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    1. #1
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States

      Project 53 Bel Air Turbo

      I am starting a new project and thought I would share for those that may also be interested in my twisted plan. I am an avid musclecar fan and have had a 69 Camaro, 70 Chevelle, and two different 70 Camaros (still have one of them), along with a lot of late model muscle as well. I also have an interest in some Rat Rods...when done right. "Right" for me is modern suspension,wheels/tires, brakes, and driveline - in a Rat Rod shell. All of my previous cars were setup this way with a modern flair on a timeless body style. What makes this build so ambitious is that I want to combine a lot of features into one build, more than I ever have before. Kind of like a semi-Rat Rod/Classic/Pro Touring car with focus on streetability and handling. What makes this so ambitious? The must haves. Key elements I want to implement in this build are: turbo LS power, manual trans, rear IRS, and 345's out back.

      While most of my previous cars were muscle cars/Pro Touring style, I have always loved how a 53/54 Bel Air looks layed out. This is usually done with some kind of linked rear end and either a Mustang II based front IRS or a grafted GM front subframe, combined with air bags. This combo rides nice and is the simplest way to update the suspension....but I want it to really handle too. Like a late model. I want people to point at the big, curvy 50's era car hauling ass around a road course or Autocross and putting down impressive numbers. And I don't plan to spend a ton of money to do it. In fact, I am hoping to do it with mostly stuff I have lying around my shop. Stuff I have collected over the years because it was a "good deal" or was leftover from a previous project.

      So before I even started to look for a car I put a basic plan together. There are things that absolutely must happen to satisfy my "wants" and then things that I can hopefully make work. Everything else will have to be figured out along the way.

      Here are things I already have in my "inventory" that I hope to use in this build:

      · An aluminum L92 6.2L truck motor. I had this in a late model truck I built. It already has a Comp custom turbo grind cam, valve springs, and timing set. The motor had overheated and just needs gone through to make sure it is still in good shape. This motor made 420 to the rear wheels through the trucks' 4L65E trans NA. Hoping for an easy 550-600 with the turbo and manual trans.

      · A 68mm T4 Turbonetics turbo. This may be too small ultimately but I am more interested in keeping good throttle response with the turbo than with peak horsepower. If it does end up being too small I can swap it later but it will get things going in the meantime. I also have a large Precision wastegate that I can use.

      · A Speartech intercooler. Not sure if this will work but it's worth a shot.

      · A built T56 6-speed manual from a 4th Gen Camaro with a Spec dual disc clutch.

      · A complete front and rear C5 suspension with brakes. These were originally planned for my 70 Camaro but now I want to make them work in this car, if possible. I have literally had these for 15 years...

      · Front and rear C6 Z06 calipers and rotors

      · A brand new Viper differential. A race team was selling these for $250 each on Ebay about 8 years ago and I picked up two of them.

      · A set of Viking coil-overs and a set of QA1 coil-overs. I think both are 4.25" stroke.

      · A 4" PST aluminum driveshaft with billet yoke and 1350 series joints. I had this made for my late model truck about 6 years ago and never used it. I think I can just have it shortened and it will work fine.

      · I also have a lot of little things that can be used. Things that add up and slow a project down. I hope to make use of a lot of the following if possible just because I have them already: A Summit aluminum rear battery box, lots of 3" stainless mandrels and straight tubing for the exhaust, a whole box of Ebay aluminum 2.5" and 3" mandrel bends for intercooler plumbing, black braided line and various fittings, lots of various polyurethane bushings for making motor mounts, etc.

      So.... LS turbo power, manual trans, IFS and IRS, big brakes, big tires....big car. Should be a lot of fun.




      I found a car on Craigslist after searching for about 3 months. It was down in South Florida (I live in the TampaBay area) and from the pictures and phone conversations it seemed to be just what I was looking for - a complete car with all the trim and interior, minus a motor and trans. Unfortunately it was more than I was wanting to spend though so I had to get creative. I had a 2007 Silverado that was worth about $6500 according to KBB.com and the guy wanted $8000 for the car. Hesitantly I offered him a title swap and he agreed.

      I can't complain about the car. The bumpers, grille, trim, interior, glass, etc. are all in perfect shape and everything works. This is a 64 year old car so the rockers and lower quarters are in rough shape but the floorpan is completely solid. The paint is decent but there is lots of bondo in the lower half of the car. It's a perfect 20 footer.


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      ^The ad on Craigslist:

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      ^Me leaving with my truck to trade the guy:

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      ^Not a very good start to this project. This happened coming back with the car.....the rear straps broke about 5 miles from home, letting the car roll forward and fall off the trailer, destroying the trailer jack and my truck bumper. Oh well, this sucked but I guess it could have been much worse. The car survived without any damage and fortunately no damage to my tailgate either. On with the project...



    2. #2
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
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      So I got the car up on the lift to look it over. Very solid car except for rot out at the rockers and the lower quarters. I can fix that later. Doors open nice, windows work perfectly, hood, trunk, and door lines are pretty good. All good news. On with the plan. The first thing I did was pull the gas tank, wheels/tires, rear axle, and leaf springs off the car. These are all things I don't care about but might be worth something to someone else. I also unbolted the entire front suspension. I had no clue these cars had a removable subframe up front, separate from the frame. It made it really easy to drop out as an assembly.
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      I listed the wheels/tires on Craigslist and sold them for $500 within two days! Maybe I should have listed them for more, I don't know. At least I have $500 now that I didn't have yesterday.
      I began looking over the rear end and it was actually pretty nice. Somebody had put a 55-57 rear in the car which back in the day was a major upgrade. They also spent time sand blasting and painting it with some real deal paint, not just a rattle can job. It had new brakes and what looked like a new yoke as well. Not a posi though. Listed this on Craigslist and got $200 for it 3 days later.
      No luck selling the other parts yet...
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      I also pulled both font and rear bumpers to get ready for dropping the frame out of the car. Everybody assumes that these big bumpers on early cars are heavy but I was really surprised, they weren't heavy at all. I decided to weigh them to see. Front bumper and bumper guards together weighed 22 pounds while the larger rear bumper with guards weighed 37. More than I thought by how they feel but still much lighter than they look. The bumper brackets are nothing more than essentially 1/4" x 2" flat bar formed and welded together. They were 8 pounds per side. I will sell them also and make something tubular and nicer later on...
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    3. #3
      Join Date
      Apr 2015
      Location
      Burlington KY
      Posts
      357
      Country Flag: United States
      that will be cool! i had a 53 210 fifteen years ago and wanted to make a custom rod out of it but lack of a real garage, tools and time made it impossible. I could prob. get it back i still know the guy who has it...
      "Racing is life. Everything else is just, waiting"

    4. #4
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      Since I will be building a full IRS for the rear, a completely different front suspension, and running the car as low as possible, there is literally nothing of the stock frame that I can use, so it must go. I began by unhooking the steering shaft and brake pedal (master cylinders are bolted to the frame on these cars, under the passenger footwell). Then I temporarily welded some 2" x 2" boxed tubing along the full length of the rocker seams to keep the body from moving around when the frame is removed. These will also be necessary as a lift point to get the body off the frame.
      These early cars have 26 bolts holding the frame to the body! What the hell?? I think maybe 4 of them actually came out. The rest of them reminded me they were 64 years old and either broke off, rounded the head off, or just spun in the frame. That was fun. The plasma cutter fixed the rest of them and the frame was on the floor.
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      An hour with the Port-a-band and I had a truck full of scrap.
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    5. #5
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      My vision of this car when it is done would be similar to these cars below as far as looks go. Most of these are bagged and have the frame sitting on the pavement in these pictures. I want a similar look but I want this look with the car at ride height while retaining full suspension travel. The nice thing about these cars is that the rockers extend almost 7 inches below the floorpan so it is easy to get these cars looking low while still having lots of ground clearance. My target ride height is 4" at the rocker.
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    6. #6
      Join Date
      Feb 2012
      Location
      Vancouver,Canada
      Posts
      91
      Country Flag: Canada
      Yes sir! This is going to be fun to watch...great choice for a Pro-Touring ride

    7. #7
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      Quote Originally Posted by xsboost90 View Post
      that will be cool! i had a 53 210 fifteen years ago and wanted to make a custom rod out of it but lack of a real garage, tools and time made it impossible. I could prob. get it back i still know the guy who has it...
      Do it! As far as I can tell there is nobody else on this forum messing with these cars. It would be nice to see another 53/54 project on here, lol.

    8. #8
      Join Date
      Feb 2013
      Posts
      1,414
      Country Flag: United States
      Cool project. I've always loved that body style.


      Ridetech Suspsension
      Tech Specialist
      Phone: 812.481.4734

      Project Fox
      1979 Trans Am

    9. #9
      Join Date
      Mar 2012
      Posts
      87
      Country Flag: Canada
      Looks good so far, and I like the direction you're going.

    10. #10
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      One of the first things I really need to start mocking up the rear suspension is wheels and tires so I can establish my overall track width. I really didn't want to spend $1500 each for high end wheels if possible. So I started looking at BMW wheels (they share the same bolt pattern as GM) because they are very inexpensive and have a lot of design options. I knew I wanted 19" wheels for a specific tire I wanted to run and 9.5" wide wheels are pretty common in the BMW world. I settled on the wheels below for $680 shipped, you just can't beat the price with any other option. This wheel choice may polarize my followers because it is not a nostalgic type wheel but I am hoping they will look good on the car and if not, for the price, I can always change them later if I don't like them. I got the idea from a car Mark Stielow did a while back using very similar wheels on a 69 Camaro build.
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      Once they came in I immediately shipped two of them out to Weldcraft for widening. And they did an awesome job. For $250/wheel I now have 12.5" wide wheels for the rear. Weldcraft splits the wheel, machines the face, welds a widening band then measures and adjust for runout. Being in the fabrication industry myself, $250 per wheel is a bargain for the amount of work that goes into them.
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      One of the reasons I really wanted to run 19" wheels is so I could use readily available Dodge Viper spec tires. There are a lot of guys road racing Vipers so many of the manufacturers offer competition tires in these sizes. Michelin recently changed their tread pattern on the Pilot Sport Cup so a lot of tire warehouses have the older tread pattern in 345/30ZR19 discounted. I picked up two brand new tires on Ebay for $500, almost half price from what they would normally cost.
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      The fact that these large wheel and tire combos only required less than 2oz. to balance is a testament to Weldcraft's quality.
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    11. #11
      Join Date
      Nov 2006
      Location
      Ma.
      Posts
      5,567
      Country Flag: United States
      I've seen a set they did, it was a nice job. I love the project keep the updates coming.
      Wayne
      Car FINALLY home !!!!!! lol
      Project FNQUIK https://www.pro-touring.com/showthre...ghlight=FNQUIK

    12. #12
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      My plan for the rear suspension is to design a removable cradle that will attach to full length frame rails. I am hoping this will allow me to design and plot out the suspension mounting points on the computer before even building anything. After a lot of research I obtained mounting point locations for the C5 A-arms and toe rods and just had to adjust them inward to compensate for the narrower track width of the 53 Bel Air (vs. C5 Corvette). To tuck my tires the track width had to be narrowed 4.5" overall. With my X, Y, and Z A-arm mounting locations plotted for the lower A-arms, I drew up the lower part of the cradle where the A-arms would attach. Rather than just assume that the OE designed "instant center" for a C5 Corvette would work for this application, I made the lower A-arm mounting points adjustable. When viewed from the side of the car, the imaginary triangulated intersect point of the upper and lower A-arms create the "instant center". This is essentially the lift point of the rear suspension which dictates how well the car transfers weight during acceleration. Since at this stage of the build I can't really know the "sweet spot" for this car, I am just making the lower A-arm mounts with adjustability for instant center.
      I found an image online showing the intersect points of all 8 A-arms. This gives a good visual of how A-arm angles effect these points.
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      The picture below shows the beginnings of a rear cradle. Three 5/8" bolts will locate the lower A-arm mounts and I have adjustability from horizontal up to 6 degrees of angle. The large rear plate in this image won't be used, I was just using it as a reference to locate the upper A-arms.

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    13. #13
      Join Date
      Nov 2006
      Location
      Mountain Springs, Texas
      Posts
      4,487
      Country Flag: United States
      Very cool build and it looks like you got some serious CAD and fab skills. Looking forward to following this one.

      Don
      1969 Camaro - LSA 6L90E AME sub/IRS
      1957 Buick Estate Wagon
      1959 El Camino - Ironworks frame
      1956 Cameo - full C5 suspension/drivetrain
      1959 Apache Fleetside

    14. #14
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      Quote Originally Posted by dhutton View Post
      Very cool build and it looks like you got some serious CAD and fab skills. Looking forward to following this one.

      Don
      Don, thanks for comments, I know just enough to get myself into trouble. As much as I enjoy doing stuff myself, if I had the money I probably would have just saved a lot of time and made a call to Art Morrison for a full frame with IRS. I am jealous of your 69's!

    15. #15
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      I was playing around with Photoshop (not very good at it, btw) to see what the car would look like at the height I want, with the wheels I chose. It's not the greatest chop and I probably have it a little too low for realistic driveability but I am kind of liking how it looks. I think I would want a little bit of a rake to it too...
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    16. #16
      Join Date
      Oct 2015
      Posts
      122
      Country Flag: Canada
      Great looking project. To fit the C5 rear end/axle assembly, are you going to narrow the axles or widen the fenders?

    17. #17
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      Quote Originally Posted by windows View Post
      Great looking project. To fit the C5 rear end/axle assembly, are you going to narrow the axles or widen the fenders?
      I will be narrowing the axles. I would not be opposed to widening the fenders if it were a different car like a Camaro or pre-50's car/truck with curvy fenders but I don't think this bodystyle with it's flat vertical fenders lends itself well to any form of wider fender. The back could probably be done because of the fender bulges but if I were to do it I would want the front to have a similar track width and I just can't imagine any way to do it in the front (at least that would look good anyway). That's just me though, somebody may be able to pull that off, who knows. I will be sticking to narrowed axles though, lol.

    18. #18
      Join Date
      Oct 2009
      Location
      CT.
      Posts
      738
      This is gonna be a cool build



      Glenn

      1955 Chevy BelAir
      1951 Chevy 3100
      1987 Chevy Silverado

      My last project....
      https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/...my-72-Maverick!!

    19. #19
      Join Date
      Nov 2008
      Location
      Tampa, Florida
      Posts
      60
      Country Flag: United States
      Well, this is what I have to work with. The Viper diff is much bigger than the C5 diff that normally occupies the cradle. Upon first observation, the large mounting ears on the Viper diff look like they might possibly interfere with the upper A-arm mounting points but it's hard to tell at this point until I get everything mocked up.
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      I started by fabricating the base of the cradle from the Solidworks model. I have a small CNC plasma cutter that allows me to make all of my plates. It is a huge timesaver as opposed to cutting, drilling, grinding, etc. Once I had the base of the cradle fabbed, it gave me mounting points for the lower A-arms so I could begin mocking up the rest of the rear suspension. I don't have solid models of the suspension components or Viper differential or I might have been able to design the whole cradle virtually. Sometimes I find it easier to design with parts laid out in front of me in the "real world" anyway. I am using the front wheels (they have the same backspacing as the rear) to hold the spindles into position which also lets me establish toe by simply using square tubing on the floor to "parallel" the rear wheels.
      Once everything was assembled there was nothing to hold the upper A-arms and spindles upright so I made a couple of temporary floating mounts to hold them up with a 2"x4". By rotating the spindles to zero caster and shimming the 2" x 4" I was able to get the arms positioned close enough to where they need to be so that I can start figuring out the upper part of the rear cradle and locate the differential. I also made some "fake" axles to give me a visual when positioning the differential.
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      If at all possible I do not want to intrude into the rear seat area. From what I can tell so far I should be able to make a cradle that will clear the rear seat but it will definitely be close...
      -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Current project:
      https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/...ect-53-Bel-Air

    20. #20
      Join Date
      Mar 2013
      Location
      Boynton Beach, Florida
      Posts
      199
      Country Flag: United States
      This will be a fun ride when you are finished. I'm almost ready to fire up my 50 Fleetline (same chassis)I will be following your build.
      my current build https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/...uild-Vettehawk

      1977 Buick Skyhawk C4 chassis swap #vettehawk
      1950 Chevrolet Fleetline Pro Touring #thefiddie (sold)
      2002 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 daily
      2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer wifes daily

      Racer Supply Store

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