make the window area smaller, getting them closer in size to the windshield.

Once I get the doors done, I'll probably stretch the windshied opening ala Cleatus (sse post #17 that thread) ala Mantraga Merc to fix the lines that Chevy didn't get quite right.

 

Checking the fit of the extended door:





Using the piece from the rear door for the side window:





And the dreaded "rinse and repeat" for the other side:

 

nice work,i'll be watching this build.36's chevys are a uniquecar to say the least.good luck,what are your plans for the rest of the car?

 

Dark blue. Black frame. Black diamond interior. Straight six with a T-5, dual back pipes running under the driver's side door to turnouts before the rear wheel. I'm sitting on a running 235 but like the idea of the taller head 292 for this... we'll see.

Front axle is coming fwd and since it's going to stay fenderless. Stock front body color wheels with the stock center dome caps. I'll be rounding out the back half of the rear wheelwell openings. Although the swept-back openings look great with the fenders, I don't like the way they look stock when left open.

Open driveline, obviously. I've yet to decide on a rear suspension, but since rear leafs with traction bars were huge when I was a kid, I may go that route. I was also a fan of engine turned sheetmetal on the firewall, but don't want to appear to be hiding anything so it may just be solid color.

50's Pontiac Taillights - the simple round ones, in the trunk lid, not frenched. Probably w/ blue dots. Headlights on their stock mounts, but mounted lower - on top of the front of each front frame rail instead of hanging off the grill shell. Front turn signals will sit in the headlight's old locations.

And most likely... no stinkin' radio.

 

haha,very good! I'll keep an eye on this.thanks .......

 

Coming alone nicely!

 

so! how's the ol C-Dan coming along?........

 

flt blk I've been thinking about your question regarding the alignment of the rear fenders after shortening the body and just wanted to make sure I properly address what could be a perceived concern:

Although my vision for this one is fenderless and the wheelwells are going to be altered to my liking, I never showed how the fenders could easily be re-installed without issue.


Looking at the rear view, it’s evident that my body-shortening cuts went around the rear wheelwells by design. Had I wanted to put the fenders back on, it would simply be a matter of bolting them back up to their original mounting holes (after welding the body back together) and fabbing up a small, splash apron / roll pan across the back to tie the two – now slightly extended in appearance - corners together across the bottom of the trunk… no cutting of fenders, etc.

This would be much easier IMHO than the path I envision by re-shaping the back half of the wheelwells to lose that whole "sweep", but it's not anything extreme and it looks good in my head. Time will tell.

' hope this helps.

 

It looks like somebody just took my toolbox and dumped half of it out into the car! Who would believe it would take this much effort just to fit the front floorboards and lower half of the firewall? Check-out the come-along pulling the front door posts together to get the width right. And as you might guess a 75 year old car might also ”settle” a little bit… so there's a jack supporting the cowl/driver’s door post sticking into the lower left corner of the picture. This was a job. At least it was fun!


Here’s a shot of the same thing when I stopped for a second to take the pictures. You can tell where the lower part of the firewall was put back in after taking the 3-1/4″ section out to make the channeling job work and still keep as much floorboard area available for foot-room as possible.



Shown closer-in and from another angle, it’s easy to see how the pedal geometry still lines up. Remember: Raising the floor into the body effectively lowers the body, it doesn’t change any of the frame-to-body relationships. The only angle that will change will be that of the steering column since now the dash is closer to the frame than it was in its stock configuration.



Also notice the firewall uprights - the outer portions leading down to the mounting brackets - still need to have their inner sides fabricated and inserted. When I took these there were also some good size holes that needed to be filled before all the grinding and sanding takes place.



A shot of the inside shows it with the removable transmission tunnel laid in place. I’m undecided as to whether I’m going to leave the battery in its stock location to allow for more trunk space or to relocate it back for better weight distribution. In a car this light, I’ve got a pretty good idea of where it’s going to end-up, but I’m leaving the hole open until I cross that bridge. After all this, it’s really no big deal to fab a lid. It might even make a good place for a tool box. Who knows?



Same thing from the other side. Maybe now it’s easier to see why I lifted the entire interior cowl supports (side kick panel area) earlier on since the front and bottom parts of these are what the floor eventually lined back up to.

Looking along the outside edge where the driver’s foot panel lines up with the next panel back, you’ll see that it’s off-set inward what amounts to 1/4″ (half of the corner bolt hole). When I measured it out, I thought I made an accurate floor panel, but it wasn’t lining up exactly as I wanted. As it turns out, the transmission tunnel mounting holes are off by half a bolt hole as well in the same direction so the panel was made the right size, it’s just not installed exactly where it should be. I could probably make it work just by flexing the hump a little extra, but it’s bothering me enough that I’ll be cutting apart the seem that I just welded and redoing it on my next trip out to the garage.

How’s that old saying go? If it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing twice… or something like that.

 

Fast forward:

Although it’s about 16″ in length, just the one seam running perpendicular to the outer edge needed to be broken. It didn’t take the plethora of tools involved in the initial install; but it’s nowhere near as easy to un-weld something as it is to weld it.

Looking at the left edge by the ubiquitous bolt hole in the existing pan one can see that it’s been lined-up, but the piece of the floor that used to cover the cross-support, well that’s another story.


We were able to cut out small areas for a few patches but about two-and-a-half inches in from the edge of the floor there’s a longitudinal ridge that disappears about 1-1/2″ to the rear of the seam I just re-did. The fade is right in the middle of one of the patch panels so it wasn’t a pair of straight bend in opposite directions, but with a little figuring we got it done. To think, all this for something that’s going to get covered in sound deadening and floor covering.



A view of the same thing from the other side:

Although the far end of the trans tunnel is lifted off the floor in the picture, I’ve got a much better fit in that area now. That panel has a little “spring” to it and will fit flush when the screws are put back in their proper holes.


Move forward to the front of the firewall to see the sectioned section has been put back together and ground down.

We started filling the firewall holes and some of them will obviously need to stay: like the one on the passenger side for the heater core (the lower hole was removed with the section and will need to be re-drilled) and the upper oval cut-out in the center for cables.


A look through the grill shell shows where I still need to “dress the legs” so to speak. The supporting metal is there, but I’ve got to make two pieces to go into the centers. Nothing too difficult. It just takes time. I also need to weld up the old holes below the body mounts.



I’m going to end this one here tonight. Four-thirty comes early. Here are a few last shots for your reivew of what's been done.

 

Pretty cool chop. Your car would look killer with fenders.

 

Thanks.

"To each their own" I guess.

 

interesting build,like what you've done so far.waiting to see where you set the stance,to bring it all together

 

I was going to start this post off by writing about how my rotary sander, an ’heirloom’ I acquired in 2000 after my father’s passing, breathed its last heated breath two weeks ago, but looking at the date on the pictures I can see that it was already more than a month ago – Aug 27th to be exact. Since it was ‘vintage’ enough that even basic parts like brushes were no longer available I’ve done a few things to it over the years to keep it going, but be that as it may its time had come.



I’ve been left to only grinding after welding since that time, but yesterday a new replacement arrived and I’ve been able to spend a while cleaning up what I’ve been working on in its absence. I’ve still got quite a bit from the previous month’s accomplishments to get to but I am now able to differentiate the areas that need more metal work from those that don’t.



Once all the pieces of those ever-present rear window openings were welded in, I put the piece of the front body legs in and filled some of the holes in the firewall that won’t be used. Again, I was finally able to start sanding here. Although it’s plainly evident where the welding has taken place after the channel, this shot shows where the job is after the first pass. A lot of the high sports have been taken down and the darker areas along the welds reveal low spot that need more time and attention.



Moving forward in progress takes us rearward on the body to the rear wheel openings. The "During" part of the photo was taken yesterday before anything on the body was hit with the sander, but the area above and behind the wheelwell where the new metal is shows the original, stock fenderline. The bottom of the masking tape is where the metal will roll underneath in a 1/2″ radius. A 1/2″ may seem small at first, but I don’t want it to look like a Corvette rollpan. I just want it to look like it is finished.



Form follows function here as seen in a construction photo from a different angle the day before. The shackle has obviously seen more than its fair share of wear and is as-of-yet untouched. It will need to be worked on once the body is removed from the frame and may need maintenance in the future. Therefore, the wheelwell flare was placed to bump out to allow easy access to the mounting bolt. When viewed from the profile, the lower part of the shackle that swings as the spring flexes should end-up below this bodyline.



To fill in the inverted right-triangular area just above the new opening, my 11yr year old son visited with our old friend Pythagoras to get accurate layout dimensions for the piece, a practical application of arithmetic if I ever saw one . I used the not-as-old-school method of tracing onto card stock for the odd-shaped filler panel. Together, we got it the way we wanted.




A look from the other side shows a couple of things:

1. The driver’s side rear not yet changed. If you’re wondering why I’m going through the trouble, here’s a picture that I most probably got from this board of one that's chopped & fenderless with stock wheel openings. It looks like it’s nicely done and I’m sure the owner likes it, but that open space behind the rear wheels just isn’t for me. To each their own, right?
2. The back side of the rear wheelwell. I didn’t want to work the exterior panel only to leave the actual wheelwell stretched back. I’ll probably leave this cleanup until I’ve got both sides done and am working the lowered (due to channeling) trunk floor.

Being able to step back and like what you’ve done is a good feeling. Little by little it’s getting there and I’m enjoying the process.

 

...nice work there; I've always thot a 36 Chevy tudor would make a cool hiboy if done rite. The wheels tend to sit forward on a 36 Chev moreso than other cars which helps in the overall profile. What you plannin on for front suspension?

 

Thanks Rusty.
By the time I'm done, it'll be similar to a suicide front... but a little different

 

subscribed, keep it coming. Im trying to buy a Chevy coupe, cant get close enough to tell if its 35 or 36 until I can contact the owner. Car is pretty rough.

 

...I always loved this 36 "modified"

 

I've always had a soft spot in my heart (or head) for the old modifieds. That one is great! I love it just the way it is.

This is from a couple of months ago, but here's a few "out takes" from the chop if anyone is interested: