Thursday, June 12, 2008

Ride Rite

I was able to get the front clip lined up and welded into place, it was a tight fit but everything seemed to go smoothly. The only modification I made was that I notched out the bottom where the clip meets the frame by about 1 inch. This allows the A-frame a little more clearance on the top of the frame and lowers the ride height just a little bit more.

Things are starting to get cramped in here, I still need to mount the sway bar yet and clear all of the steering linkage. One thing I am not satisfied with is the lower shock mount, if you look close you can see that there is no way a bolt will come out of there, so I would have to take the whole plate off the A-frame to get the bolt out. Modification necessary. I also had to modify the upper shock mounts to fit below the aframe and still give clearance for the shock when the upper A-frame travels.


Here's what i came up with, I cut the tabs off of the old mount and cut some new ones that are longer out of some sheet plate and welded them back on the old bottom plate. I may build another set or two so I can adjust the ride height when the air shocks are at their proper inflation for daily driving.

Another view of the rear suspension and rear shock mounts that I made. Hopefully everything will fit when the body gets set back on. Some people run a brace across the top of the hump but I will need the room for exhaust as the axles will bottom out against the frame when the shocks are deflated.


Finally welded in the frame center supports, I had a bear of a time cutting the angles on the front of the supports, last resort use the saw zaw. The tubes going through on an angle were a PAIN as well, I could not get any of my saws to cut at that sharp of an angle, looking back I should have welded in a straight piece of pipe and then cut it with a band saw (not hooked up at this time) or saw zaw. Anyways that will be for the exhaust to pass through to keep everything up off the ground and hopefully not dragging.


Laying the Framework

I took the frame away to get sandblasted, revealing all of the beautiful welds that were done at the factory. Overall it came back in good shape, there are a few areas that will need to be repaired where water has collected and rusted through. I will be welding the entire seam of the 2 piece frame to add a little strength.


Here the frame is up on the jig I built to keep everything in line when I cut off the front clip. This shows the new clip already in place, we did have a small problem with it though. The body mounts did not line up with the factory locations when I refrenced the bumper mount holes. We decided to keep the overall length the same and cut off the new mounts and reweld them on.


Here you can see the new front clip and rear suspensionin place. Three was a lot of measuring and thinking to get it to this point. I am not expert at this but I tryed to consider all of the geometry of the rear end in regards to trailing arm angles and pinion rotation that will happen during suspension movement.


This is supposed to be one of the most important pieces when welding on the front clip, this is supposed to add strength to the frame where they come together. Hopefully I have retained my welding skills from shop class in high school.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Beauty in the ROUGH!

Well here is the beauty, 1955 Chevy Bel Air, 2 door post. This car may have some history that we do not know the entire truth about. I am going to nickname her the "Widow Maker". Short story is the previous owners wife went missing for about 3 years, eventually he confessed to strangling her and told the police he buried her in the basement of his barn. For all I know she rode around in the truck for a while. Hopefuly this isnt going to bring me any significant bad luck.




Compared to the plastic truck I drive around today, I don't think there is any comparison. They just don't make them like they used too. While the fit and finish is a little rough I will take the style and design of the 50's & 60's any day.

For some reason i think this speedometer may need a little modification. Even though we will be doing some modern day conversions, there will be no speed limiter on this one. But for some reason I doubt it will be the first time that the needle was buried past the 110 mark.




Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Catch up time.

I will be doing some posting of pictures and comments to get caught up on my 1955 Chevy Bel Air project.  I started on the project in the summer of 2006 and have made some good progress.