Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Amazing progress! The paint booth brings back old memories - I primed and painted more than a few cars, a boat and a couple of trailers in a similar setup although I also rented time in a proper booth occasionally. I rolled up and stapled a 1x2 at the bottom of the plastic so it sat a little tighter on the floor, and wet the floor before spraying for dust control. When I wasn't painting I rolled each side up to the ceiling and held it there (bungees? Can't remember that part). Also always used a ground strap which is probably still a good idea to get rid of static electricity. I used to shoot some flake and metallics and they didn't lay down right w/o a good ground.

Looking forward to more progress!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

loving your project , can't wait to see it when its done ......cool project .....

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Thanks for the tips, I'm mainly using this to protect my garage items from primer and bondo dust. I may be using a real booth for the final paint shoot.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Saturday night picture time.....

Just a couple showing the frame and front suspension all wrapped up.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

After I wrapped up the frame last month, I've been chiseling off undercoating for weeks! The rotisserie sure makes that a ton easier. I also got to examine close up my rocker install that I had laid on my back to fit and install. It left a lot to be desired, so I cut it back loose again and refit it. Looks MUCH straighter now and its so much easier to weld standing up at eye level!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Lookin' great! Do you have a target date to start painting?

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Buick is looking super, underside looks great, that undercoating did it's job protecting everything...Jim

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Wow, that's a ton of work but now you're about to make the turn toward it starting to look nice again.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Drew I don't know if you have one, but those Harbor Freight pneumatic gasket scrapers make removing undercoating a breeze!!plus they come with a few different changeable blades and only $20. The Buick is really coming along!
Have a good one!
Ben
:metal:

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

I don't but I was using a Milwaukee scrape blade in my Sawzall which works well to get the big stuff, but to big and wild acting to get in every nook and cranny. It's done now!!!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

I really don't feel like I'm close enough to even guess on that. Next I have to cover everything in Eastwood Rust Converter, then epoxy primer, then bodywork/filler, then final priming and blocking, then paint! The front cap still is untouched, so I need to get that down to bare metal also. I wish I had a crew of 14 like Chip Foose!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Any New Updates On The Bride? By The way, I just found out one of your Sport Clips Shops is not to far from my house....

Sport Clips Haircuts of Hauppauge. At....Hauppauge Shopping Center, 389 Nesconset Hwy, Hauppauge, NY 11788

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Saturday Picture Time:

This will be a long multi-post. I like to DRIVE my classics, that's why I have gone to such great lengths to upgrade the suspension, steering, and brakes. I will also be upgrading the engine/tranny with something new with great power and mileage. But...... If I'm putting a lot of miles on my classic cars, that means the chances of me being in a wreck in one are much greater. Cars in the 50's had just about nil in the way of safety features, so I've been working on upgrading the Roadmaster on the basic items - airbags are not really possible, but certainly we need to get it up to 80's specs. First on the list are seat belts and I'll be documenting that soon, second, to me, is side impact protection inside the door and good door latches that will stay shut during impact. (50's cars were notorious for the doors popping open at the point of impact and then ejecting the passengers out onto the pavement!) There are other safety items we will look at also, but these were the first biggies in my mind.

So lets dive in. It's a hotrod right? That means take better parts from other cars and make your own supercar! Time to head to the junkyard and find a donor car with good latches and side impact protection. Lots of cars have door beams that are thicker corrugated steel bonded to the skin, that won't work for me. Another thing that won't work is all 4 door cars since the beam won't be long enough for my 2 door from the 50's. Hmmmm, this may be tougher than I thought. While poking around, I walk up on a 2000 Camaro which I am immediately drawn to since the doors are so long - I can easily cut something down to fit. Then, within seconds, I come to realize that these Camaros have fiberglass doors.....2 things that are possibly great about that. 1 - the door shell is ridiculously unsafe and would need a really stout bar, and 2 - a steel bar won't be bonded to the fiberglass door - it will need robust attachment points that make it easy on me to fabricate onto my car. I open up the door panel to find....ding, ding, ding :cf:

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

This pipe is SERIOUS! and comes with brackets to let me easily weld it into my door. It also comes with an extra "jerk pin" (my term) which is above the latch as an extra measure to keep the door and beam connected to the jamb in a wreck. (Think side impact and the door being driven into the passenger compartment - this pin keeps the door connected to the jamb in addition to the latch)
I also cut the jamb of the Camaro to get the latch and jerk pin together since I didn't know at the time exactly how I was going to create this monster.
This is major surgery here, and I need to be able to get at it all inside the door, so I found it was easiest to cut out the inner door for access. Should be fairly easy to weld back up after all the modifications.
Next pictures are of the opened up door in my blast cabinet! It was tight!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Here's the patient laid out on the table with her chest opened up. (see the Frankenstein reference) Working on fitting a good bit of the hinge end bracket up in and around the 57 hinge mount. Cut and shaped and bent with many weldable spots on the hinge end now. I cut about 6 inches of length off the bar, tapered the skin side to fit the skin close, and drilled a new mounting hole for the 1 through bolt to the latch end.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Side impact bar done! It took a lot longer than these posts show!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Next was a head scratcher - how to make a 1957 door handle work with a 2000 Camaro latch and lock assembly. My first issue was my door handle on the 2 door (not pictured), it only punches the plunger straight ahead when you push the thumb button. On the 57, it engages the latch which is mounted directly behind it. No levers or rods or anything. Booooo. Time to really think...
I wonder how the back door of the 4 door parts car parked outside works? I went to see and it was the same. Boooooo. Then I opened the front door - mainly out of frustration- and noticed right off that the latch was much lower, probably to make room for the rear door's hinges. I tore open the door panel to find that the front door handle on a 4 door is different than all the rest and has a built in lever which changes the simple plunger push, into a pulling action - SEE PICTURES. Score! Oh wait.... the Camaro latch needs a push to open, not a pull. Booooo again. Thats when I started channeling my inner Rube Goldberg..... came up with this crazy bell-crank to change the pull action into a push action. Whew! That took a while too.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Nice job Drew! Should make it safer for Biz

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

For my next trick, I had to get the lock button to work which meant building a cam to convert up down action into front back action. It's too complicated to explain.....

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

One more kinibly rod built, this one works the outside key lock.

Oh and remember times 2 on all this crazy stuff - 2 door.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Looks great .

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Looks good, does that give you the ability to install a keyless entry system from the camaro?

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Not sure about keyless entry - if I have to have a large keyfob, not really interested. It does have the electric lock solenoids still, so I know I could do electric locks. I'm sure I could do most anything aftermarket. Remote start might be a fun gimmick.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Nice work on the door and latch upgrades Drewski!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

I Win!

Bride of Frankenstein - you will come alive. It may take a while, but I'll get you rolling -safely- again.

Here you can see the secondary pin that the slot on the jamb plate engages. It now opens and closes effortlessly, now I just need to finish the drivers side jamb and weld up all the little holes and little pieces of sheet metal that close it up. Primer and weatherproof the inside of the door after that, then weld the inner door panel back in. And then a million other things.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

So cool Drew.. I love your level of detail and planning on the fabrication side of things with your builds. Taking something old and improving it with today's technology is a cool as it gets in my book...

Nice progress

Marc

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Great work on the door Drew.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Great idea. Nice to see someone else thinking about safety. Been trying to figure out crash bars on my 69. Agree totally on the modern latches. Nice work again!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Very nice work on the new latch and mechanism installs! That took a lot of brain storming and trial and error. Been there, many scrap pieces and puzzled moments. :lol:

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

x100.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Awesome work drew! That's a lot of tedious and (more often than not) frustrating work. I like that kind of stuff though.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

OK Drew, I'm hereby nominating you for, and awarding you with, the Most Real and Down to Earth Thinking Hot Rodder of All Time Award.
Aside from all your other skills, innovations etc. which have been amply documented on these pages, you are probably the first to consider safety to this extreme, and to actually make it work. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this way, I commend you sir for taking safety to this level, eyou're really leading the way in this hobby of ours, hopefully more will follow. I'd like to see a full spread in Hot Rod to get these ideas out to more of the general Hot Rodding public.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Thanks!!

Those driver's education films from the 50's we were made to watch sure made an impression on me when I was 15! That was 35 years ago and I still have images of passengers ejected onto the pavement and steering columns impaling drivers in my head. No way I'm getting in this death trap without a few sensible mods. In fact, I was on the H.A.M.B. boards a while back and a shop owner had posted he was about to start on a 56 Buick, and then got back on the board a month later and said the project wasn't happening anymore because the owner had crashed the car, car was a goner, and he wasn't sure if the owner would ever fully recover from his injuries.

I'm still welding away on the doors and jambs, but in between cooling down periods I'm figuring out how front shoulder harness seat belts are going to work.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Wrapping up the driver's side door now.

Tedious and not fun project to be hidden from view forever. But less injuries makes it worthwhile.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

You're welcome! Ive got another 15 on you, I lived some of it. I vividly remember some of the wrecks I've seen, both back then, and recently as well. Maybe 10 yrs back I saw and stopped at a scene where an elderly woman had lost control on a I26 overpass, (state rd crossing over), left the road and gone down the (really steep) embankment, crashing into the backside of the guardrail. I fully expected everyone to be dead or dying, but the airbags (and harnesses) had saved both with only minor scratches. This would not have been survibable before shoulder harnesses and airbags. Again, I applaud you for doing what you do. When many are figureing out how to put 4 more turbos and5 turbos on their "street" car, and if they do even consider safety they probably chunk a rollcage in it, you integrate real world advances in design etc into a 60 year old potential deathtrap and make it a state of the art daily driver. Yeah, I'm impressed. Keep this just between us tho, ok?

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

I know this is just a message board, but I think I can do better by you guys. I vow more interesting pictures and maybe even a video or two from now on out.

Jamb and door are both ready for a wipe of bondo, but I need to clean up a little surface rust in the blast cabinet first.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Saturday Night Picture Time

3 dull pics of the rear seat belt crossmember I cut and shaped to fit the floor. It used to be the structural hoop under the radiator. I've primed it with weld-thru primer, bolted and welded it in. Nice solid anchor point for all 4 belts. Yes, I said 4. It's ridiculously large inside and I think for short trips I could squeeze 4 kids or girls in the back. The front is actually even 4 inches wider, so we'll have 4 up front too. Sounds like fun!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Went to the scrap pile and found 2 pieces to use as reinforcement to the sheet metal floor. I'll need a strong anchor point for the outboard lap belt portion of the front seat belts. The inner portions will bolt through an existing thick support member.

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

The new outboard seatbelt brackets are shaped, bead blasted, and ready to weld in on the bottom of the car. I will attach the center seatbelt ends to the main crossmember that runs underneath the rear edge of the front seat. It has a recess that creates a bit of a problem in bolting it down though. There is a 1 inch air gap between the thin sheet metal and the meaty bracket so I have to cut out the thin stuff and create a pocket so that my belt end is mounted hard to the bracket. Still using that bent up fender for patches!

Re: Bride of Young Frankenstein - 1957 Buick Super
 

Burned in the outboard seatbelt reinforcements.