Thanks to Rich, his right sun visor is going into this nice 4 door custom 300 that a friend of mine is working on. He was extremely happy when I gave him the delete plate and thought that he would never find one after seeing the one in my car.
The vehicle is running an FE engine with 4 speed transmission.
Nice car, did he weld up the rear doors??
Quote from: hiball3985 on 2013-12-07 15:12
Nice car, did he weld up the rear doors??
Looks like a 2-door to me.
I'll let Jay fill you in on the details, but this car was a 4 door. Pretty amazing transition.
Okay, I gotta hear this.
I've seen it done a couple of times...even of tri five chevys. The B pillar gets cut out. Put in a two door pillar. Hammer and dollie the skin around the pillar and weld in place. The roof and floor is the same for 2dr or 4dr. Hang longer doors and you have a two door.
Wow! Nice job, looks better then factory.
I'm not sure if you guys want the long story or the short story, so I'll sort of cut out some of the unimportant stuff.
The owner left the 4 dr 57 custom 300 it in his sister's garage for 20+ years and was out of the state.. During that period of time his young nephews took rocks and smashed all of the glass and damaged the surrounding stainless. When he came to me, I had all of the glass and stainless that he needed, but he was not a hands on guy so nothing got done to it. The car was totally rust/rot free. I was parting out a 58 4dr custom at the time to fix my 58.
My friend, the present owner is a master body guy and has had his own shop for years. He decided that it had too many doors, but was happy that the body and floor was like new.
He bought a pair of two door doors that had the bottoms rotted out and made steel lower sections and repaired them and bolted them on the car. Then he removed the rear doors and moved the B post back to where they lined up with the front doors. Then he welded the relocated B post into place.
Then he took the skins off of the 4 dr rear doors, lined everything up and welded them on the back of the car. Now he has a 2dr car.
I went to his shop to look at the car and asked him what he was going to do with the inside back section because there were no window mechanisms in it yet. I told him that he should look at my car. He came over to my shop and looked at mine car and decided to make it similar to mine and make it into a custom and a business coupe.
He bought a 2dr front seat and custom side stainless and is getting ready to get rid of the unnecessary custom 300 holes. The 58 hood is also coming off and a stock 57 hood is going on to it. I gave him the front and rear window stainless and all of my original 70D back panels. He has my measurements and is going to make his own back tray like I did. I told him to make a few of them.
That is one talented body man.
Gary You hit the nail right on the head. Obviously you've been around and this ain't your first rodeo.
Jim Yes... This person is very talented. I'm sure thankful that he painted my 57. I'm not as good at painting as I used to be. It's going to look nice with the Custom trim on the quarter panel.
Here are some more pictures of the car. Unfortunately I only took those four pictures at the time. Right now the car is locked up in a storage box and was scheduled to go back into his shop for 2 weeks during Christmas. A huge job came in and got scheduled for that time slot, so the 57 will have to wait until after the new Year.
Next time I'll get pictures while he is working on it. He never did tell me if he is going with the same color or not but I suspect that he is going to do a two tone and use a stock divider piece if he can find a pair.
This is his parts car and the tractor frame is what he usually does. He just finished building a beautiful cab for it and I forgot to take a picture . A couple of weeks ago, that frame was just two rails.
I'm impressed.
Quote from: BAMA_57 on 2013-12-08 16:41
I'm impressed.
Bama
According to Gary Gasman It's been done before .
I give a lot of credit to anyone that can do something like that and use OEM pieces .
Jay
Really nice work. I too have seen this done on trifive chevies a few times. First time I personally have seen it done to a 57 Ford.
Jay.. your pal has the chops!..... incredible work!!!!
Quote from: Jeff Norwell on 2013-12-09 11:43
Jay.. your pal has the chops!..... incredible work!!!!
Jeff
We need to go ever there to see what he's doing. He's only 15 minutes from my place and it's all back road driving.
Would you believe that he also has a 51 Ford business coupe and it still has the original back tray in it? He even has one of my old cars (53 Ford) that I brought up from Md. about 40 years ago.
You need to check out the straight body work on the 57 also.
J>>>>--------------->
"young nephews took rocks and smashed all of the glass and damaged the surrounding stainless"..Are they still living?
Excellent work!
Quote from: F570RD on 2013-12-11 09:12
"young nephews took rocks and smashed all of the glass and damaged the surrounding stainless"..Are they still living?
Excellent work!
Yep.... They are all grown up and are probably in some executive job somewhere, or they may be running our country. I'm guessing that they may be about 35-40 years old now.
After all don't forget. "That was just the old car that Uncle----- left in their mom's garage before he went away." They probably thought.. There's Nothing better to do so let's open the door and go in and wreck the thing.