1948 Chevy full kustom project.

The plan with it being a moredoor was a bombitas style lowrider. All the trim, accessories, on its ar$e, daddy little wire wheels, etc.

So I made it go low.

Smaller wheels and tyres happened first, went from 16” down to 15” truck rims as was the hot ticket back in the 50s.


Then I set about the suspension.


That wasn’t low enough so I took the body off to work on the chassis to make it lower.






I C notched the rear-

I decided the best way to get the front down a bit more was the slightly unusual step of sectioning the front crossmember. The crossmember bolts in so I could take it out and do it on the bench.









All back together and it’s stuck on the ramp so it must be quite low now.




Satisfyingly low-




So low I had to put the 16s back on just to move it.

I love what you're doing with this car.

Just one possibly stupid question. You seem to have taken quite a lot of thickness out of the chassis with the "C" notch. Will that not affect the strength or is there more work to do on this area?

Edit - I've just seen your last post which appeared literally as I was writing this, so I guess there's a bit of a re-think in progress anyway?

So after I’d rebuilt the workshop, I rolled it inside and started marking up. There was some sportsball thing going on so I got one of the longest uninterrupted runs I’ve ever had in the workshop!







I chopped the back half of the roof off and slid it forward, after messaging craigrk And asking him to measure how long his doors were for me 😉

You can see I set about making my door that long to keep some of the proportions factory-ish.

Amazing.

I think set to tidying some of it up and stitching things together properly.

To get the roof to flow correctly, I split the front section down the peak above the screen and deCROWNed it a bit.










The roof was then largely seamed up and dollied out at the front.



I then chopped up the leftover roof skin sections to make the new rear 1/4s.


I found this whole process incredibly cathartic, and it really helped me deal with the whole great big pile of sh1t that was the workshop burning. At the end of the day I do this sh1t cos I enjoy it, and some time of just me and the metalwork did me a lot of good.

Oh yes!
Bookmarked and a bit LOL

So seeing as I’d decided this was going somewhere, I set about acquiring some of the necessary parts to make it a complete vehicle again. As I mentioned before, as it’s kustom a lot of these parts were definately not intended to live on a ‘48 Chevy.

This was though, albeit aftermarket. A offenhauser twin carb manifold with new Weber carbs and adapters, Stellings style air cleaners, and Fenton split exhaust manifolds. It came up for a bargain price locally so I dropped everything and bombed down and grabbed it. It was even a justifiable expense as I’d lost my carb in the fire 🤣


I didn’t have a steering wheel as that also melted, and by chance I stumbled across this on eBay, again very cheap. I really like the spoke design, especially as the bullet shaped end spears echo the design of my planned dash.


A split-fold seat out of a slightly later Chevy coupe popped up for sale so I snagged that as well. Needs recovering (slight understatement!) but it’s complete.


The dash took a bit more planning, and eventually I got one at the right money on US eBay with global shipping.
Here it is marked up for cutting, it’s for a 49/50 ford shoebox. It’s one of my all time favourite dashboards which is the simple reason I went for it. The way the previously mentioned end spears on the Buick steering wheel echo the end spears on the dash is just perfect too.


Next up I spotted this for sale very cheaply.


It’s just another stove bolt Chevy, but my knowledge of them told me it was a very late model 235ci motor, which is desirable for a number of reasons, not only that extra 19c.i.

The earlier motors (pre-54 iirc) have Babbitt bearings, cast iron pistons, splash/low pressure oiling , and are generally an older tech engine. When they did a refresh on ‘54ish they gained proper bearing shells, the oiling was upgraded to a proper pressurised system, and if the motor was late enough (‘59 on I think) they were 12 volt too. 12v motors also have a normal width fan belt rather than the big fat thing on earlier motors.
The head design is also a bit better and there’s the capacity increase too.

So after getting the engine number off the seller, ascertaining it to be a 59-61 motor, and finding out it has been siezed but freed off and now turned over, I took a chance and bought it.

It turned up and I did this to it-


And it turned out to be very usable. It needed a rebore and one liner(pitting in the bore) , but otherwise there’s not much wrong with it. Not bad for a 60 year old engine that doesn’t appear to have ever been rebuilt. Crank is vgc, head is vgc, all the ancillaries are good. It even came with a 4spd truck bellhousing which will be important further down the line.

Thanks. I will post some more on the theory/artistic merit of what I did and why later on, but I need to gather some more pics before I do to illustrate my points.