1955 Chevrolet Bel Air More Door For A 16 Year Old

[Catbox]

This is the slow moving tale of my sons first car.

Sooooo....
A year or so ago, my son (16 at the time) had the day off from school and was perusing Craigslist for fun.
I was at work and he kept sending me links to trucks from the 'List that he would love to have.
He really wants an early '50s Chevy truck and all the ones he was sending to me were overpriced crap.

Then, out of nowhere he sends me a listing for a 1955 Bel Air.
I looked it over and replied to his text:
"Hell yeah I will buy you that one. You just have to get your mother on board."

I have always wanted a '55 for myself.
So it was a no brainer on my end and my wife was all about it as well for him.

So, the next day we went up to Vancouver Washington (Not terribly far from where I live in Oregon) and gave it the look over to see if it would be something we wanted to take on.
Trent, the owners representative was a swell guy to work with and took us on a tour of the facility the car happened to be stored in.
The owner of the vehicle happens to own the company "Chev's of the 40's" and has a museum that was being built where the car was located.

We saw the most awesome behind the scenes stuff that day.

When it came time to haggle, I bent Trents arm with the "He is 16 and this is going to be his first car" and "It will be a father / son project" and we managed to earn back a couple hundred bucks off the asking price. The car had been for sale for quite some time at higher prices. There were offers from different countries to have it shipped and Trent just didn't want to deal with that stuff.
So we struck a deal and the car followed us home a couple days later.

Here are some photos for you to oogle....

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[animal]

Nice project

 

[Catbox]

So this is a true Bel Air survivor car.
It came with a bunch of options not found on lower models.
The engine is a 265 V-8 with Powerglide transmission.

The owner we picked it up from has been in the car scene since the 60's when he owned a tow company.
This car was pulled into the tow yard sometime in 1976 and was deemed to be worthy of saving by the owner for restoration.
As the feller built his empire this one simply bounced around from storage to storage.
The decision was made to sell it as he is now at a place where he needs to let go of some things.

Somewhere the car lost some of its parts and pieces.

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Our plan is for Max to build it in the theme of a '60s hot rod Dad car.
A car that can be driven everywhere and look the part doing it.

I have a car guy coworker with a '68 truck he is currently putting a LS into, so he offered us a swell deal on the totally rebuilt and original to his truck 307 / Turbo 400 combo.
This is the most powerful version of the little engine and it has maybe 1500 miles on it since being totally gone through.
Perfect for a 17 year old punk to drive.

Now to get the boy to work on the thing.
He works on my truck far more than he has worked on his car...
The engine still in the truck.

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Now it is waiting for him to make it a new home.

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[idahovette]

FWIW, when you install that engine and trans combo, Side mounts and a rear trans crossmember would probably serve your purpose better. Those old transmission side mounts are kind of a pain. If you decide to go front side and rear trans you can remove the bat wings from the frame where the old trans mounts hook to. Lets you tuck the exhaust up next to the frame so you can get it lower. I have done this to my Nomad project and it works very well. It's really very easy, too!! Just my 2 cents...

 

[Catbox]

Why thank you for the insight @idahovette
For Christmas SantyClause has brought this little punk a set of side mount engine mounts as well as the deluxe transmission cross member.

We plan on doing away with all the old mount junk and running a current setup to hold the engine and transmission all in place.

I did hours of reading on any forum post I could find to see what the best one was to use.
The responses were all over the place and so I settled on the kit from Performance Online.
Once the cooties that are putting us all into quarantine are gone enough, we will be buying a new engine hoist.
Then we can remove the old junk and get to work with putting in the new.

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[Catbox]

Here is a semi current photo of the car sitting in the driveway.
When we got it home only one of the doors opened.
The others all had lock mechanisms that were gummed up, so he went to work on them.
Slowly one by one he got them all apart and working like champs.
The doors on this thing close so nice, of course being off the road for 43 years helps on that.

However, there is a small butt load of rusted out stuff on this feller.
It will need some extensive surgery to fix all that ****, but whatever.
I paid $2000 for a cool car that I have always wanted even if this one is a more door.

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[DoubleDingo]

Nice find and great project!

Your boy looks a lot like my cousin Mike when he was that age

 

[Catbox]

A few more shots of the car in the driveway.
The passenger side has the most rot in the car.
It will need a rocker and up into the rear wheel well area with a touch of floor pan.
I told him to go to the junkyard on a half price day and pick up a 70's era hood to make patch panels from. Most likely off a squarebody as they are large, plentiful, and pretty flat.

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So the car has sat for a while.
I was bored and wanted to be out in the sunshine one day.
So I went out and started some light scrubbing on the paint with Comet and a wimpy scouring pad from the Dollar Store.
Just enough to knock the oxidization off the paint.
Then I used some random wax I found in the garage, just so I could get it to shine.

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Junior daily drives my Squarebody with its big block, so he works on it as it needs it.
So to help motivate him, I told him to take the wheels off my Bel Air and put them on his.
It will lower the car and put a better looking wheel on it.

He likes it a ton better, but has still not managed to do much more to it...

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[DanMcG]

That's a nice looking ride! Good luck with the resto!

 

[broketiredugly]

man, thats a beauty! only two things will motivate that boy to build the car.
1. make him walk until its finished.
2. a girlfriend that promises a heap of vitamin p when he takes her for a ride in it!

 

[Catbox]

So then....
We left off with the car sitting around waiting on Max to get motivated.
Two weeks ago whilst on the Facebook, I saw a posting from a local friend.
He recently acquired a 1955 Chevy for himself.
Brake upgrades were first on his list and after they were all installed he posted them up on a page.
I saw the post and made the deal to go and fetch them.

This sparked the boy to jump in with both feet.
First he started to strip the engine bay down of the things that will need to be removed to pull the engine. Radiator, core support, rotten battery tray, hood, and other misc items...

This included pulling the power brake system out of the car as the buddy deal had a manual master cylinder in it that is a functioning dual circuit unit.

Then off came the intake manifold and driveshaft.
Pretty quickly after that we plucked the engine and transmission out as one piece.

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[Catbox]

Now that the engine and trans are out of the car it sits quite tall in the driveway.
That is around 900 pounds of iron out of the car.
Cast iron Powerglides are monsters.

So he now has the engine and trans separated.
The engine is sitting on a stand and he has been pulling it apart, working on figuring out why it is seized.

He got the heads off and we then started to see that somebody had been in the engine at one time.
The pistons have .030 stamped on them.
So we started to run some of the casting numbers on the various parts.

Intake is stock 265, not a big surprise.
Exhaust manifolds again, stock.
Cylinder heads, 1958 Corvette used in 4BBL, Dual 4BBL, and Fuel Injected V-8 cars.
Wait, what?
We have a real honest set of Corvette fuelie heads in our hands?
Engine block is just a run of the mill 265 as well, we were hoping it was the 283 block as well.

So I quickly did some more google searching and verification of the casting numbers and they sure are. Somebody loved this thing at some point in its life.

They are the correct casting number, date code, and show all the signs that the fancy pants vette guys look for when doing a concours restoration.

They decode to being manufactured on January 3rd and 6th and include the little "X58" casting mark as well.

We may have found some gold in this old rust bucket....

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[Rusty Nail]

Saw-weet!


I wish I had a cast iron Powerglide...

 

[Catbox]

Forgot the close ups of the casting numbers...

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[Catbox]

Saw-weet!


I wish I had a cast iron Powerglide...

250 Lbs of **** this ****.
I have this one and the one in my Bel Air.
They are tanks...