Читать книгу Project Street Rod - Larry Lyles - Страница 11

Take a look in photo 1 at where this car came from. The previous owner informed me he had spent several hours cutting down heavy brush and small trees just to reach the car. Once access to the car was gained, he towed the car into the open where it could be photographed, loaded onto a trailer, and transported to his garage. That was a few years ago, and I assure you that in the meantime the overall condition of the car wasn’t drastically improved upon.

A NICE CAR IT ISN’T

The ’46 was a bomb, to say the least. A lot of vital parts were missing, and the ones that were there had been used for target practice. I’m not stepping out on a limb when I say this car probably would have never seen pavement again; and if by some fluke it had, it would have been a risk to everyone within 100 yards of it. But that’s no longer true. I’ll be taking this aging hull of a car apart and making a lot of modifications designed to bring this car back to something that will handle and drive like a dream.

How am I going to do that? Let’s move this bomb of a ’46 into the shop and start by defusing it.

The previous owner was kind enough to remove all of the front sheet metal, which for the time being has been piled in a corner of the shop. That has left everything forward of the firewall exposed enough to give me a better look at what I have (photo 2).

REPLACING THE SUSPENSION

What I see I really don’t like. The front I-beam axle setup may have been a good suspension system in its day, but it can’t hold a candle to the modern IFS (independent front suspension) units available today (photo 3). Nor am I thrilled with the drum brake system or the manual steering setup. What this car needs is a good SLA (short arm, long arm) suspension system coupled with a set of disc brakes and rack and pinion steering.

The good news is that I can purchase an off-the-shelf IFS unit that will come already equipped with disc brakes and rack and pinion steering. That will let me rip out the old front I-beam axle setup, then weld in the new IFS unit, and end up with a state-of-the-art front suspension. The bad news is that most off-the-shelf IFS units won’t simply drop into place under the ’46. To get one to fit, I’ll need to make some modifications to the frame. As I move deeper into this project, I’ll go through the entire process of modifying the frame to accept such a unit.

PHOTO 1: Parked in the weeds for many years, it took the previous owner two days to extract the car and save it from the “rust worms.”

PHOTO 2: With the ’46 finally in the shop, it is time to take a hard look at what I have.

THE ENGINE AND TRANSMISSION NEED ATTENTION

Looking at the engine the previous owner had already installed in the car, I know I have a very solid Chevy 350 bolted to a pretty common 350 automatic transmission (photo 4). Depending on the budget, I hope to be making some internal changes to the engine to boost its output as well as making a few cosmetic changes designed to dress up this engine. I’ll also be thinking about giving the carburetor the toss, in favor of something a little more high tech and user friendly to the driver, such as a multi-port fuel injection system from Affordable Fuel Injection. I’ve yet to teach Bryan the subtle nuances of starting a cold engine with a 650 Edelbrock mounted on it. I don’t think the term pump it computes to a younger generation brought up on fuel-injected grocery haulers.

Anyway, as far as the transmission goes, overdrive would be nice, but sometimes you just have to “run what you brung.” That doesn’t mean this transmission is a slouch; GM thought enough of it to plant it under a few million Chevrolets. As long as I send it out for a once-over at the transmission shop, it should serve this project quite well for a number of years.

PHOTO 3: I-beam front suspension with its drum brake setup has got to go. I’ll replace everything here with something much better.

PHOTO 4: The Chevy 350 is a good start toward making this car really purr. It needs a little dressing up, but that’s for later.

Crawling under the car to check the clearance between the transmission and the X-member, I can see that the frame will require some extensive modifications in this area also. The transmission is bumping the X-member on the right side and has less than a 1/4-inch clearance on the left side. In an ideal world, I’d like to see at least a 1/2-inch clearance all around the transmission. That means I’ll be modifying the X-member to gain that desired clearance.

TOP AND BOTTOM METAL WORK

Working my way farther back, I’m finding a lot of rust in the passenger compartment floor pan area that will have to be dealt with, plus a massively bubbled roof that is just begging for some attention. The floor pans are an easy enough fix. I’ll simply cut them out and replace them with new pans fabricated here in the shop. The bubbled roof is going to present more of a challenge (photo 5). It will have to be chopped.

But then, that is an art in itself. If you have ever wandered through the local car shows admiring all of the painted iron on display, I’m sure you have noticed at least one ride with the windshield so narrow you can’t help but wonder how the driver can see where he is going. That’s a huge problem I want to avoid when it comes time to chop this top. I’m not fond of massive tops, but I am fond of seeing where I’m going.

The flip side to the overly chopped top is the chop that leaves the casual observer wondering if the top has been chopped at all. I don’t want to spend the amount of time and money required to do a first-class top chop and then in the end realize I had needed to remove another inch of metal to really make this ride look right. To get it right, I’ll use an old school trick combined with new-school technology to determine the correct amount of chop the roof panel should have.

TIP

A good way to keep your pants clean when going under a vehicle is to purchase a mechanic’s creeper. This board on wheels keeps you off of the cold floor and makes negotiating the tight clearance between car and floor much easier.

I’ll dispense with going into the details of how this chop will be accomplished until later. Instead, I’ll, explain the odd-looking car in photo 6. The lines across the door opening were created using masking tape. The strips of tape are spaced 3/4 of an inch apart. That will allow me to take a photo of the car, blow it up to a larger size, then cut and crop it along the different tape lines until I determine how much chop is enough to make this car look the way I want it to look, I’ll tack my cut and cropped shot of the car to the shop wall to serve as a reference guide as I work. I know, Photoshop can do that on the computer, but it can’t blow up the picture enough for an old goat like me to get a real good look at it. I’m old school in that regard and proud of it.

Moving on toward the back of the car, the trunk floor pan is almost as rusty as the passenger compartment floor pan. Replacing it won’t pose a serious problem until I toss into the mix the need to replace the fuel tank. I’m not thrilled with the fender-mounted fuel filler neck, so I will be making changes in that area also.

Under the rear floor pan is a GM-type rear axle assembly that had been removed from something with a rear coil spring suspension and modified to accept leaf springs. Nothing about this setup is acceptable to me, so the only alternative is to remove everything under here and start over. I just happen to have a Ford 8.8 rear axle complete with disc brakes and a factory four bar-type suspension that should be an easy fit.

IMPROVING INTERIOR COMFORT

Moving back to the passenger compartment, I know from having helped hot-rod a few cars over my career that there are two basic areas of concern located between the firewall and trunk compartment. The first is the dash area. Leg room can become a premium when trying to tuck air conditioning, stereo equipment, and a variety of gauges into an already confined space. This will take some careful thought and consideration as to how to proceed.

The other concern is the back seat. Did I say back seat? Yes, I did. The ’46 may have begun life as a business coupe, void of a back seat, but it has more than enough room to accommodate a rear seat. It won’t have the space of a limo, but it should have ample room to stuff a grand-kid or two into the car to make the day’s outing a little more family friendly.

PHOTO 5: From this angle, you can almost get a feel for how the roof will look once it has been chopped. From any other angle, the roof is one huge bubble.

PHOTO 6: The first step in the old-school process of chopping a top is to lay reference lines on the car to be used later to determine the exact amount of chop this car will receive.

TIME FOR A WISH LIST

Normally, I would bring out the camera and note pad and start a master list as I begin to take this car apart. However, there isn’t a lot to be taken apart on this car, and most of what I will be taking apart will not be put back on the car anyway. I think the best course of action is to start by compiling a wish list of desired changes, then venture onto the Internet in search of parts and parts catalogs. That will help me construct a budget for this project as well as help establish a sequence of steps for rebuilding this car.