1959 Chevrolet Bel air 4 door
This car was purchased a few years ago now as an abandoned project roughly 14 years ago there were 2 of them both in fairly poor shape the "donor car" has since been completely stripped for parts what were left for the El Camino. I can still see them now when they arrived on the trailers I thought to myself "ya gotta a heappppp of work ahead of ya there" the "project car" had been sittin for some time and had been pulled off the chassis and had the chassis powder coated and a few patch panels here and there some of the glass was missin as well as some of the stainless trim, the pics below of the end result was a good 7 years of hard labour blood sweat and lots of tears- a labour of love ya might say, the pics i took at my place really don't do the car any justice and one cannot fully appreciate the detail that has gone into it, it would have to be the best example of a 59 Bel air I have seen bear in mind this car is NOT thrown in the shed and admired it is driven on a quite regular basis.
The paint used in this build is a slightly toned down Monza red 2 pack, the roof is done in a white acrylic lacquer base with a gold pearlecent additive in the clear coat that gives off a gold tinge in the sun it is the same color as i done the roof on the Four runner in the background. Of course like anything this age there was 100's of hours of block sandin by hand to get it dead flat as the owner is very pedantic and as i said it is a shame ya can't appreciate how straight this car turned out by the pics.
The engine is a basically a stock 350 small block that come out of a friends 59 Cadillac to make way for a 454 big block, the 350 is coupled to a 2 speed power glide transmission and drives like the day it drove outta the factory.
The 59 Bel air was assembled here in Australia and is RHD the parts were shipped from Canada i think and were assembled in one of the 5 GM plants at the time in Australia, upon purchase we found out the car was last registered in 1974 and by the rust in it it would of seen a good deal of the 74 floods as it was assembled in the Brisbane plant not one of the plants down south, GM put together i think 2400 odd of the 59's the one pictured is number 1200 somethin but don't quote me on that as in how many made as i am goin by memory only, it was a nightmare to get registered as it had no proof of "country of origin" or some garbage like that the motor registry office said as we all know they try their best to put old cars off the road and will try every trick in the book to achieve this. In the end after much bureaucracy and BS it was finally registered and was back on the road where it belongs!
Believe it or not the chrome on the instrument cluster is original it was back in the days when chrome was in!! when electroplating was done PROPERLY unlike the rubbish turned out these days.
TO BE CONTINUED
