My Father purchased this 1957 Chevy Bel Air in 2003 from PA in hopes that my brother and I would help him restore it. At the time my brother was in the Military...close to getting out. The thought was my brother would move home from San Diego and we would all work on it as a happy family. Well my brother didn't move home. And about 5 years later...the only progress we had made was to pull the engine out of the car. And buy a crap load of parts.

Here is the car when we picked it up from PA. It's hard to tell from the pictures but the paint looked like it was spray painted. There wasn't much surface rust...but of course there was some hiding.







My Father had a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee fully loaded...but the rental company told us that isn't big enough to haul this beast. So we had to break out the old Conversion van to haul this. Almost lost the tranny and the brakes going through the Poconos...but we made it.

Got it home and gave it a bath. The car ran and was driveable...so my Father was not in a rush to restore it. Especially considering he had a couple corvettes in the garage. It sounded pretty good too...had Glass Packs on it. It was a beast to drive...breaks sucked...steering sucked...and it was slow...but it was fun!







Interior is pretty rough.




Crappy old 283 from an Impala.




Rims that came with this beauty...


So after sitting for a long time with no engine...and no TLC...my Father...and actually more my Mother...had enough. The basement was filled with parts...and the garage looked like hell. So my Father made the decision to have the car professionally restored at a shop where he knew some people. So we hooked it up and dragged her away.

The engine was out in this one...so his new, newer one then when we bought the Bel Air, Jeep could pull it.




Shots from the restoration to come...

__________________
"Why's the Rum Gone?"

-Patrick

pretty cool! are you just going to restore it or do some custom work?

We did a complete tear down. Full frame off restoration. Found a bunch of rust...had to replace all the bad pieces and get it ready for paint.

We are doing basically a restoration. We are using 2 inch drop spindles to lower the car...17s in the front and 18s in the back. Disk brakes all the way around and much much much better suspension and sway bars. Other than that the car will look basically stock. My dad wanted something he could drive without problems. This isn't a race car...it's a cruiser...hence the 350.

When the shop got it they started to find some major problems. We ordered new door skins and trunk skins.

Trunk with the new skin on it.


New door skins.




Took the other pieces down to bare metal.


Interior was pretty bad. Had to replace the whole floor.


Welded the shifter hole closed. We will need to make a new one in the correct spot. The previous owner had hacked up that hole so the engine and tranny he shoved in there would work.


New Floor boards.




Had some rust problems with the roof. There were rats living in the headliner for years...which caused a "crap" load of rust. Pun intended.






Chopped the bad parts out and filled them in.


The frame under the door was toast. Had to have that completely redone.






Trunk was bad too.






Some Random...

__________________
"Why's the Rum Gone?"

-Patrick

Can't wait to see the finished product. Always loved the Bel Airs and Nomads.

Can I please come and work for you? Thats my dream to work and restore cars, God, I wish I knew how to do that, I would quit my current job and just do that.

You and me both! I wish I knew how to do this and could do it! I leave this stuff to the professionals.

Here are some shots of the Frame. It was treated, sanded, and repainted.



The Disk brakes.


New rear end.


350 GM Crate engine with some go fast goodies. Bigger carbs...cam...that kind of stuff. Also check out the ceramic exhaust. Should stay shiny!




Here you can see the brakes and the drop spindles and suspension.


You can see here the time they took to sand down the frame. The sides and bottom that you could see are sanded down and smooth as silk. The top, where the car sits, is left as is.




And here are pics of the car as it is now. All primed and ready for paint.





We should have the painted car back on the frame Oct 31st. I will be up there to take more pictures on Oct 19th...so hopefully there will be something to take pictures of!!

For the curious minds...we are painting the car a similar color to the stock turquoise only more blue...and with metal flake to make it pop. We are discussing right now what color to paint the roof. We are debating between the Lexus iridescent white and the Cadillac white. Both should look great and give the car some more pop! Other things we are adding is Power Steering...alarm...10 disk CD changer and upgraded sound system. Nothing ridiculous...but something that sounds decent. The interior will be basically stock...but completely new. The interior is done so I should be able to update this with pictures of that soon. The car is being built 4 hours away so I can't just run up there for pics.

The next big item we are working on is rims. Now my dad is very old school...and doesn't get into much in the way of customization. So for the rims they are very subdued. I recommended HRE or something higher end...he quickly shot that down. As I said before we are doing a 17 in front 18 in the rear staggered setup. My dad has decided on the ever popular American Racing Torq-Thurst II's.

Here is a pic similar to what we are doing. Same drop...light tint...wrong color.



This is definitely not an exotic...but I think it's just as fun driving. You really turn heads in this thing. Even before the resto we would turn heads. Can't wait for this to be finished!!

__________________
"Why's the Rum Gone?"

-Patrick

Patrick, the restore looks great from the pics. Thanks for sharing. I would to see the finish product as well. The classic look w/ those wheels would be more preferable than the HREs...

I agree. HRE's or some other higher end tire would probably only look good if we did some more customization to the outside of the car. That said...I think Foose makes some nice wheels for the tri year chevy's. Ahh well. Pops has liked the TT II's for years.

As soon as I have more pics of the build i'll post them here. Stayed tuned if you want to see this ending...

__________________
"Why's the Rum Gone?"

-Patrick

Foose Nitrous wheels would look incredible on that Shoebox. In fact, I think Foose did put those rims on a '55 he did on Overhaulin'

Thats an awesome ride. I love the bel airs. Good for you bringing it back to life!

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Rad Rides by Troy '70 Nova Notorious
http://www.luxury4play.com/american-auto/2038-rad-rides-troy-70-nova.html