This week i planned on trying to get my chevy chopped. Works out preety good that its all so tech week. So im going to be doing updates thru out the week so this will be a on going tech post of sorts. Im not sure how far i get with it by the end of tech week but i would like to see it preety far along. Tommrow my little trick i want to try happens, and hope to god i dont ruin the car in the process. but you will have to wait till tommrow for that to happen. Any rate i started on this at about 4:00 or so today. got all the gl*** out (wasnt to hard since every peice was cracked so i didnt have to be nice with it). i all so pulled all the junk out of it that had been thrown in there by the last owner. and cleaned it all so i would not start any fires. I actually did learn something from the last two chops after all. Once all that was out of the way i started marking the cuts with some masking tape and a sharpie. I even mesured a few things. I know now to save this little section. I went thru hell trying to make a new one on the space herpie. Here is all the bracing. i all so put a peice in the trunk to support the panel between the winsow and the trunk. I didnt brace the herpie cause i didnt know any better and i know all to well where these flex when ya cut em apart. Conduit is great! The first cut was the p***anger side door frame. Since this is a coupe i wanted to hard top it so i dont end up with a dumb little quater window. Plus hard tops are ***ier any way. And after a few more cuts its well on its way to being a bad *** custom. I cut the back window out with a cut of wheel. i left 5" all around the window frame. ive seen some guys use less but better safe then sorry. I will more then likley end up cutting more off to make every thing line back up once i laye the window down. Here is my pile of parts i cut off so far. All ways a good idea to keep any and evry thing you cut off. you never know what can be used later. Here is the roof all cut loose waiting for the "muscle" to show up. When i cut the 51 ford i rigged a complex system of ropes and ratchet straps but it was a huge pain in the *** and it was easier to wait a half hour for my buddy to come over. Here i was setting the top in place some what and trying to get a idea of how much i wanted to take out. The last two cars i knew how much before i started. but this car i plan to go a bit of a diffrent route with it so i didnt want to go that much. I decided on taking 5.5 out of the a pillar and about 6.5 out of the back. I layed the window in place and liked how it looked at 37 degress so im going to shoot for around there . I didnt want this car to have such a sloped back window like the herpie had. with being a coupe the deck lid is all ready very long and i didnt want to make it look any longer. And here the "Muscle" makes sure the car is on the leval Over all a pretty productive day for only working on it for 5 or so hours. Tommrow ill start to get the a pillars set up and hope fully get those welded up and get the c pillars tacked into place and then beg the old lady for some money for sheet metal. So stay tuned. Thanks Bryan
Sweet! I've seen people chop the sedans, but not the business coupes like mine - I look forward to seeing your progress.
pfffft!! there's no time for sleeping..... get back out there and keep working dammit! I've got the zact same car sitting outside my shop waiting for some lovin'. I wanna see how this story ends.
hell i would work on it all night if i didnt have neighbors that *****ed about any noise past 10:00. Damn suburbs!
Be careful welding that conduit in a closed area, the galvanizing stuff gives off toxic fumes when you weld on it.
So those giant talking penquins were fake? thats to bad they said they would come back tommrow and help! but yea i know all about welding galvanized stuff. i grinded it off the first few but then it became a h***el. i try not to weld those with my helmet on cause it seems to find its way in there and it trys to kill me
Cutting the top is always the easy and fast part of a chop. Looking good already can't wait to see the rest! Just one thing, triangulated braces are much stronger and garanty that nothing will move for sure.
nice! a tutorial for choppin my 50. just what I wanted. Feel free to give plenty of description on what your doin. what kind of welder will you be using?
Hey Bryan I just got back from watching/helping Gene Winfield chop a 50 ford p/u at the local comm. college. If you need help let me know. I still want to go bone yard shopping soon.
just let it sit out side for 10 or so years it takes care of its self. As far as welding going i wanted to gas weld this but i was not able to afford new larger tanks for my torches so i will be using a mig. This is the easy part in some ways. you can really screw your self if you dont cut it apart right. I didnt go into much detail cause i didnt know if this would be recieved well that and it seems there are 100 diffrent ways to chop one of these and who's to say my way is the right way. I just know what works best for me.
The insulation tears off pretty easy. For the tar, I used a paint s****er from Home Depot to get it off. One of the ones that's a long (12") metal handle with a razor blade about 3 or 4 inches wide... plastic grip on the handle... It's not too bad if you let the tar warm up in the sun, or take a propane torch and *lightly* warm it up. Too much and you've given your roof that "bottom of the ashtray" look. Best of luck, brian. BTW, if you get desperate for a gauge cluster, I have one that's probably good for some parts.
When I removed the tar **** from the roof of my 38 chevy I used a foot long s****er that I could get 2 hands on. Not the razor blade kind but one with a chisel end and about a 1/4 inch square shank between the handle and the s****er part. I did it when it was nice and cool and the stuff came flying off in chunks. Left very little on the metal.
Huh, I guess mine is a Sedan and not a coupe as I was led to believe. There's a big difference in the rear 1/4 windows. Oh well As I was s***ching up the 1/2 finished chop on mine, I jambed a 1/2" solid rod into the A pillar from under the dash. A few holes on either side of the cut to plug weld to the rod, and the A pillars are very sturdy now. I hope this helps. Thom
I do the same thing but i do it before i weld the a pilars together. ok time to work ive been running around all morning
There was progress made today for about 2 hours or so. then the little hint of not feeling good became the full on "autorama flue" But i did start on my little trick i wanted to try and turns out its actully going to work.... im going to bed now well see when i feel well enough to work on it again.
OK now that ive got a good 8 hours of sleep since yesterday i think i can make this post. But i warn you im all hopped up on day quill. Today i didnt get anything done of course. But tommrow i think i will feel well enough to get back out there. So here is my little trick i wanted to try. I often wonderd why no one did this on these cars but i soon found out the amount of work it intales is insane. Now pay close attention... I started by making a cut above the belt line. I rested the cutoff wheel right against the body line in order to get a nice cut. The width of the belt line is 1" So i used 1" take to tape off inner quater. This was a nice straight shot since there was nothing i needed to avoid. BY now you might be able to figure what im trying to do here. be sure to take your time you dont want to make more work for your self with cuts that dont match back up. Once you....... yea thats right section the belt line! Here is what it looks like with the belt line removed and the top of the quater lowerd down. Next it was on to the door. This again i cut off at the top of the belt line. You do this so you have to try to cut the belt line section out off the car. Like with chopping its best to leave your material attached to the car so its more stable to cut later. Here is the belt line removed. with the inner structure holding it all together. Here is what the inner looks like taped off. This had to move around a bit to avoid a few things int he door like access holes and the door latch. But its ok to move around a bit as long as the cuts are uniform and connect at all points. Take your time laying this out it can get a bit confusing. Now once you have your door top cut off and your 1" section taking out its time to set it back in place. Well the problem with this is the top of the door used to be 3/8" inward from where it now wants to go. This all due to the belt line curve and what not. So the two parts have to be cut apart. But before i did this i made sure ot mesure and take not of the orig window opening. ONe hand pic sorry it ****s. Next i took the out side peice and set it on the door and made sure every thing lines up nice. Once i was content with the fitment i tack welded it in place. Now due to the door shape there about 1" or so on the front edge that is no longer there. This was not a concern to me due to the fact that im hard topping any way and i need to cap that area off. And tacked into place And here it is getting welded up. Be sure to move around alote so not to cuase to much heat. This is as far along as i got (i finished welding it all up). after this i started feeling real ****ty. This is not done yet and im sure there are questions to be had but please wait till i get it done it hopefully will all make sense. least it does up in my head. So what im hoping to do with this is get rid of that nasty looking belt line that is usless when you lay a back window down with a chop. And it will allso add one more inch to the window opening wich in turn will create a better body to gl*** ratio and make the car look better. Thanks for looking
Bryan, Excellent idea! It makes perfect sence to me. That belt line disapears across the cowel anyways, why not loose it altogether. I hope you feel better, I can't wait to see your next trick! Thom
Another grea thing i forgot to mention is now the bottom of the windsheild and the bottom of the side gl*** matches up perfect. I think over all it just cleans the body up.
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