1953 Studebaker

it's kind of hard to know where to start [Music] hey it's Paul Herman welcome to the body and soul shop today we're going to do a final on the Studebaker it's all done ready to roll out here it's hard to know where to start because there's so much that's been done to this car so this thing has been heavily massaged I mean there's not a piece of it that we haven't touched and worked in every direction right so this thing's got an art Morrison chassis under it and man let me tell you it's solid this thing drives so great it handles phenomenal I'm really impressed with it so that's that's our base and we're going to come up with it so I'll start here in the front and start showing you the motor the engine compartment the hood all the little intricate things that we've done to it okay whenever you're building a custom car uh you need a theme right so we've capitalized on the sea coves that were in the doors originally we made those a little bit deeper as you can see we also Incorporated the Sea Cove in the inner fender well I was laying in bed about three o'clock at night and that concept came into my head we'd already started to see Cove on other parts of the car and I was like I just saw it and it fit perfectly the way the hood has to roll forward and everything it just it just was right on the money so what we have is a 495 horse LS as you can see I made custom motor cover custom valve covers all that stuff for it I'll explain real briefly this part right here is out of the hood side of a 40 Chevy that I had saved years ago I had it hanging on the wall back there these Hood Spears uh right here were off a 36 Chevy Coupe and the valve covers I took small block valve covers I cut the top out of them and fabricated the center piece raised it up so it's got mounts underneath it to hold it down to the ls valve covers I think it looks great especially when the lights on it reflects real nice one of the things that I did was make this entire tilt forward Hood hinge setup hand fabricated all the radiator shroud it's got a fan out here for the air conditioning and fan back in here for the cooling a little trip switch down there so that little trip switch when you open the hood that's what turns on the lights in the Sea Cove and on the motor and stuff I mean one of the hardest things on this is try just trying to figure out all the angles uh you know where your hood stops and the hood is wedge shaped so the hood has to jump up out of here first of all so the wheels lay on the stainless and rolls back and goes down and latches it was into place so as soon as you start pulling the hood forward it jumps up so it's not gouging into the fender that's what all this is about and that's why that Sea Cove theme works so well in here so once again like I said themes are really important keeping things consistent but very tasteful at the same time so one of the wheels we had a kneeling machine that did a lot of other pieces for us one of made these little wheels that match the wheels on the car one of the things that I kept seeing in my head was a front spoiler on this like a Mach 1 head and I come in and told Eric one day I said we need to build a front spoiler for this thing and just I said just think Mustang Mach 1 he did a phenomenal job fabricating that thing up that's one of the cool features about this car that I just absolutely love that and the exhaust ports that he made I just really uh really make this car stand out like I said in the previous two or three videos there's uh we talked about chopping the top and what all we did we did take the top down an inch and a half it's called a gentleman's chop we simply come down and cut the cowl across here and pulled it down and forward which allowed us to use the original windshield and original back glass in it too which was really cool but we had to totally recreate the driver's door and the driver's door window area to make a one-piece glass where it used to have a vent glass in here so that's this is all hand fabricated stuff and just happened to spot a car a Chevy Chevy Lumina sitting in uh in a parking lot one day it had these mirrors on it and they were perfect for what I wanted to do so I'm real happy with the way that turned out it looks so much better with the roof being level here and the reason they've done that Studebaker made the roof go uphill because the guys used to wear the Fedora hats back in the day but it just looks so much cleaner when it's like what the chop that we did on it one of the things that I love about this chop is it makes it look like it's going fast just sitting there looks like it's going 100 mile an hour just sitting still you know so I think that's really cool Wheels can obviously make or break a car and I just really felt like these American Racing Salt Flat rims were the ticket for this car and it had to have red lines on so we had these red lines especially made for this and uh just love the way it come out I think it was perfect for this car as we went into detail in some of the previous videos also about how Eric made these bezels for this and uh just love the way that come out he had formed all this aluminum then we sent it out and had it chromed and I think it just really helps make this car it's just one of the cool features on it one of the things that I absolutely love is this rear roll pan that Eric fabbed up it covers all the gas tank and everything but it just when you're looking at the car from the back side it is just sweet it's smooth it's slick and just helps everything to flow it goes from one quarter panel to the other and Tucks up underneath the rear bumper and just really well done so this truck area is kind of like a big jigsaw puzzle everything's got a sequence that has to go in Eric fabricated a fiberglass panel for underneath the bottom side of the trunk lid and of course we had it all covered and everything so had a Studebaker s made for right there to highlight that and it was um we had that made with a 3D printer so that was pretty cool we also have that same Studebaker logo in the back of every one of the seats but they're the smaller origin original logos so we fabricated this panel right here it does come down and it exposes you get into your battery and your stereo system and a little bit of storage right in here this is this is all fabricated out of metal as well as the side pieces and this just snaps in place and uh magnet holds it in place so on the back we just pretty much kept everything standard uh even using the original key latch for it and everything okay so on the interior there was a lot of brainstorming going on between Eric and I uh just coming up with different designs and things that we wanted to do and incorporate into here pretty much told Eric when to do the Sea Cove in the in the side of the console and turned him loose and he fabricated all this and it just turned out incredible this was a straight piece of aluminum he started about with and the English wheeled that thing out and uh just all the radiuses everything it turned out really good of course we got it backlit so when you open the doors everything lights up the steering wheel was something I designed so I want to keep the seaco theme going on so I designed the steering wheel this way and Neely machine cut this out of a chunk of Billet it did a phenomenal job they also made this piece of Billet across here that I had chromed I just thought that needed a little bit of pop in the dash so that really brought it alive I did away with the radio the ashtray glove box all that's totally gone and I added this tube to the bottom of it to kind of help hide the air conditioning and everything give it just give it a little bit more mass plus it gives it a nice bit of detailed character there Dakota Digital did the gauges for us I really love them and the customer he wanted digital gauges in it so Dakota knocked him out of the park for us really appreciate it so one of the things that we wanted to do was use a 65 you know mid 60s Thunderbird rear seat in this thing absolutely love the way that it come out and uh we found this seat Desert Valley out in Arizona had it in their salvage yard and was gracious enough to sell it to us and send it to us so so like Eric said before you had to shrink them down to make them fit in here which meant refabricating the whole deck panel and creating an armrest in the center and everything but it really turned out really super nice and there again we used the Studebaker emblems in the in the backs of each one of these seats just a little bit of bling just makes it come alive really love it with much fabrication there's a 65 Thunderbird seat in the back of this Studebaker so Eric fabricated up these pieces right here out a quarter inch round stock and then we sent them out and had them chromed really made that seat pop just that little bit really helped a lot so I wanted to have a little bit of fun with the headliner so I took the original bows out and took them and had them chromed and then we put the headliner in it and put the Bose on the bottom also Eric fabricated up these side panels here and uh it made them out of fiberglass and then we had them wrapped but I love the tray lighting I had I had that thought in my head for a long time about doing tray Lighting in this car and I think it really uh really complements it well one of the things that is so special uh among your customers is when somebody trusts you enough to say Hey you know I want this motor in it other than that just build me a car I love it and I appreciate it very much thank you so much guys [Music] so now that you've seen how we made it how about let's go for a spin see how it drives [Music] oh [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you that pretty much wraps it up thanks for watching we really appreciate it

Channel: The Body & Soul Shop

Views: 30,135

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Id: 2cqyEh8OpjE

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023