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54 Chevy Bel Air hartop
Trying to restore a 54 Chevy bel air sedan.
Anyone have some knowledge you may drop on the subject? Stock specs or any mod suggestions?
Still has the stock inline 6 with a 32/36 bolted on , any suggestions for better carbueration?
This is my friends project and we are both new to restoration but looking for any knowledge that one may be able to drop on us. We don't mind the challenge/task n headaches cause we're here to learn, we believe you gotta start some where so any help will be appreciated, thanks for your time peace, justin
Anyone have some knowledge you may drop on the subject? Stock specs or any mod suggestions?
Still has the stock inline 6 with a 32/36 bolted on , any suggestions for better carbueration?
This is my friends project and we are both new to restoration but looking for any knowledge that one may be able to drop on us. We don't mind the challenge/task n headaches cause we're here to learn, we believe you gotta start some where so any help will be appreciated, thanks for your time peace, justin
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1. What do I want to end up with? A stock /54 restored like Chevy made it? OR an "improved" /54 Chevy that looks real stock but has better motor, brakes, exhaust and is more fun to drive? OR a real "rod" with big motor, radical paintwork, big wheels, unusual interior with digital gauges, super-sound, etc? OR do you just want to tinker with it WHILE you're driving it, like a p/t hobby car that you can use?
2. Once you know your goal, then you work up a budget. How much money do you want to have in this car as a grand total? Have you added up all that you want to do? Are you numbers realistic?
3. How much of the work can you do yourself and how much will you farm out? Where will you do this work? Do you care how long it takes?
So once you have a plan, a place, and a budget, you can start on it.
Oh yeah, I'd put Dyna-mat down on the floors and inner firewall, too, to keep heat out.
The bottom line, do you want a cool 1954 Chevy to drive around in or do you want "something else"?
Do you want it stock as it was designed or do you want it "Mickey Moused?" I can give you a strong argument either way. Just remember, they are only stock once.
I had a 54 Chevy Bel Air and it was one sweet ride in it's stock condition. It steered well, stopped well and cruised the freeways of So. Calif at 70 MPH with no problems.
I never felt any excess heat through the firewall although this can be a problem with some old cars.
It did have a split manifold for that wonderful sound only a Chevy six can produce. The 235 engine is a strong workhorse, and if it has a Powerglide, it will hold up well.
Usually, these arent daily drivers. They don't have to handle or stop like a BMW.
Is it a hardtop or a sedan? You weren't clear. If it's a 2 door hardtop, then it would really be a shame ( I know, my jaded opinion) to make it something it never was intended to be.
Sorry, Joe, I respect and even agree somewhat with you on this but to me, it's a shame to mes with an old Chevy!
Now...if it were a Ford we were talking about....
Or would doing those mods require a bunch of cutting, welding, etc, to the point that the old stuff would never go back on?
However, if you give it some juice with nicer wheels and a good V8 rumble, well then the picture changes. Then you have a mild street rod. You have more fun. The spectator has more fun.
Yes! You can modify to power steering and disk brakes without cutting or changing anything permanently. It's not that easy but you can return the car to originality--although again, with a sedan, I don't know why you would.
Just look at the value of a Ford or Chevy sedan from 1927. In 80 years, they are still worth less than a used Hyundai---so with an early 50s sedan, you aren't sittin' on a gold mine here.
to answer Andre, yes, they can be converted to disk brakes without butchering the car but, WHY?
It's almost like some people think the old drum brakes were dangerous or inferior. If they are adjusted properly and working well, they will quickly skid the car to a stop if necessary. Yes, disks won't heat up or fade as much, but, again, people shouldn't drive a 54 Chevy as they would a modern car and any sensible person wouldn't.
Last night, at the local car show, thre was a 1953 Chevy convertable. At least it had been at one time. Undr the hood sat a small black Chevy engine of some kind. The Powerglide had been replaced with a floor mounted who knows what. The stock guages had been replaced with modern digital ones etc. It was a nice car to be sure but it sure wasn't a sweet, stock 53 Bel Air convertable.
To each his own...
I don't think once a V-8 has been installed that it would be possible to return the car to stock. Too many things have to be cut.
One time I decided to see what the top speed of my 54 Bel Air was. I got to 92 MPH and it wouldn't go any faster.
It wasn't TOO anemic for what it was.
Another time I blasted through a tunnel at about 80MPH with my dual pipes blasting like mad only to discover a motorcycle cop hiding outside the tunnel.
He was NOT amused nor was he a big fan of split manifolds and 18" glasspacks!
How about this for a compromise? Instead of going with disc brakes, what if you just went with a more substantial drum brake setup from a later model car? Disc brakes are going to make a power assist mandatory, whereas simply putting bigger drums on the car, you could get away without the power assist. So there'd be less to change, less complexity, etc.
I had a '67 Chrysler Newport hardtop with a 383-2bbl, and it just had drum brakes. I'd imagine they were 11" drums all around. It also had no power assist, so you'd think it would take plenty of leg muscle to stop a heavy, torquey behemoth like that. But I had no trouble at all. Even more telling, before I owned it, it belonged to a little old lady who'd owned it since around 1971. That's gotta be proof positive that, as long as your drums are big enough, you really don't need a power assist.
Of course, a good disk setup with power assist will still be better, but that Newport was perfectly adequate in normal day-to-day driving. Of course, if you want to slam on the brakes multiple times in succession, hauling it down from highway speeds to a dead stop, you're going to fade them pretty quickly, but I can't imagine too many situations where you have a bunch of panic stops in a row like that.
My '67 Catalina convertible has drums all around, with power assist. I dunno how much hp the thing has. Originally it had 290 gross with the 2-bbl, but it has a 4-bbl on it now, so I'd guess around 325? Other than being a bit grabby at first, I've never had any complaints about them. I'd imagine they're 11"?
As for the domestics switching to disc brakes, I don't think it was high-hp engines that caused them to do that, but probably increased pressure from the public, foreign competition, or somebody else. Heck, in 1973, GM was still putting 9.5" drums (same size as a Corvair, I think) as standard equipment in 4000 lb musclecars with 454/455 big-blocks! Fortunately, a disc setup that also upgraded you to 11" drums in back was optional, and I think most of them were equipped this way. But they were still making you pay extra for the privelege, in a time when the power was coming down.
Now, if someone has turned the drums beyond minimum specs it could be a different story.
Mine stopped just fine!
"In the heading of his post it said hardtop and later, he said it was a sedan so I don't know. " - There such thing as a four door hardtop right? I haven't seen the car in a couple of months so the picture of the car is kinda blurry in my head..Could I be wrong? :confuse:
At a car show, I recently saw a REAL oddball 1956 Chevy. It was a 4 door hardtop 210 series! Now, those were extremely rare! It was nice to see despite the fact it had the worst color combo they offered that year. Remember the two tone yellow and greens that were actually pretty popular that year.
To make it even worse, they just HAD to add fender skirts and a hokey continental kit. Those are two options I just despise on ANY old car yet people seem to think they are nifty additions.
To make ths Chevy even more unusual, it was a six cylinder with a three speed. Actually a VERY nice and very unusual old Chevy!
Oldsmobile and Buick fielded the first 4-door hardtops in mid-1955, on the B-body, which would be the Olds 88/98 and Buick Special/Century. The Buick Super/Roadmaster, being on the larger C-body shared with Cadillac, wouldn't get that style until 1956.
I've actually seen illustrations of a 1952 DeSoto 4-door hardtop, but it was never offered for sale to the public. I dunno if any prototypes were built, or if it was just an illustration. IIRC, it just looked like a 2-door hardtop with 4 doors, so it didn't have a special roof or anything.
I think most people nowadays don't really know what a "hardtop" is. They just think hard top versus convertible. I remember years ago, right after I totaled my '69 Dart GT, I found a '76 Delta 88 4-door in the classifieds. This was back before the internet, so there were no pictures. I called about it and asked the lady if it was a hardtop (they offered both a pillared sedan and a hardtop with that generation). The lady just replied "No, it has a vinyl roof". At that point, I didn't even bother to try explaining the difference to her. Also never saw the car, because I had my eye on this local '68 Dart that I saw for sale, the day after I totaled my '69. And ultimately, that was what I ended up with.
Oh, and I absolutely HATE those add-on continental tire kits and skirts! I know that color combo too, the yellow/green. So was it green with a yellow contrast, or vice versa? Neither one is particularly taseful in my book, but I'd prefer the green body.
Somehow though, I could actually picture that combo working on a '54 Chevy. Probably because it would just have a contrasting roof, and at most, just a tiny sliver on the rear quarter, versus the more radical two-toning they did in later years.
I could be dreaming or it could have been something someone very creative put together?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who despises Continental Kits and skirts. As far as I'm concern, these just hokey up the looks of a car. I guess in some parts of the country, these wer popular? Certainly NOT in So. California!
I've always wondered where that continental kit trend started, anyway? Those cars certainly didn't leave the factory that way! Same with fender skirts.
I dunno how popular this trend was, but there used to be a kit you could get for a 1957 Chevy or Ford to convert it to a quad headlight setup. I saw it in an old 1958 Popular Mechanics that my granddad had. The ad said "Make your car look identical to the new 1958 models!" Umm, not hardly! The end result looked sort of like those 1958 Packards and Studebakers that had the hastily contrived quad headlight setups. I'm hoping that quad headlight conversion fad died pretty quickly.
Yeah, I think that's why they didn't offer a kit for '57 Chrysler cars! You couldn't get quads on a '57 Dodge, Plymouth, or DeSoto Firesweep, but you could always just convert it, using 1958 parts. And the Chryslers, Imperials, and bigger DeSotos just offered them from the get-go in '57, in the states that had them legal.
I saw a one-off concept of a '57 Bonneville that had quad headlights, and it was actually pretty sharp looking. The fenders were actually redesigned to take the headlights though, so they weren't just stuck on as afterthoughts like those '58 Packardbakers. Another nasty quad setup that just popped into my mind is the 1957 Mecury.
That car should have never happened.
An unfitting end to a great marque.
Never once, in my youth did I see a car with blue dot tailights but now, they seem to be the rage on old cars.
If I recall correctly, that Nash and the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham were the first cars with quad headlights as standard equipment.
I remember reading somewhere that the Nash was technically illegal in some states, because of that "true" quad headlight setup. But they sold so few of them, something on the order of 5,000 units, that nobody really cared. I used to think that the '57 Lincoln had true quad headlights too, but didn't it actually have a standard sized single headlight on top and a smaller driving light below it, to give that look?
Of course, the tailfins grafted on to the 1956 Lincoln to create the 1957 model didn't help, either.