Skill Center ’54 Chevy Build

In the winter after the shows and rod runs we have a chassis dynamics and fabrication class that normally runs three days. Last year one of the students was faced with a dilemma: He had a cherry condition ’54 Chevy that he was in the process of restoring almost 75% completed. He wanted to hotrod the car but earlier on a similar ’53 Chevy of his hot-rodding turned out to be a disaster. His purpose for the class was to establish some perimeters for this type car and fulfill his dream of an all out ’54 Chevy rod. In class he told that the first car built by a reputable local builder ended up falling short of his desired car. The ride height was 13 inches at the rocker panel and because of the after market Mustang II kit, the engine centerline was over 16 inches high. The front tread and rear tread widths didn’t match. The after market front installation was done according to directions but when finished the geometry was far from desirable. The car handled poorly but looked good in a parade.
<O
After looking over both cars and suffering withdrawal symptoms from not building a single car since moving our shop from North Carolina to Tennessee, I decided this would be a neat project for our students to work on. The only sticky point was the ’54 was in almost perfect shape, no rust anywhere, the owner quickly reminded me that a perfectly restored ’54 was worth $10,000.00 at the best a ’54 all out hot rod would be worth at least $50,000.00 so cut away like you stole it! When I remember, I have taken pictures of the build so I thought I would post them so people could see what we are working on. I remind students on a daily basis that you have to choose between Comfort-Queen or Steve McQueen – this build is about performance!
<O</O
<O
As you will notice, I like adjustability in every component, light, simple and strong. We have spent a lot of time establishing a strong handling package. The chassis theme uses the majority of the stock chassis but in some areas we had to take some liberties to get our desired result. The stock chassis had not been challenged in 53 years and was in great shape.<O</O

<O </O
The stock frame was set up on the jig we cut the stock frame on the kick out angles 8”. The 8” inch sections allowed us to slide the rails back and out to achieve 29” between the rails. 29” minimum allows you the ability to sink the ZZ-4 crate motor and headers down to 12” crank centerline.
<O</O
<O
<O</O
The frame was spliced back together with a gusset on the inside and out, the inside gusset is an 1/8” box style gusset that allows a cross-member brace to be attached.

More pictures to come.

 

Looks like your off to a good start....gonna keep an eye on this one..

 

The front end is a strut rod design coil-over. This picture shows how the frame was cut and a 2 X 3 .083 was spliced in . We maintained the length of the frame horns.


Strut rod set up and slice area for the 2 X 3.

More pictures coming soon.
Mark

 

The cross-member is fabricated. Left and right side are symmetrical tied together with 3 &#8211; 1&#8221; square tubes. The rack fastens to a cross bracket

 

Another view of the tubing cross-member

 

Coil-over tower, cross-member is tied to A-arm plate

 

Nice work and it must be cool to teach young guys the ins and outs. Small nit pick. As far as I'm concerned it's worth more with the 235 in it.

 

Slugged plates allow changes to anti-dive and roll centers

 

Slugs can offset 3/8 off center giving ¾ of adjustment

 

Towers are built out of three tigged together plates .125 PIO cold plate.

 

Rear engine mount is a solid style mount

 

Looks killer

 

Front mount is a solid style that works as a gusset or motor plate insuring strength from side to side

 

Beautiful work! Awesome welds! great engineering. What more can I say than "I wish it was mine!" You could be easy to hate.

 

Motor mount bolts to the rear of cross member with 4-5/16 bolts spreading the load. The mounts are symmetrical left to right. Notice the notch for the rack.

 

How very cool. I always thought the best way to build a hot rod would be to have a 100&#37; restored car and a nice bare chassis. Build up the chassis with all the best parts and a cool engine and trans, transfer everything from the restored car and be on the road. Of course, I'm sure it's nowhere near that easy, but it sounds good in my head. Best of luck with this.

-Dave

 

Great work.Very interesting set up, guess this will be a road course type race car with the HD suspension/ engine setup. Looks like you are shooting for a $50K car. Way out of my league, more power to you.

 

I forgot to mention - the only problem I would have with this whole deal is that I couldn't bring myself to run wheels and tires worthy of this nice suspension.

Has anyone ever engineered a good-handling chassis to work under a heavy fifties car running skinny bias plies?

-Dave

 

This shot shows the cross member mount and rack

 

Chevys always seem to have issues of clearance on fuel pumps. This set up gives worlds of room


Engine is 12 inches on crank center at ride heights, 1<SUP>st</SUP> plug on right side located on axle centerline.

 

Shot of lower A-arm, rack mount, strut, set up.

The frame is set up on the jig with a 9&#8221; Ford Winters rear after spending 20 years in Lala Land building Cup cars I love truck arms, simple, light, affordable, and capable of handling 800+ horse power.

 

This is a picture of the original nine inch set up on the jig. Notice the centerline of the yoke is on the centerline of the fixture.

 

Cross member set up 2 X 2 X .125

 

Extremely good work. My guess is the owner has a rather large bank account!

 

Unbelievable work.

 

The cross member ties the side rails along with tying in the gusset areas creating an effective cross brace.

 

I like the box gusset that doubles as a crossmember mounting point...don't think I won't steal that idea for my newest build. Oh, and awesome work.

Jack

 

The truck arm mount on this build we are using a mono ball in a machined housing, the bushings have a 1/2&#8221; hole, grade 8 shoulder bolt.

 

The slug system allows you to adjust and square the rear in the car.

 

We area missing some pictures of the rear section. With the main part of the chassis tacked together, we needed to locate the body on the chassis to inspect any issues that might occur. The owner wanted to lower the body on the factory mounts solid with no body hardware, so here are some of those pictures. I had one phone call asking about the cost of this project. As in any build, labor is the issue, most of the parts, truck arms, rear-end, and even some front-end parts, we purchased used from racing teams. They changed the rules on material thickness on the truck arms so we bought the new components for half the normal price. The rear end came from a team that switched a number of cars to quick changes with camber built in so it made these rears obsolete. I bought two $1,400.00 rears for $500.00 - hubs, axles and all. The engine is the ZZ4 GM crate motor with the turnkey kit, a local dealer item for $4,800.00. Our machine and fab shop puts all the drops from material in a drop box, we just pick and save to make brackets, etc… One local powder coating oven builder will let you pick through his scrap box for $3.00 for a hundred pounds of cut off’s, 1/8”, 1/4”, 3/8” cold finish plates. A good ban saw, MIG welder, 4” grinder with a 40-mop disc and you could easily build the parts we tacked together so far.