I purchased my 51 chop top Chevy from a gentleman in Piqua Ohio named David Grunkemeyer on August 31th 2015.
When I received the vehicle It sat so close to the ground I had to be really careful just pulling in and out of my driveway. The first thing I need to do was raise the truck up so it would be safe for me to drive after all what good is having a truck you’re are afraid to drive.
So it was off to Acme Spring at 527 East Second Street in Dayton Ohio. (phone 937 222 8615) The guys at Acme raised the truck by 3-1/2, replacing the front coil springs; which were cut down springs from the donor 86 firebird and removing the lowering blocks between the rear axle and the leaf springs.
The truck is equipped with power and after a few days the passenger side switch decided it had severed its complete life. After quite a bit of research I was able to purchase the exact switch from MCM Electronics. I replaced the switch without any problems. Now on to bigger and better repairs and upgrades.
From this point on I need quite a bit of help to do the following upgrades. For most of this part of the project I needed to rely someone who could not only add air conditioning if the truck was unmolested but also do any repairs needed or fabricate special parts or bracketry. That is where Jim Unger comes into the picture. Not only is Jim a good fabricator he is know from coast to coast for building some really exotic hot rods and race cars. Jim has been building, restoring hot rods since his teen years.
Before I go any further let me give you a little background on this particular truck. If you didn’t notice in the picture above the truck has “shaved door handles” meaning it does not have door handles at all. To open the doors there were small electrical push button switches installed on a riser just above the fiberglass running boards between the cab and bed. These are called “door poppers” for those of you that don’t know. If the battery was dead, there were two steel aircraft cables with rings tucked up under each front wheel wells so you could get into the truck in case of and emergency. The access to the battery is a removable panel on the passenger floor board. It is also equipped with an all steel tilting front end powered by hydraulics which the controls are inside the cab. The hydraulic pump is located under the bed of the pickup.
In this picture you can see the hole where the “door popper” switch was originally located. It has since been removed.
Since I did not trust the reliability of the “door poppers” and hearing the horror stories of just the slightest amount of moisture and low temperature rendering them useless I decided they had to go. I like the look of the twist type handles that were original equipment on the 1947 though 1951 trucks of this type. For these model year trucks were only equipped with a single outside lock on the passenger door. This was done as a safety feature so if you drove your truck in town and locked it up to do some shopping when returning to your vehicle you were not standing on the street in traffic to gain access to the interior of your truck.
Drivers door with handle
New door handles and lockset above.
There was quite a bit of work involved getting this hardware to work as intended. The doors had been stripped of all the original hardware and donor parts from a Monte Carlo was used for the “door popper” system that had been in place. With the doors complete the “electric wiper” conversion has started but won’t be complete until the “vintage air” heater and air conditioning unit is mounted on the firewall.
More interior challenges, as I mentioned before these products are manufactured to be used in an unmolested vehicle. Starting off part of the donor car, the Monte Carlo was used in the interior. The 1951 steel dash and part of the Monte Carlo dash where blended to give the truck more custom appeal. This means that part of the original truck dash had been cut out and the portion of the Monte Carlo dash (the gauge cluster) was welded in. One of the brackets that held the vacuum wiper motor had been removed and discarded. The original wiper motor is not mounted where one would think, the logical spot would be on the firewall but it is my guess GM located it on the backside of the dash so the pop up vent would not leak and moisture on mechanism while driving in the rain.
(Under the dash) Electric wiper motor mounted with 2 bolts a bracket will need to fabricated to make it more stable when running the wipers. This will occur after all hoses and duct work has been laid out.
Monte Carlo dash blended with the 51 dash.
More details under the dash. After removing part of the carpet that covers the firewall two large hole were discover. I am not sure what for; there had been a patch applied from the inside of the cab and tacked in place.
(inside view looking toward the engine compartment) This part of the firewall is where the heater/air conditioning box has to be mounted so a permanent and safe repair needed to be made on the outer side of the firewall. This will allow the heater/air conditioning box to be mounted in the correct location and keep any fuel or engine exhaust out of the cab.
This view is from the engine compartment looking at the passenger firewall that will be completely welded in place.