1938 CHEVROLET SALOON STANDARD

Meet a 38 Chevrolet Saloon. I've no idea on any more details of the car nor have I really tried to be honest. This little puppy was built for my wedding day. It has since past ownership from me to my mate.

A mate of mine has been building this car on and off for the last 10 years and finally when I required the car for my wedding (and with much help from myself and several others) we got it on the road the day before my wedding. This thing now finished will come and join my other cars and maybe now I've time I'll finish my zed so that the big rumbling cruiser has a sports car stable mate.

DETAILS
Engine & Driveline

350 Chevrolet International Truck Engine - Custom Purpose Built Race engine.
Originally featured a 850 Holley
Dedicated LPG.
75 Series Landcruiser Radiator
16 inch thermo Fan.
Custom made close fit extractors to a free flow exhaust.
Original setup made a 102DB of noise currently at a legal limit of 93.5DB due to an extra muffler to pass engineering
T5 Borg Warner Gearbox with delo adapter plate.
LSD 2.75 ratio diff out of a XF falcon.

Suspension
Mitsubishi L300 coil sprung front suspension with Ford Falcon XF Spindles.
Dihatsu FJ20 Steering Rack, with Hold Commodore VL Steering Column
Ford Falcon XF Watts rear end with air shocks and uprated Ford Falcon EA springs
Ventilated Falcon XF Discs and calipers all round.
All suspension is mounted high on chasis to give the appearance of a lowered car that still has full travel in the suspension (ie still rides well).
Front sway bar has been removed for ground clearance.

Body and Stuff
All door handles have been shaved. It now features electric push buttons only which operate internal door openers and door poppers.
Boot is remote open only.
Dual Action Burst proof locks on all door
Retractable seatbelts front and back.
Twin Bucket seats front
Electric Windows all round
4 Speaker CD stereo (its a bit of a pov pack but will do for now.)
Two windscreen wippers (yes this model only came with one originally. Dam you must of had to pay big for little options).
Full range of guages (rev, speed, oil, heat, water temp, etc).
Holden VL Commodore Steering column and stalks with a wood trimmed sports steering wheel.
As yet no carpet or soundproofing.
Hand made vynal door trims with XE Falcon arm rests front and unknown door handles on the rear doors.
Subaru Sports Wagon front door trim pockets and speaker pods on front doors.
Black Cloth roof linning.
Front headlights are a universal crystal style with a intergrated LED ring. This is currently the front parker light.
Indicators are in chrome surrounds hanging off the headlights
Rear tailights are 3 in 1 LED squares that are flush fitted to the body. They are approxiamly 3 x 3 inches big. So little.
Back number plate lives in a recessed alcove below the boot lid.
The boot lid opens sideways now instead of up.

THE STORY

The pictures above are with an old crappy film camera before I got a decent digi cam. Now Its all digital and so much easier :D. Anyway Let me give you some pictures and comments on the build. Page two will give a more in depth description of things.

On with the show. This is how I first saw this car. By this point a set of wheels had been sourced to replace the originals. They aren't stunners but they are more modern and do dress the car up a bit. In these pictures the car still featured bug eyed style lights in the ligh cones, the 350 was in the car and some laser thermo fans were trying to pretend to cool the car.

A person whom shall remain nameless claimed they could clean the doors and gaurds up real nice and was given them to take to work to treat. He sand blasted the doors leaving them looking and feeling like heavily hammer toned metal. Needless to say it made a mess of them and made them alot harder to fix.

As you can see in these pictures the left side wasn't even on the car. The shell wasn't bolted to the chasis and the interior that is there was just sat in the car to see how it would go. Alot of surface rust is visible.

The gas tank and well the basic chasis setup had been done by this point but the suspension would be revisted before it was complete.

The interior got a set of sparco seats as they were left over from another job. A Jag owner who had a XJS series 2 coupe wanted them in his car after the floor was replaced (due to rust) but they would not phsyically fit so they became the new front seats.

The grey primer on the roof was a good sign. The roof had only had surface rust and cleaned up beautifully. Straight and clean with no repairs. Imagine trying to repair those curves.

I've got no comment for those last two pictures. I just think they are cool pictures. :D

Alot of the floor need to be remade as rust and time had taken its toll. Well that and the gearbox needed space and a floor mount. The rear seat thingy had to get remade as it was all rusted through. Thats the first shot and the second is OBVISOULY where the gearbox tunnel was made. Not very obtrusive is it. I like that.

The next three shots show a few things. The first is the battery housing that was built into the floor of the boot for the battery as there was no where in the engine bay anymore. The next is the fact the external boot hinges have been removed and plugged. Hmm hidden hinges are so much nicer looking. Take more space but look good.
And last but not least is all the rust in the bottom beaver panel and in general around the area.

These following two shots show the genreal condition of the nose. The are lots of little imperfection in the guards. Lots of surface rust on most surfaces, the left bonnet is a ripplerly mess and in general it needs some help. Notice at this point in time the slots for the bumper bar are still in the guards.

Here the notch in the bumper has been taken out and some filler has been used to get some of the shape back into the guard. You can also see the mirrors, the radiators over flow tank and the bracing for the radiator has been added.

The running board that is attached here was bought from a gentleman at a swap meet that specialises in making hard to get panels. Ford, Dodge running boards are very easy to get at the moment in Australia as that is what most people are doing up from this time period but chevs are hard to find. You can also see the back end starting to take shape.

The front suspension is visible here as in one of the previous photos. The decision to use an L300 suspension set up was decided for a couple of basic reasons. It had been tried and proven, the engines in vans sit behind the front wheels, the same as most hot rods meaning it was set up ideally for this and could be gotten in coil to allow different springs to be run to fine tune the suspension

Currently the car is powered but an 350 chev. This chev was originally an international truck engine that was rebuilt for stock car sprinting. (You know where they go round in circles on dirt really fast on a car with a brake on only one wheel to help it turn). Reality is we have no idea what has been done to the engine but it will live happily at 7000 rpm all day with a red at 7800. Its not a normal little engine. Its currently on dedicate LPG with no intentions of going back to petrol. It has more power then we can happily handle at the moment. The suspension is still a bit of a work in progress as we work out what works and what doesn't. The back springs and arms are going to be swapped out for commodore arms with UTE srpings (coil not leaf) as the back end doesn't want to hold its own share of the weight up.

If you feel like getting any of the work you see on these pages done to one of your vehicles or any other mods drop past Rods Trucken Trailers as we are more then capable of helping you customise your vehicle exactly the way you want it.

LINKS TO OTHER CARS
Datsun 260Z Garage
My New car - Toyota Corolla 07
R31 Skyline