1960 Studebaker Lark VI

[bread_and_water]

I'd like to start off by saying the work you guys do and the attention to detail is inspiring and it has helped me take a step back from my project and really think through and take my time on the small details.

I picked this car up around Oct 2015 and have been plugging away at it ever since. My original plan was to just clean it up and bring it back to mostly original but with airbags. Then I started thinking I wanted to go fast but also be able to control that speed in both the straights and some winding back roads. I've always liked PT style cars so that's what I set my sights on. ]

With the Studebaker I'm at the disadvantage of aftermarket support, it's not that there isn't any it's just very limited in comparison to the other big name brands.

The first thing I did was strip the car of everything, the interior was shot and I cleared out more abandoned spider nests than I could count (still finding them in fact).

Picture from the craigslist ad


Loaded up an ready to bring her home, there was actually some rain that day in California.


At this point I had removed the front springs and all but the main rear leaf so I could see how low it could sit without cutting anything yet(this was still the airbag planning stages)


The car overall is very solid the only bad spots being in both front floor pans where your feet would sit, their condition was nearly identical on either side so that will be addressed.
I did clean up the trunk floor as well as the engine bay before deciding I wanted to do a modern V8 swap in it. These were the same blue just different lighting.




Pulling the old flathead 6, this thing ran extremely well I cleaned it up and painted it with the intention of dropping it back in at a later date.








My first thoughts of a V8 swap involved an original Studebaker 259 but then when I started looking at the cost of the rebuild kit+machine work I realized I could drop an LS in this car for much less and have a bunch more consistent and reliable power.