1933 Chevy Stock Car restoration chronicle

I'm new to this forum, but I've posted this restoration chronicle before on some other sites, so now I'll post some pictures of our current project here too.

It's a 1933 Chevy 3 window coupe that was raced as an oval track stock car back in the 60's. It was wrecked around 1968-69 then stripped of useable parts and left on "the back 40" of the farm for 30 or so years.

Here's the car as it sat when we found it:





We had to do a bit of "logging" to get it out of there. The wheels and suspension were long gone, so we had to come-along it onto the trailer. We placed two steel pipes instead of ramps, and dragged it onto the trailer. The car was buried almost halfway up the doors in years of forest accumulation.

We brought the car home, set it on top of a 65 Chevelle frame we had and just gathered parts and "ideas" for a year or so. These pictures give a little better look at the "unrestored" condition:


It was sitting on the original frame rails, which had been damaged then plated and then completely mangled in the wreck that ended this car's racing days. Then the frontend and all other "component parts" were removed before the car was discarded and forgotten about at the back of the property where it had been worked on.

After gathering some parts and doing some research, we determined that the body was decent enough to bring back to life as a vintage race car. But, since it was also an early 30's coupe, we thought it would make a cool Hot Rod as well.
What to do? We decided to do both! Perform a "restoration" of the race car, but also take some creative liberties with it and make the car street legal too.
Once in the shop, the task at hand revealed itself to be quite "ambitious":


It didn't take long to figure out that a new frame and roll cage would be required.

Removing the body from the remains of the frame revealed a crude roll cage that had been constructed of Driveshaft tubes and water pipe. Then it had been wrapped with padding and electrical tape...probably so no inspection of the cage by track officials would notice the poor design.
The driver position had been relocated back and to the center of the car.


We located a solid 1953 Chevrolet passenger car frame. These frames were popular with oval racers in the 60's because they were STRONG, due to being fully boxed. Most frames from 1937 to 1954 were similar.

We shortened the frame both front and rear. We utilized parallel leafs in the rear, similar to what would have been stock, except we mounted the springs inboard of the frame rails (these frames are wide enough to accomodate it) so the car will be able to sit lower and the spring shackles will be concealed from the side view.
We mounted a Frankland Quick-change rearend with Camaro leaf springs, shortened to use fabricated leaf spring sliders with jacking bolts:



In the front, the frame was shortened quite a bit and a 2x4 steel crossmember added to mount the transverse leaf spring. This mount also incorporates "wedge bolts" for racing chassis adjustments.

We fabricated motor mounts for the 327 Chevrolet engine and a transmission crossmember for the Saginaw 4 speed transmission. We also mounted a 1940 Chevrolet steering box.
Inside we fabricated a completely new roll cage of 1-1/2", 0.095" wall E.R.W. steel tubing. We made the roll cage fit as tightly to the body skin as possible for three reasons. 1, it is replacing the original wood that gave structural stregnth to the body. 2, we wanted as much room inside the car as possible and less obstructions to vision out the windows. 3, structurally, the rollcage and body will be one with the frame, so flex will not be an issue.




A bench seat (from the back of a 1982 Bronco) was mounted in the car. Since the driver's side door will remain welded shut and protected by structural roll cage tubing, access to the driver position will be through the pasenger side door. We thought that since we wanted the ability to have a passenger anyway...why not use a bench seat to make it easier to "slide" behind the wheel:



By this point we had made some pretty good progress and the "vision" was present. But there was still a long way to go. We kind of got side-tracked for a couple of years and have just recently begun to put some serious work into this project again. I'll try to put regular updates here http://good-times.webshots.com/album/557521995prNDgp?start=0, as well as posting them on this thread.

Here's a view of the roll cage and dashboard. We've removed the steel plate that had been weded into the roof to replace the fabric. We made a new steel insert from a mid-80's GM roof panel, but we're trying to get some other interior things done before closing the top up again:

Here's another view, but without the dashboard panel. We still don't have the steering column figured out completely, swinging pedals are from late 60's Ford pickup:

Here's a couple more pictures of the frontend. The spring is one of the originals from the parallel setup. We fabricated the weld-on mounts and the steering arm. Tie rod is in front just temporarily, until we finish fabrication of the radiator cradle.



Track style "nerf bar" is fabricated of 1-1/2" tubing. "H" is for Hager, our last name. Lots of H's in racing....Hildebrandt, Hillegas, Halibrand, Hilborn.....

We are going to need a "lip" for the window glass rubber gasket, so we've made these thick sheetmetal pieces to weld into the body. They're going to stiffen up the area around the glass and provide that lip. The center bar will be removed before glass is installled, it's just there now to keep the window opening from sagging:

All those years lying in the dirt took their toll on the lower regions of the body. Here, we've cut off about 6" or so and fabricated a sheet metal repair panel. This is when it comes in handy to NOT have a door opening:

The new panel clamped in place. We used a bead-roller to duplicate the body line at the front of the cowl. Along the bottom we've bent a piece of 3/4" light wall conduit, then split it down the middle on one side so it can slip onto the sheet metal. When finshed with a little plastic filler, it makes a decent "fake" stock body line. Plus, it helps to stiffen and hold the panel to the shape desired:

The passenger side will have an operational "door", although the top part where the window frame was will remain welded into the body.
We needed to make a new rocker panel/cowl side. To get the curvature, the top edge was "shrunk" in a shrinker/stretcher tool, the bottom gets the curved conduit treatment:

In this picture you can see how we split the conduit so it will slip onto the sheetmetal:


Bottom of the trunk lid required a patch too:

The back panel was very rough and we needed to provide clearance for the leaf spring jacking-bolts too:



We decided to replace it completely with a new panel that we fabricated. In these phots, you get a good view of the Frankland Quick-change rearend and the parallel leaf springs:

We fabricated the rear panel and again used the stretcher/shrinker to get curvature:

We used the conduit trick along the bottom and the notches for the jacking bolts are made from 3" exhaust pipe:

Here are the "splash aprons" we made from heavy gauge steel. We used the bead roller with a custom large diameter roller die to create the ribs:

The spring eyes are going to get cut off. The shackles have been replaced by "slippers" that the spring will bear on. The slippers can be adjusted up and down with the threaded "jacking bolts" which will allow chassis adjustments.
Using the slippers and jacking bolts was common on oval track cars of the era (mid 1960's). The shackles limit the amout of travel that the spring can lengthen. This system allows for plenty of travel regardless of what height the spring is set.

Here is a vew of the 1-1/2" square tube transmission crossmember, which un-bolts for tansmission removal from beneath the car. Also the welded in 1-1/2"x2" tube crossmember behind the transmission which has an offset center to allow for driveshaft clearance and also it doubles as the driveshaft sling:


And here is the start of the rear floorboard and rear firewall:

I'm using all sheet metal that I got for free. It is really "old school"...as in old school lockers and shelving. The bare sheetmetal came out of an old school metal shop classroom and even the rounded drivshaft clearance piece is made from a old school bus exhaust part. That's OLD SCHOOL huh?

The roll cage has a straight cross bar at the bottom of the seat and one with curves on the ends at the top of the seat. The bars will be the locating mounts for competition seatbelts.

The car looks like it was done up a lot prettier than most stock cars of the era. It was white on top with lots of thin red pinstriping highlighting the stock body contours. The bottom was a metalic goldish color with the red and white number lettering.
We plan to finish the car similar to the original paint scheme. And, yes....with any luck the paint will come out shiny.
I think I'd like to paint a black checkerboard on the center of the roof where the cloth insert would have been originally. The front I'm envisioning with some scallops. I think gold around the entire radiator shell, then scalloped to white about halfway back on the hood.
Interior will be black and wheels probably raw magnesium.

Front wheels are 6-pin Sprint car pattern, with real knock-off hubs. Rears are wide-five (36-39 Ford) Frankland safety hub pattern.

I plan to use these 15x7 wheels on the front:



And this picture shows another six pin, but I have wider 15x10 matching wide-fives for the rear:




These are magnesium two piece wheels made by Safety Racing.



I also have one of these 15x8 Halibrands, but I haven't found a match yet:

While Fords were much more prevalent in oval racing during the 50's, Chevrolets became a very popular choice during the 60's when rules started to allow the cars to be retrofitted with overhead valve V-8 engines. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this car from it's racing days (I would love to find some though)....but here are some pictures of a few similar cars from the mid 60's era:

Great pics John.

Jeff

Very cool...

Nice job on a great project.
I really like seeing that car rebuilt and used again.
Great pictures, please keep posting them. '22

Wow John, that's a project that most would probably consider too far gone to even start on. You are doing a fantastic job with it. I'm glad you are saving it.