Project 53 Bel Air

[Ben@SpeedTech]

You may want to touch base with Nick Relampagos, he runs a beefed up LSA in his Camaro, IIRC it puts 670 to the wheels. He beats it pretty hard on the autoX and roadcourse and in a recent visit to the shop here he was commenting on the incredible torque always on tap and the insane acceleration coming out of turns and laying on the power. I rode in the car at LS Fest West on the speed stop segment and man, that thing pulls smooth and hard! You can find him on fb under his name or on instagram as bowtie_garage. Here's a link to more on the car... ZL-70 Camaro: House of Muscle

[tterbo]

Well it sounds like the consensus is LSA. I have been thinking a lot about this and pretty much agree with what everyone is saying. It's just hard to beat that flat power curve. I think as long as I don't overdrive the blower and have a really good heat exchanger I should be good. And now I won't have to fabricate headers, y-pipe, etc! Can't wait to get to that part of the build...

And Ben, that ZL-70 Camaro is awesome.

[tterbo]

Just thought I would post a pic of a car that one of my friends built. I have always wanted to build a 53/54 but this is the car that pushed me over the edge and made me finally go buy one and make it happen...

[KiwiStarChief]

Sitting like that down in the weeds, with those Detroit Steel wheels (I think) makes it one cool looking car.

[srcracing]

Just thought I would post a pic of a car that one of my friends built. I have always wanted to build a 53/54 but this is the car that pushed me over the edge and made me finally go buy one and make it happen...

Great looking ride!

[tterbo]

I don't have a lot to show for an update except for a bunch more sheet metal on the ground. I started cutting out the inner wheel wells and making the wheel tubs. This is time consuming to say the least, but necessary before I can start building the frame rails.

I started with 32" trailer fenders. They are very reasonably priced (I think I paid less than $30 each for them) and come with a nice smooth radiused edge on one side and a flat edge on the other. You can see in the image below that they are significantly lacking in width so I cut and welded two together for each side. Once that was done I traced a template onto some cardboard and used it to transfer the radius to the inner structure so I could cut it out to fit the tub. I went as high upward as I could to make sure I could run the car as low as possible. With my schedule, the ridiculous amount of time this is taking, and my limited time to work on the car this will probably take a month or two before I have both tubs welded in place and everything stitched back together. It is coming along but I will be glad when the tubs are done and I can get moving on the frame rails...

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Great idea! Looks super cool. Where did you resource the fenders?

[tterbo]

Thanks Ben. I think these are the ones I used but they have a ton of different sizes too:
http://www.easternmarine.com/rockwel...ch-wheels-2104

[srcracing]

Great idea, probably an easier way to go, I split the stock wheel houses, was a bit of work to put them back togther. I might take them out later, and go this way....

[Motown 454]

Now that's Hot Rodding! Great idea.

[tterbo]

Great idea, probably an easier way to go, I split the stock wheel houses, was a bit of work to put them back together. I might take them out later, and go this way....

I had originally planned to split the tubs also (that's what I did on my 69 Camaro years ago before you could buy widened tubs) but I couldn't get the car low enough with the stock tub limitations. The inner tub out at the quarter tapers inward too soon to get the car down where I wanted it, otherwise I would have just split the factory tubs too...

[tterbo]

Well, I finally got the wheel tubs done. This was a lot of work and I am glad it's behind me so I can get going on the frame now. Basically I did one side at a time since you have to remove so much structure and I didn't want the quarters moving around on me. Everything is tied back together now and probably stronger than it was before. Once I got the tubs fit I sprayed them with weld-through galvanizing primer and welded them in place followed by a coat of zinc based self-etching primer and 3M seam sealer.

[srcracing]

Looks great, wish I had done mine that way....

[tterbo]

Looks great, wish I had done mine that way....

I am pretty happy with it but it was a lot of work. And once I got into it I realized this car really needs rear lower quarters replaced so finding good metal to weld to was difficult. I wanted to preserve the look of the car for now so replacing quarters wasn't an option. But thanks and glad to see yours making it onto the road!

[68Birdy]

Amazing build!! Can't wait to see more!

[tterbo]

It's finally time to start building the frame. The grand plan is to build the frame completely on the frame jig then lower the car down over it, cutting away whatever floorpan is necessary to get the body to the height I want. I don't plan to make the frame removable when all is said and done. Rather than just cut the whole floorpan out, I want to trim the pan precisely to allow the frame to recess into the floorpan then weld it all together, similar to how circle track cars are fabricated. This will give me the most rigid chassis possible and will allow me to hopefully preserve a good portion of the pan (if all goes well).

This chassis is supposed to have a 115 inch wheelbase. After plumb bobbing the rear wheelwell to find center I measured forward 115 inches and put a mock-up wheel/tire in place. This wheel has the same backspace as the ones I will use. One of the first things I want to do is locate the front suspension points to determine the width of my front frame rails. The first thing I realized is that with the car this low I will have to tuck the tire deep in the fender in order to get the necessary lock-to-lock turn angle of the wheel/tire without rubbing. And just what is a full turn radius? Honestly I didn't know so I measured 3 different cars to find out. It seems most cars can turn the wheel/tire 30-35 degrees. On this car with the low wheelwell opening and the ride height I am after this may pose a problem. Tucking them in too far can potentially create header clearance issues with the upper A-arms. And narrowing the track width is never a good thing.



So basically I kept moving the wheel inward and turning the wheel until I could get it to turn 28-30 degrees without touching the outer wheelwell. This required me to open up the inner wheelwell before I could even try it. For now I just cut out a small window just big enough to allow the turn radius I needed. Also by shortening the wheelbase to 114" I was able to move the wheel outward another 1/2" and it looks completely fine in the wheelwell. This gives me 54" between wheel mounting surfaces (including rotor hat thickness). It's going to be close...

Thinking about this I knew at some point I would have to accept some type of compromise trying to make a 53 Bel Air handle. The car has a fairly high center of gravity and not a particularly wide track width. In this case running the car low is forcing the track width in the front even narrower which compromises stability. On the flipside, running the car high puts the center of gravity high which requires stiffer springs and sway bars to control. Plus it doesn't look cool, haha. So I chose to keep the car low, cram as much tire in the wheelwell as possible, keep my track width as wide as possible, keep it as light as possible, and just see how it works out.



To start locating this point on my frame jig I drew up a mounting plate to locate the hub position with the correct height to simulate the tire I will run. After plasma cutting the plate, measurements were transferred to the frame jig and the plate was welded to the jig. Now I can begin working backward to the frame rails by mounting the hub/spindle/A-arms to the mounting plate.

That's about it for now. I am anxious to start on the frame but ran out of time over the weekend. Hopefully the next update will have some frame rails in it. Now I guess it's time to go prepare for this hurricane...

[tterbo]

I got a little time after hurricane cleanup to work on the frame some. My frame rails are made from 2" x 4" x .120" tubing. What you see so far in the pictures below is the result of about 2 hours of thinking, measuring, designing, and fabbing. Then 3-4 more hours of re-measuring, squaring, plumb bobbing, and leveling then tack welding, breaking tacks, re-welding, cutting, re-cutting, re-welding, re-leveling, etc. But by the end of the day we are square, level, and plumb! The next step will be fabbing up from A-arm mounts and a front cross-member.

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Coming along great! Glad to hear the hurricane didn't slow you down too bad too.

What size tires are you running again?

[tterbo]

I am running 345's on the back. I tested up front with a 285 on a 9.5" wheel. I have two more of the same size wheels I had widened for the rear. They have the same offset and backspace as the wheels/tires I tested turn radius with in the front so I should be good on outside clearance using these wheels. If at all possible I will widen these as well on the inside and was hoping to run a 315 up front. I won't know until I get further along though...

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Awesome! We run that 335 or 345 out back and 315 up front combo on a lot of cars with our ExtReme suspension, and I just picked some wheels and tires to put 315s all around on my G-Body wagon. That much meat under your car will look wicked!