CHOPPING THE TOP ON THE 1937 Nash. EP1

on this video we'll be chopping that guy 1937 Nash I don't know some sort it's a weird car I don't think it's Canadian but should be this is a pretty solid car it was actually at the Nationals in 1968 I guess it was like some sort of low rider that is a crushed velvet headliner it's gonna it's gonna pain me to pull it out but it's part of it so I guess I'll start disassembly got no screws in well I got the headliner out it'd have been nice to have saved it from a cool Factor but uh no go plus now I probably need a tetanus shot because it was um yucky well I got the back window out and discovered that under the headliner it's all wood and of course it's all rotten Good Times I would have thought by 37 there would be no more wood in cars but the entire window frame surround which I'm going to get rid of but it's all wood all the way up into the header here the whole back window which I don't think I need any of that stuff so I might be all right but a little bit of a shock another neat thing is the drip rail is actually screwed on so that's kind of cool so one cool thing about this car is the windshield comes in from the inside I've never seen that before you got this little lip here and it slides in this way here um that thing must have leaked like hell when it rained but makes it easy to get the glass out all right time to add all the bracing so the first thing you want to do before you put any bracing in is make sure the car is actually Square you know you do this by looking at all your door gaps and these are consistent all the way around because now is the time to correct anything that might be out of whack this car had a sub frame and a frame Notch so I don't think it's it's Square as it could be make sure the door is open and close nicely there's nothing funky going on these lines look good trunk lid seams relatively Square and this door looks like it's going to work out as well last thing you want to do and probably adjust that door there maybe we'll check that but the last thing you want to do is chop your car and end up with a crooked car because the last thing you want is a crooked car it'll make a ton of work trying to fix that after the fact so do it now I got this cross brace here keep the body from doing this now I'll put the cross ones in [Music] [Music] there I got this in got a cross in down to the front I'm pretty confident it's not going to go anywhere now [Music] uh that's real cool screws on the rain gutter removed it just unscrewed so that was super easy probably not going to put it back on it'll do something a little different uh we're going to convert this to a three window so the quarter window is going to be leaving so I'll probably trim this out as tight as I can and then we'll uh shorten the roof somewhere around this area not quite sure yet and then probably going to cut the catwalk somewhere in the middle move the hole backward back window forward lay it down and then just the usual stuff but uh chopping a car is not that difficult the hardest part is laying it out and doing a lot of pre-thinking prior to cut anything because the more you put in thought into before you cut it the easier it is to go back together I mean really a monkey can do it it's just a piece of metal you know people have been working on metal for I don't know a thousand years so this is nothing special so don't be scared it's just a car cut it up if not send it to me I'll do it so the customer wants a four inch chop so I'm just going to make a little uh Temple of a piece of aluminum and use that to scribe another important thing to do is figure out where is the best place to cut everything you want to spend some time measuring figure out what's the best placement for your four inch piece that's going to be missing the more time it take to do this the easier will be to put back together hopefully don't have to cut up here and spread anything or anything weird like that so I definitely don't want to have to cut into the cowl so here is The Sweet Spot exactly the same so that should help to go together nice and tight this is why I like using the little metal shim because you can move it all around anywhere you want to go to help Mark everything stays consistent so I'm going to get rid of the window here I'm just going to use a simple scribe to pretty much Mark out where I'm going to cut it I don't want to cut too low down here I want to retain as much of that meat as possible and possibly cut it somewhere in this area here this will all have to move backwards which means it'll have to get cut here and this will all go forward no big deal like a jigsaw puzzle very complex one so now looking on the inside of the top of the door here I see I have this brace here so I'd like to stay away from that so we'll see if I can cut it somewhere in this area here depending on where it lines up oh which that puts me about right here so cut it up there and then down that edge to meet up there that way everything when this all comes forward this piece will come back and fill into this side that way I'll have enough meat to weld and I'm only going to make one little patch here easy man easy trying to figure out where is the best spot to trim the catwalk so if you're looking I would swoops up now I'm going to cut it and move the back window forward so I need to have the line off the trunk and the line off the window to line up nice enough that I wanted to make one little small filler panel so probably somewhere in the center of this crown is what I'm thinking and the same thing with the roof this will get cut somewhere in this area here and we'll move forward up underneath this roof and then I'll trim the roof back to match the window and that should shorten the roof I'm going to say probably oh maybe about six inches it should be about good don't really know until you start moving things around but just about there I think tomorrow we're going to cut I do like to make patterns from side to side so that way kind of the part everything matches just makes it a little bit easier that should be right there at the break where it goes from being flat to where it starts to curve up clean that up and match the other side and just about ready to go cut it across here I've been playing with the straight edge for a while and finally found I think what is The Sweet Spot almost I like to have that consistency from one to the other beep gotta move on to the doors so moving on to the doors they can be a little tricky but like Bobby Walden says the doors are the most important part of the car so you got to spend a lot of focus on them because it really is what you see from the side but in terms of cutting them beginning where to start if I follow this line here and that runs into this fatter portion of the door and that's going to be a problem so having to move it up to find The Sweet Spot is the key so these actually measure out to be the same with the center will have to be cutting this will have to be widen probably three inches probably gonna end up cutting right about this area here but there's also you got to think about the inside of the door so the door actually tapers from bottom to top so you have to account for all those different things and all these different body lines so it's a little more complex uh than you think the door might theoretically be harder than the rest of the chop so a word of advice don't automatically cut the section out of the door to match your other cuts just cut the door top free and trim it as needed that way you can sneak up on it and you can correct correct any gaps you don't like and these types of things and try to cut it as Square as possible it'll make your life a lot easier so I'm going to go ahead and cut the doors first get those out of the way and work on securing the roof and getting it set up I'm going to use my cordless grinder here because it uh it's a little more precise plus it runs slower and it's quiet I prefer quiet you will notice the giant scar in my hand that is from the lack of having a guard uh yeah some lessons are hard to learn although that ain't hurt nearly as bad as of the day I cut my thumb off so you know learning curve oh yeah don't do that that hurts next I'll cut the header out I think they were some electrical in there [Applause] okay getting there got the doors out quarters out both sides now I just need to work to suspend the roof from the ceiling so I can cut the a-pillars off and the back window out typically I would use ratchet straps but I cut all the rafters out for my car lift so I could double stack so now I got to come up with some sort of Genius plan that I haven't quite worked out yet so in my haste of trying to get set up so I could film this thing adequately I failed to put some thought into how to actually suspend the uh the roof here let me show you so I've got a GoPro here I got a GoPro here I got lighting I have an additional iPhone simply the film for social media in that format I'm currently on an iPhone 14. and I put all this effort in just for you by the way but uh after monkeying around here I went ahead and got a rope tied it up to my beam there down there to my workbench and over here up to the rafters going through the car and then I of course ran out of rope so I found the handy extension cord which I'm sure is approved I've got that tied off to my English wheel and then over there to the base now I have no idea what's going to happen when I cut the roof but I'm sure it's going to be fantastic to watch so hold tight [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well that wasn't bad there I planned that I swear oh progress is moving along here now under the a-pillar and uh we'll see what uh craziness happens sometimes this filming thing is really hard stupid camera angles can't figure things out this is actually a lot more difficult than anyone would ever think at least in order to try to put something out that isn't complete garbage I mean stuck around this long then maybe you need a better Hobby [Music] [Music] see my extension cord work Super Genius in action I know you had your doubts don't worry I doubted myself to I'm gonna go ahead and whack those pillars while I got a chance look at that Super Genius ah oh I mean fudge I don't want to offend the children's [Music] um [Applause] um [Applause] I just can't help myself foreign ERS are actually going to line up pretty darn good obviously I do a lot of cleanup on there starting to look like something on the side here I'm going to close that back window up and it's going to be fudge sickling awesome ain't no turning back now this whole Super Genius thing is harder than it looks so next time we'll uh put it back together Please Subscribe and thank you for watching

Channel: The Old Iron Workshop

Views: 36,520

Keywords: Hotrod, English wheel, Planishing hammer, Metal work, Car restoration, Classic car, Vintage, Vintage car, How to chop a car, Kustom, Kustom car, Fabrication, Chop top, Chopped car, 1937 Nash, 1946 ford, 1940 ford, Tools, Bourbon, Texas, Car show

Id: 7Nm2HLywI8I

Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 23 2023