I'm thinking it may be a combination of the front springs settling after I cut them and worn tires. You guys may be right on the darty feeling. I wonder if the springs settled a bit after the alignment and that caused it to be toe out. Will check and report back.

 

It's been a while since I've had any updates. Been busy building a back porch on our house and that has taken most of my free time. I've been putting a bunch of miles on the car recently and it feels great. Wife and I have taken several longer trips with the most recent one being a 150 mile round trip to a Brewery. Runs great and finally got it out on the highway. She runs great at 80+ and just purrs along which is so much nicer than with the 3.70 gears. It's a great road trip car. I don't have a great gauge, but it must have averaged around 20 mpg with all the highway driving.

Drove to get some lunch in Culpeper, VA.



This was leaving Cars and Coffee in Charlottesville, VA. Some guys shoot the cars as they leave. Really cool action shot and love the new lowered stance! Very happy with that.





I think that is my favorite one.



After C&C we saw a familiar car parked in the shopping plaza.



I installed a flex fuel sensor as part of my winter upgrades since I was re-doing the fuel system. I finally got the tune-up all ready to go and the wiring adapter from Current performance. I didn't want to go all in, but I had about 3-4 gallons in the tank and then topped it off with 3 gallons of e85. It ran great and didn't even notice any difference in performance. Pretty cool that I have that option now. With the mix of 93 and 3 gallons of e85 it brought the ethanol up to 42%. I like having that little gauge there and should help keep the IAT's cooler when running the turbo.





About a month ago I put a post online asking if anyone had a pair of fender trim pieces for a 55 Nomad. A few guys reached out, but one guy actually had a set that he wanted to let go. I talked with him a bit and he sent me some pictures. Then come to find out he wanted to just give them to me! I couldn't thank the guy enough!! I thought it was a scam honestly at first, but I gave him my address and about a week later they showed up.

They are heavily pitted, but are better than nothing and will really fit the look of the car. I'm going to repair some of the really heavy pits and a few cracks with a product called Muggy Weld Alloy 1. I tested it out and it works great, but you cannot have any contaminations whatsoever or it won't have good adhesion. Really looking forward to installing the trim. I'm still torn on if I should just leave the pitted/chrome and attempting to polish the aluminum pieces to match as close as I can or maybe painting flat black/silver.



Hoping to attend some car shows later this summer and fall once I get the porch finished. I'm really getting close to the finish line so I want to get that behind me.

Thanks,
Ryan

 

As a Nomad-noob, I had to search for some 1955 Nomad images to see where those pieces go. Do you have the matching door pieces already?

 

Yes, I have the trim above the headlights called eyebrows and the door spears already. I found a guy who sold them to me the eyebrows and door spears that were aftermarket cast aluminum. The plan right now is to fill the pits and paint probably a silver or flat black. Haven't quite decided yet.

 

You absolutely nailed the ride height and stance!

 

Stellar work Ryan.

 

I haven't updated this in a while, but thought I'd share some photos from the summer. I really haven't been doing much at all to the car other than driving it. I was looking around at local car events and came across something called the Hazzard Run that was about an hour away and gave us a good excuse to drive through the Blue Ridge mountains. The run is a Duke's of Hazzard theme, and was a lot of fun. They organized a police escort through a few small towns in central Virginia. Started in Luray, then Shenandoah, Stanley, and back to Luray.









The Hellcat powered Hazzard police car was my favorite.



My wife snapped this picture while we were driving. One of my favorite pictures so far.



Trying to blend in with the regular crowd.



We ended up putting about 125 miles on the car and she ran great. One thing that I did notice was that I kept smelling some raw fuel every so often, but it wasn't consistent. I had been smelling it ever since I had the car out this year, but chalked it up to my tune maybe needing some tweaking or something because I never found anything wrong. Then after this cruise, I was checking things out as I usually do and noticed there was some fuel leaking out of the injectors on both 7 and 8 cylinder. That was the last straw with this Dorman LS2 Intake. It looks nice, but I posted some pictures online and listed it for sale. I was either going to buy some cheap adapter plates to run the really nice LS3 intake I have, or swap back to the TBSS truck intake.



Then it just so happened that I was looking around at intake manifolds and I found that Holley was having an Open box sale for several returned intakes without original boxes and I jumped on the last modular Lo Ram intake that they had listed. It was $350 off which was not more than what I was asking for the Dorman Intake. Then 2 days later I sold it and shipped out the Dorman intake.



I also have been slowly collecting parts for my turbo swap and finally decided on which one I wanted. I went back and forth, and went with the 78/75 turbo with Billet wheel on eBay with the smaller .96 A/R. I was on the fence about the new turbo that Richard Holdener sells that is supposed to be a great match for smaller LS engines. It looks really nice and very similar to the VS Racing units.





I'm starting to get really excited now. The last big parts that I need before I can start installing it is a new driveshaft, dual valve springs, and an intercooler. I've got something pretty cool in the works for that though. Should have some updates over the next few weeks.

Cheers,
Ryan

 

Although the car is still under construction, I peeled off the old sticker for the new one. Fits the car better I think.



Once the intake was delivered, I wasted no time with the installation. I pulled off all of the sensors from the Dorman intake and transplanted them over to the new Holley intake. I had to do a few test fits, but it fits really well overall. One thing that was interesting/annoying is that the factory LS3 MAP sensor that the intake is designed for actually contacts the gen4 oil pressure port. So I had to flip it 180* to make it work. Not a big deal, but seems like a silly oversight to me. Also, I needed to get a 45* adapter for my oil pressure sensor to clear the lid. Then I got the fuel rails, injectors and harness installed.







I test fit the intake manifold and decided to pull the radiator and give it a good flush since I noticed some "junk" in the upper side.





About this time I went into rush mode and stopped taking pictures as I was going. I got the lower intake torqued down and installed. Then before I installed the upper manifold I decided to add a 3/8" barb fitting for the new catch can. I've had this for a while, but have been putting off the install for one reason or another.





I pulled the driver's valve cover to install a second passenger side valve cover so that I can use a filler adapter to -10AN.







To be Continued...

 

Had some time to finish the updates. While the intake install was happening I picked up a few parts. I wasn't necessarily looking for this, but happened to find a guy selling a 2.3L Whipple Supercharger off of a late model 5.0 Mustang GT. It was pulled for noisy rear bearings and in the meantime the guy blew up the motor and just needed cash to get the car back together. He sold it to me completely disassembled, and I'm pretty handy so I grabbed it. He sold it to me crazy cheap so I really couldn't pass on it and he was only 10 mins from my house.

It just so happens that there is a company SWS Motorsports that sells an adapter for the Holley Lo ram to a variety of Ford based superchargers... Not sure that's the direction I want to go, but is interesting. Probably will be a rebuild and sell part to fund my project.





I also was able to pick up a really nice 1955 Belair factory radio delete. Thanks Pops!! At some point this winter I'll be building a lower center console that will hole a double din radio, cubby for switches/USB/ect with some much needed cup holders! So I wanted a cool option to cover that hole. Love how this looks and matches my worn dash bezels really well.





Continuing the progress of getting the car back on the road, as I was test fitting the new Holley intake it became clear that I needed to move the radiator forward more than I could with the factory latch in place. So after thinking on it for a week or so, I decided to go the quick and dirty route and notched the bottom side of the latch so that I could bent the rear to a 90* and twisted the lower brace to match. I decided to keep the nutsert in place so I cut it off and relocated to match the new angled upper piece.





With that modified, it gained me about 2" of clearance so I could slide the radiator forward where it needed to be. This won't be my long term solution, but is strong and keeps the hood latched. Doesn't look too bad for about 30 mins work. I think I want to build something like a company Sweet Components used to sell. I will likely be swapping out to the radiator for a dual pass LS swap unit at some point in the future, so I may be reconfiguring the whole assembly at some point.





With that modified, we were able to get the car back on the road and took the car to a show on Sunday





Love the way that intake looks!



Even got to see a guy who had a striking resemblance to the late Hulk Hogan checking out my car.



We had a great time at the show and had wonderful weather. Tons of really nice cars.

When we got back, I decided it was time. I pulled off my driver's side door panel to pop off the little plates the previous owners installed when they painted the car. Thankfully they didn't weld the holes. Can anyone can guess why I punched holes in the doors?



Cheers,
Ryan

 

In an effort to fundraise a bit for this project, I started selling some parts from the huge lot of Nomad and 55 Belair parts I bought in the spring. The lot came with a Nomad rear liftgate that I had listed for sale with the lot of parts. I had a gentleman who was interested so I pulled it out and thought it might be worth a shot to test fit on my car to verify the degree to which it was bent. Well to my surprise, it wasn't bent at all. In fact it fit the car incredibly well. So well, that I decided to keep it rather than sell. (Sorry Carl) The downside is the chrome is in much worse condition than the one that came on my car.



But the tradeoff is how well it fits on the car!







I got out some steel wool and polished it the best that I could and it actually turned out better than I expected. Still much worse condition, but something I can live with.

Before



After





Now that the liftgate was fitting so nicely, I got sidetracked and decided to finish pulling off the rear strikers for the tailgate. I don't believe that they had ever been removed from the car and most of the hardware was frozen when I got it. Several months ago I started to remove the bolts with the impact tool. That loosened the bolts, but they still couldn't come out all the way. I used a lot of tools to get them all out. Impact, welder, heat, and etc. I got lucky that I was able to remove them all without the need to drill/tap new holes. So they are all the factory threads. You can still see the original color too. I'm leaning towards it being Sea Mist or Regal Turquoise. Any thoughts?





I cleaned up the strikers and reinstalled with some new stainless hardware. Should be good for another 70 years!



My next update is something I've been waiting a long time to do.

Cheers,
Ryan

 

Ok, one last dump of photos and I'll be caught up with current day. Now that the rear of the car is tightened up significantly, it was time to start installing the eyebrows and spears. I've had the eyebrows test fit no less than a dozen times, but wasn't able to work up the courage to drill into my fenders/doors until this past weekend. When one of the previous owners restored the doors, they cut the skin halfway down and blended it together with a new skin. On the driver's door thankfully they cut below the original holes for the spears, but the passenger side they cut above that line, so I was missing the original holes. I took a bunch of measurements from the driver's side and transferred to the passenger side. I marked where the eyebrow hole needed to be, and then held up the trim as best as I could to get me into the ballpark.



I used the driver's side keyhole as a reference guide and transferred that to the passenger side. After a bunch of test fits and being mocked up with tape, I laid out the holes and drilled the holes. I used a flexible metal ruler that I bought a while ago to get nice crisp lines. I got a little more delamination around the drill sites than I would have liked, but no turning back now.



After the holes were drilled, I went ahead and drilled the eyebrows and fender spears. I used some blue painters tape under the fender and eyebrows then let the studs mark where they needed to be. It worked incredibly well and the trim nearly fell into place.



There was a little nub left on each eyebrow and I wanted to figure out a way to use it to mount if I could. I found these little couplers at Lowe's that were made of aluminum and threaded #6. I was able to tap what was left of the stud, and threaded on this little extension. It seems to work great and is holding firmly.



I didn't get any pictures of the during process, but the door spears that I have are reproduction aluminum pieces with no provisions for mounting hardware. So what I did was taped them to the doors where I wanted them, marked the back with a sharpie, then drilled/tapped the holes. I used some small fender washers and #10-32 studs/nuts. It worked really well and holds very firmly. I got in a hurry to install them, and probably should have done some epoxy in the threads so I don't have to worry about them coming apart. But I'm going to likely pull them to try and polish to match the fender spears and paint the middle at some point. I got excited to have the trim installed. I also used some thread cutting nuts on the existing studs and it worked beautifully on the fender spears.





The tricky one was the driver's side for one reason or another. The eyebrow fit tighter to the fender, so it was harder to manipulate without cracking. When I drilled the inner hole for the eyebrow, it allowed the side mount to slide back about a 1/4" which threw all my other holes off. So I had to redrill to allow everything to shift back. Which was great becuase it made the trim fit much tighter at the door gap. The driver's side was in fairly good condition, but I didn't notice until I went to install and the front most stud that holds the eyebrow was about 1/4" shorter than the rest of the original studs. That caused the threaded nut to not have enough length to grab. After thinking on it for a while I realized that it would fit if I flipped it upside down but wouldn't have anyway to tighten. Then it occurred to me that I could Tig weld them together and allow me to tighten them! It worked beautifully and I added a washer so it didn't dig into the fender.



I noticed that the original driver's door panel was starting to fall apart right where the upper trim meets the waffle panel. I found some thick material (cake display pieces at Wal-Mart) that was a similar thickness as the original card stock and used some contact cement to attach to the original. Let it cure for 24 hours and then I was able to reinstall.





I also got sidetracked with other projects with the door panels off. The passenger side garnish moulding never quite fit right, so I had to weld a hole shut and then redrill. Also added the door locks and a new glove box liner.





After driving my family a little crazy this weekend with things not going my way, but fighting through I was able to get the trim all buttoned up and installed and the interior back together. I pulled the car into the driveway and snapped a few cool pictures. They turned out way better than I thought for being my driveway.









We took the car out for a big loop and put maybe 25 miles on it. Was beautiful driving through the back country roads with all the fall leaves. I'm hoping to take the car out to drive on Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains this weekend.

Seems silly, but a huge milestone for me to have the car riding with the original trim once again. Most people will have no idea or ask why my trim is so pitted, but if you know you know. Fender trim is hard to find regardless of condition.

Cheers,
Ryan

 

Looks much better with the trim!! well done!

 

Do you notice any driveability differences with the new intake? It does look cool in there.

 

I didn't noticed anything significantly different with seat of the pants feel. The biggest drivability change is the whistling sound that I had at part throttle is gone. It had some sort of internal whistling sound that I was never able to track down.

 

one of the best threads I've seen. Thank you for the details, awesome pics

 

Thankfully, I've just been driving the car and haven't done anything to it recently. I'm happy to report that I finally clocked in over 1000 miles since putting it back together this spring. Would have liked to drive it more, but the porch project took up a lot of my summer. I even let my sister-in-law put in some miles! First time I've ever spent time in the back seat. Actually pretty darn comfortable.



I've been slowly collecting parts for the next stages of the build. I want to say a huge thanks to @Crawdad55 who send me some really great parts that I can't wait to get installed on the car. Will definitely go a long way towards retrofitting AC!





I also met up recently with a guy who removed an original Vintage Air Gen1 unit from his car and gave me a great price on it. Apparently shortly after it was installed in the late 90s the compressor blew, and he never got that part fixed. Recently he decided to pull it all out and go back to an original heater box. We weren't too far from each other, so we met in the middle. I took my car and it was a beautiful day for a cruise. Unbelievably he had the original installation instructions too! My engine bay is getting very tight, so I'll be trying out one of those 12v compressor pumps that I've been seeing online since I won't have the room once the turbo is mounted.





Last but certainly not least is one of the last big components that I needed before the turbo swap can begin. My buddy upgraded to the ultra low profile intercooler, and sold me the original unit that he had for a great price. The unit is beautifully built.





I need to buy a heat exchanger, reservoir and turbo drain lines and I'll be ready to make the swap. Colder weather is moving in so that may be a great time to start the swap.

Cheers,
Ryan

 

It's been a few months since I've had any meaningful updates, but I've been busy this past weekend. About 2 weeks ago it snowed about 3-4" overnight and I had to get a photo with the car in the fresh snow. Love the way they turned out.















I had been holding off on starting the turbo install since many times we don't get snow until late January/early February when they put down salt or salt brine. Well they laid it down on the roads so that was my cue to get the car up on wheel stands to start the winter mods. First up was to get the complete passenger's side exhaust removed. Starting with the manifold back to the muffler and tailpipe. Then it was the first real test fit of the turbo log with the billet wheel 7875 turbo.







Everything cleared as I expected it to because I have had this manifold on back when I originally installed the LS in the car. My original plan was to install this manifold but run it N/A with a dummy turbo pipe in place that just routed it back. But I scrapped that idea since the vband could be in so many different places and I didn't want to modify the exhaust multiple times. Only thing that needs adjustment is one zerk fitting on the upper control arm needs to be relocated as it points directly at the manifold. Next up was test fitting the turbo! It has tons of clearance everywhere which makes me very happy.











Then I had to mock up the Tick intercooler brick to see if it has any clearance issues. It is very close to the wiper motor, but has about 1/2" clearance around the whole thing. It couldn't fit any better around the motor!











So close, but it doesn't touch. I'll definitely keep an eye on it though for any witness marks with the engine shifting around.











The turbo outlet to TB opening is tight, but I think with a few tight 90* elbows it will fit.







Next up was making sure that with the taller intake that I'd have enough hood clearance. First attempt I wasn't even touching the hood, second attempt didn't either, and then on the third attempt I was finally making contact with the hood. Even with the added 3.25" intercooler brick, I still have over 2" of clearance between the intake and hood! That was a pleasant surprise.















Now it was time to see what the exhaust fitment was going to look like. With the battery right there, I thought it may be sort of tight, but after trimming the pipe down a bit, I'll have plenty of clearance around everything. I realized though that I'm going to need to get the crossover fit and mocked up though before I get too far with building this downpipe. I want to make sure that there is good fitment while also leaving a little room to grow in the future. I am running a 3" downpipe which I'm sure many will say that I should just go with 4", but I'm not sure for the power level that I want that is necessary. So I have a 3" mandrel bent stainless exhaust that I'm running back to the same muffler. I am however going to add a vband to replace the exhaust clamps that have been leaking since day 1.











One last picture where the billet wheel is visible.







That's all for now, but next up is the radiator, heat exchanger and A/C condenser fitment and mockup. I've got a lot of things to fit into a fairly small place, but I'm confident that I'll get it all to fit.



Cheers,

Ryan

 

Lots of progress Ryan.

Keep it up!

Andrew

 

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (or other holidays celebrated) and Happy New Year! I was able to get quite a done on the few down days we had during our time off. After going around and back and forth trying to decide where the best location will be for the wastegate, I finally decided to locate it similarly to where the Huron Speed truck kit does on their log manifold. This should give a good priority wastegate flow. I wanted to locate it straight inline with the exhaust flow at the elbow, but there were too many other things in the way and it would also make for a long pipe back into the downpipe. I'll be able to tuck it up nicely and will clear the inner fender and allow for easy access to change springs if needed. It also gives a nice clear shot to route the wastegate exhaust back into the main exhaust.





I pulled off the manifold and mocked everything up on my welding table. That way I could get to things much easier to mock it all up. Used some CAD from an old paper towel roll haha.







Once I nailed down the location where I wanted to the pipe to come out, I started drilling with the hole saw. Those manifolds are thick! I destroyed 2 before I finally bored all the way through. Then I trimmed up some of the summit racing 304 stainless pipe that I bought for the job. They had a nice mandrel bent pipe with a 180* and some long sections with a 45* as well. Cut off a section to get it mocked in position then test fit on the car.



This was the first of about 37 times the manifold was bolted on with the turbo, then down pipe to check for fitment.



Once I was happy with the fitment, I tacked the first pipe into place. I then determined that I needed another small pipe to angle the wastegate up and at a different angle. I cut and tacked that piece into place and was happy with the fitment. It was tight, but cleared everything. I didn't get any pictures during, but I set up the TIG and purge welded to eliminate the oxidation behind the weld. I'm still practicing with the TIG, but I turned the amps way up and got full penetration into the cast manifold. I made sure to use 309L filler wire that has good adhesion with dissimilar metals such as welding steel to stainless steel.







Here's the test fit fully welded to see the clearance. Will be relocating those wires up and away from the heat.





Here's my purge welding setup. I actually used my son's 3D printer to make that little puck for the end of the pipe. Worked really nicely too.





I didn't take any pictures while I was welding, since I wanted to move quickly to avoid using up more gas than I needed. But here's the end results. I welded everything fully bolted together to avoid warping or shifting. I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I'm pretty happy with how I progressed with my welding as the project went on. I was able to get the settings pretty dialed in.





Then at long last, I was able to do a final mock up with the completed pipes. I need to pull them off one last time to paint the log manifold where I welded it, then wrap the down pipe with header wrap to protect the battery.



That's basically what the end result will be. I'm very happy with how nicely it tucks up and in.



I finally received all the parts for adding the AC condenser, heat exchanger and a new radiator. I'm working now on mocking up all the components to see how they all work together. Hopefully it won't take too much work to get them all to live happily together. Now that the more difficult fabrication work is done on the hot side, I just need to connect the crossover pipe to my passenger side log. Does anyone have a good recommendation for a higher quality flex pipe?

Cheers,
Ryan

 

I never used any sort of flex pipe on a crossover and never had issues.