rat_rod_russell

I posted a while back hoping that i would be able to keep up listing about my 57 2 door sedan but thing happen, all three of my computers died in 3 days, had to build a new one to get my data from the other 2, and then i got on with a local machine shop learning Solidworks and some other 3D programs so with great regret the 57 had to go on the back burner.
So Slowly I just wanted to get it together so I could have something to cruse in. The car was red, craptastic red but all one color. Got it wired, running did an alignment on the floor here in the shop, and wow. There was no way I could leave the car with so much potential to look so foul.

Dad in my 57 ( he can't work the camera)



The Current Hit List

Drive Line
LS1 98 Trans AM (Setup motor)
T56 Viper Spec
Aluminum Flywheel Steel Insert
Stage 3 Spec Clutch
Long Tube Headers full 2.5” Exhaust
2 Core Radiator Twin Fans
Oil Cooler

Chassis & Suspension
New Custom Chassis
C4 Corvette Suspension
3.73 Rear Gears Dana 36 (Setup Dif / Experiment)
QA1 Single Adjustable Coil Over Shocks
C5 Corvette Brakes
Drilled Slotted Rotors
Braided Steel Brake Lines
2 Turn Lock to Lock Rack

Body & Interior
Shaved Door handles
Remote Trunk
4000 Watt Stereo
Interior from a 04 GTO
Custom Center Console
Black Leather Paneling
6.2" LCD Touch Screen Wired into the GTP

So with a heavy heart my little brother and I began to break it back down. Unhook the motor, pull the front end and bought some splash pans to replace the rear quarter. The guy who owned it before and had painted it had also cut the quarters up 3.5 inches to fit his big tires. It just didn’t look right and we have modified the insides to take a set of 275's. We looked at it and saw that the stainless we had needed a ton of work to get all the dings out of it and none of the pot metal items were usable. With the cost of parts stacking into almost what I had in the motor, transmission and drive line we started to look at some alternatives. I don't mind spending on performance but not bling, all the stereo gps and touch screen i begrudgingly spent 700. Billy and I were going to paint the entire car semi-gloss black then body work all the stainless, chrome and bumpers and paint them gloss black. Not classic but we could make it work with our budget.
Then we met Tony Mendez of Mustang Mendez. He had seen and taken a ride in my 32 ford. C4 suspension C5 brakes, LS1, Viper Spec T56, 1956 LB’s and FAST 0-60 in 3.2 and he wanted one for himself.



When we had our roadster we were building one for another customer, He got impatient and just bought ours. Seeing as every cop in 5 counties knew who billy and I were and would follow us into and out of town we weren't so sad about selling it. But we had his project, it went out back half finished and the trade negotiations began. We started talking and he figured this was going to be a 12-15k rolling chassis with all the stuff he needed us to do that they couldn’t. So he asked what are you planning to do with that 57?



I had just picked up a magazine with some great photos of a 57 black widow clone. I had always wanted to do a black widow but we didn’t have any of the stainless at all.

Quick Re cap the black widow was the 57 Chevy 150 2 door sedan. It had some beefy truck parts and the 57 Corvette Fuel Injected Motor under the hood. That year they riped NASCAR up and then got fuel injection band. I want mine to be a little more modern.

So Tony asked, why don’t we just air brush it all on? Ding Ding Ding, in those few words all the problems we were having just vanished. All the bumper, that we had now cut down for a tighter fit, all the stainless that we didn’t have, all the pot metal parts that all of the chrome had flaked off of, the body work that I didn’t want to do because I’m not that good at it, the paint I was going to screw up because we didn’t have a big enough paint booth. All for a fiberglass car that’s been sitting out behind my shop for 8-10 months that was already paid for once.
I dropped the car off last week, they’ve already started on the body work and tony told me that it should be 1.5 - 2 weeks and they'll be done with the body work and have it in primer, I showed up after they started cleaning for the day so it was back out of the way but it's coming along quick












I’m going to try to keep up some photos this time, now that I don’t need to worry about my computer going down.

The long term goal is a LQ built with twin turbos to move the heavy metal beast.
-R^3

djquik88

iTrader: (20)

God I love it already. If I ever sell my coupe I will be buying a 55 or a 57 to build.

Mike

classic gary

I still ask my friends to kick me about selling my '57 150 sedan, and the '56 210 sedan, and the '69 Z28, and the ...oh well, you know.........................

rat_rod_russell

I haven't gotten a chance to play over here for quite some time. I've acutely been working on my car and trying to keep up with the rest of the work around the shop.

I've been posting on the TriFive forum because my dad sponsors them but he sucks on the keyboard. It takes him 10 minutes to type his own name, J I M. But he did give me a bunch of parts he had been saving for his hard top that’s taken major back seat to my car plus he’s been busy with my mom and the doctors. But here the list of upgrades and other goodies for my baby since last time.

03 Corvette LS1 instead of the 98 Trans AM LS1

Long tube headers

I went back to a steel flywheel due to the weight of the car.

And I said **** it and built a new better frame for it. The old frame was #4 the one under her now is #27 we’ve refined a bunch of little crap since then and I got to weld my own frame out instead of Eric. He’s still the better welder but when I claim to have built the car I want to have built it not bought a bunch of crap and bolted it together.

The painters body guy screwed me, go figure, and so I ended painting myself then took it over to have the air brush work done, but I also get to keep the spare roadster for a C6 conversion project I’m working on.

And we’ll let the photos speak for themselves














-Later
R^3

Pro Stock John

iTrader: (34)

I like it!

Novas Forever

OMG Becky, nice.

rat_rod_russell

hell ya and with the air brushed moldings when It gets dirty I'm just going to pressure wash it and dry it off None of that lame scrubbing on the stainless to clean it up or crap like that. Plus I just got the first box thunder racing of LS1 internal goodies.

-Patriot EXTREME dual valve springs
-Comp push rods
-gaskets

and the one box I'm waiting for

1 custom ground cam specked by Thunder Racing and drop shipped from Comp when they get done. 224/230 112LSA +1

Loud but streatable

Nashty

iTrader: (7)

Oh now that is too sweet, you're good.

kainzien

iTrader: (1)

Ahh.. Thats AWESOME..

patriotformula

iTrader: (28)

very cool...hope your gonna drive it though! Nothing worse then a cool hot rod that doesnt get driven

NHRAMAN

iTrader: (1)

Nice..a buddy has 2 --'57 Nomads. [old school engines].

rat_rod_russell

dude, the biggest problem will be me, my father and little brother fighting over who's going to get to drive. My mother scared her self when she drove the roadster so I'm not worried about her. We all work different shifts at our shop. I end up on the late afternoon and night while dad and billy both work the day. When we had the 32 for running (the red car up top) we put 8k on it in 3 months. January - March, No top, No heater, you just drove faster to get out of the cold and drive faster to keep the water off of you, almost every problem could be solved by driving faster in that car. And billy and I both live at the shop so we don't go anywhere, so It wasn't to work and back It was all just ******* around or parts runs. "I'm going to run to Austin" "Why, we don't need anything an its ******* raining!, where the hell did that **** head go...." (tire squeal) "**** that old man" Dad would drive it for his morning runaround, Billy would run to his friend and back over in san marcoss and I'd drive it at night. No rest for the little roadster

All three of us knew how to hot wire that car real quick when the other *** holes would try to hide the keys.

Me, I just got sick of getting pulled over. I think this was watched
Pig: "Who's car is this sun"
Me: "...... mine, why did you pull me over?"
Pig " have you been drinking?"
Me "Officer, If I was worried about you arresting me for something, I wouldn't have stopped and you'd never have caught me."

I think thats why I ended up getting nailed so many times but never got a ticket, so I'm hoping with the dark windows and top they'll leave my *** alone thinking I'm one of the old guys in town until I actuality do something wrong.

I'm expecting at least 3000-4000 miles a month.

luckyhenriksen

iTrader: (1)

Thats funny I think cops are very annoying. I'm glad they havent given you some lame *** ticket. BTW that Chevy is beautiful

rat_rod_russell

Getting closer,

The cam will be here Thursday. So Thursday morning I'm hunting down the UPS guy. He stops by my shop last on his way back to Austin. So **** that I know where he eats lunch I running his *** down so i can get her back together ASAP with any luck we should be starting the braking in 1 1/2 too 2 weeks.

-R^3

Hugger Z

iTrader: (4)

Looking good! Can't wait to see it finished.

rat_rod_russell

ome update photos of the widow

We’ve gotten the front end locked down. All the motor goodies are on and locked down. Cold Air intake is on; I’m going to wrap it in header wrap to prevent heat soaking. I also threw some photos of the rear stereo assemble a buddy of mine came over and wanted to wire it so I was more than happy to let him.

I just got the GTO seats back from the upholstery shop. I had them take that GTO logo that was in the middle of the seat out. Those seats were a little more complicated than what I was use to so I let an expert take care of it. I’m fitting the back seats and modifying them I’ll also probably be doing the interior myself. I put up some photos of the seats for other guys looking at doing a little more modern interior for their tri fives. They have a nice feel, good side bolstering but it’s not as aggressive as the corvette seats so it will be better for cursing but still keep you in place when you hammer into a corner.

You can see were building a special grill for the front to give it a little more of a custom theme to go with the black widow idea. I should have some more photos of it this afternoon.

Right now I’m waiting on a box of gaskets and carpet from Mutton Hollow, But I don’t think I have to wait long, 30min after I hit the submit button on their web site I got a email reading that the order has been shipped. And you can’t beat those prices and with such an easy to navigate web site +1 from me to Mutton Hollows.

(I didn't want to kill everyone band width again so click the photos to blow them up)




















Later
-Russell

bonecrrusher

iTrader: (1)

Nice cheap 4" filters from Autozone!

I've got one on my GTP, and I've had zero issues with it.

rat_rod_russell

I'm all about shaving bucks. the real reason we shaved the car was because it was cheaper than getting handles and locks. Then I had the stainless airbrushed on the car because it was cheaper too and easer to clean. The red looks good against all that black, and I was not in the mood to wait on summit or speedway for shipping. but the intake is a 3.5" feeding a 4" right into the TB No place for restriction.

rat_rod_russell

This was kind of one of those random ideas that just came out there as a "why not" I'm really surprised it turned out so well. We used 1/8" tig rods and twisted 1/16" rods to give the look of a spiders web in the morning dew. When you catch the light on it the twist gives it more depth than just having it cut out of a flat piece. I'm not even going to polish it. I'm going to leave the slight heat discoloration and burnished tig welds. Since I was trained as a black smith from an early age that slight worked look has always been a little more appealing to me. You'll see the same theme in the shifter and probably the steering wheel as well.





One step closer, but I'm going to be slamming out frames for the next few days since eric is gone. So it's probably be the end of the week before i can do anything except look at it.

later
Russell

rat_rod_russell

Update time
We’ve been snowed under with work. I’ve been spending a lot of time pushing out quotes and getting some frames together. She runs, we had some problems with the alternator but that’s all straightened out now. The next hurtle put up by another painter is the stainless and other trim parts. First off he’s a month behind second the parts he brought back don’t look like chrome. There too busy so with them also being behind schedule there also going to need to be re done, more time wasted. But It was a good learning process. In the future we need to take him a piece to duplicate. We did that with the side part. I didn’t have the exact parts for the car but I had the right shaped parts for him to look at when we did them. For the other parts I had given him s ton of photos I had from other 57’s but that wasn’t good enough. I also think he got a little too focused on the parts as individuals not at a whole package.

Click to enlarge




I have to brag about the guys up at thunder racing again this cam rocks. Even with the long first gear (viper specked T56) I haven’t had a single problem rolling the little bastard around at low speeds. It sounds good with the right power to keep it real street able.

Next on the list
- front end all leveled and fitting
- hood and trunk installed
- bumpers installed
- Lights
- Stereo
- Finish out the console
- Carpet
- Rear seats
Here she sits for a few days then we’ll get back on to it.



R^3