It’s roaming around the streets of St. Petersburg ! We delivered this gorgeous custom creation to the owners so you’ll be seeing it on the road and at car shows. Check out the photos in our latest web page.http://www.billsautorestoration.com/custom-1957-chevy-belair-on-the-road/
Restored 1957 Chevy Belair
Are you’re tired of doing battle with your old or new carburetor ? Do you wish your vintage vehicle would start and run as nicely as your modern car ? The new fuel injection conversion kits can really improve the driving experience of vintage vehicles. The prices have come down to the point where they are a viable option for many budgets. Converting from a carburetor to EFI isn’t quite as simple as it looks in the ads. I wrote an article that I hope will inform everyone about this technology. It’s a long article, but it covers many of the things you need to know before you dive into this project. Check it out and decide if EFI is for you. If you don’t feel comfortable tackling this project yourself, give us a call.
http://www.billsautorestoration.com/fuel-injection-for-your-vintage-engine/
We can convert carburetor to EFI (electronic fuel injection)
The vintage step van for George and Debbie’s restaurant is back in their hands and ready for some fun.
It’s always interesting to step back and see how these projects started out. For that we’ll give you some side-by side before and after pictures.
P-10 Step Van as delivered
Step Van ready for its sign painter
The two tone paint is topped off with a matte finish clear coat. Bumpers and trim items were painted with a gloss black for some contrast.
Beside all the cosmetic work we also addressed quite a few items to make the van safer and more dependable. The mechanical upgrades include rebuilt front suspension and steering , a new steering column, an upgrade to front disc brakes, a complete rewiring, new lights inside and out, upgraded alternator, carburetor, battery, radiator and conversion to an electric cooling fan system. We also installed LED back -up lights and a back-up camera system. The wheels were -upsized to work with the new disc brakes and painted to match the restaurant logo.
The interior has come a long way too. As part of the interior restoration we added jump seats and LED lighting. The engine compartment was sealed off and insulated to reduce noise.
We needed to really clean up interior
Ready for business…and a passenger in the jump seat
The driver spends a lot of time looking at the dashboard so we tend to put extra emphasis on making them look good. The P10 had a very worn and tired dash when it came in. You can’t get replacement parts so we restored the original instrument cluster. Next we added real gauges including a tachometer to monitor the health of the vintage engine.
Original dash
Restored dash with added gauges
There’s not much in the way of creature comfort in these vans. You leave the doors open and enjoy nature as you cruise along. We were able to restore the original heater- defroster system for those times when you just can’t do without. It’s that odd looking white box to the right of the dash.
Heater/defrost box to the right
Here a two more views of the van. The rear bumper is a one-off custom made from the original. The van will soon have the restaurant signs on it. If you frequent the downtown St. Pete area, keep an eye out for this great looking van and swing by the Bodega for some seriously good food. You might also see the van at their new restaurant in Tampa.
Sliding door makes it easy to hop in the van
Rear doors open wide for loading and unloading
We love working on unique projects and this is one we just couldn’t resist. It’s a rare 1965 P10 Step Van. We’re not sure how many of these vans were made but they are incredibly hard to find these days. It’s possible they were just beat to death in commercial service and very few survived. A local couple found this one at a dealer in Texas and had it shipped to St. Pete. Their plan is to use it for promoting their restaurants. The dealer in Texas had done the difficult body work and it did run to a certain extent when it came to the shop.
Here are some pictures of the van as it was delivered to us.
P-10 Step Van as delivered
It had a side window already added
Original P-10 Step Van dash
Step van interior before restoration
This is another instance where we’re behind on our posts. We’ve had the P10 for a couple of months now and we have almost finished it. It has been upgraded in every area and has been on the streets of St. Pete. We’re wrapping up some of the final restoration items now and will be posting the completed restoration photos soon.
http://www.billsautorestoration.com/bodega-on-central-1965-chevy-p10-step-van-is-on-the-road/
We saw quite a few interesting cars, motorcycles and bikes while visiting parts of Europe last October. Check out these tiny cars:
There were some pretty tiny work vehicles too:
Then there were the bicycles and scooters in the Netherlands…very creative to say the least:
Bill liked the tricked out motorcycles in Germany- Some of them held three people in individual seats. They were powered by high-performance four cylinder car engines. The best we could determine without a translator was that they cost 40,000 Euros (over $50K in US dollars). That seemed reasonable for these engineering marvels.
The classic American cars still steal the show over there…. We spotted the Bel Air in Switzerland along with a 1960 Cadillac convertible. The Tattoo parlor bench was in Amsterdam
We have no idea what this means…….
Do they have hail storms in Switzerland ?
A Tesla taxi in Amsterdam. Now that’s class.
OK, this is a little embarrassing….. We’ve commented before that we don’t update our website as often as we should. We get so wrapped up in the actual car building that we tend to forget about sharing this adventure with others. Back in May 2017 we did a post showing a “new” 1957 Chevy 210 project. That’s the last you heard about it. I guess some updates would have been nice considering that the car is almost finished now…
We left off with some pictures of the floors and rockers being replaced.
After all the steel work was finished we removed the body, installed it on the rotisserie and really took it to the next level.
57 Chevy body and chassis
57 Chevy body on the rotisserie
The chassis was completely stripped down and rebuilt. This included a rack and pinion steering system, all new suspension, a lowering kit and four wheel disc brakes. Here are some shots with the body back on the chassis and the car going back together.
The drive train is a 385 hp small block mated to a custom built 700R4 transmission. We went with an aftermarket fuel injection system and supplied it with an in-tank pump system. We left the original rear axle in the car but upgraded it with a posi unit. We also installed a custom AC system and upgraded to a programmable electric cooling fan.
At present the car runs and drives, and is mostly assembled. Here’s a teaser shot from a month ago so you can see the color. The paint on this car is incredible. The silver is difficult to look at in full sunlight.
We’ll make a point of doing another update on this beautiful car soon. It has about half the trim on it right now and the combination of the chrome on silver is pretty amazing. We carried the gray metallic from the roof down to the dash and wrapped it around the interior trim. We hope the owner has a big trophy case…..
Vintage trucks of all makes are incredibly popular and a lot of fun to own. They do tend to lose some of their charm when you actually have to drive them and maneuver in places like parking lots with the stock steering system. The original steering can be very difficult, if not impossible to turn with the truck stationary. This problem is exaggerated if you’ve installed wider tires. The original steering designs also had a fair bit of free play in them which can make the trucks a real handful in traffic at higher speeds. Many people are of the belief that the only way to solve this problem is to transplant an entire, modern front end into the truck. Granted this does solve all the problems and provide great handling but it’s expensive and takes away from the originality.
I was dealing with the classic steering issues on my 1951 Ford Panel truck and began looking for solutions. I wanted to keep the original front end and steering column on the truck but have precise, power steering. I came across a kit being sold by Performance OnLine that looked like a perfect solution. I’ll jump ahead here and tell you that it was ! They sell a custom made power rack and pinion kit that bolts to the stock straight axles using custom machined clamps. You have to supply your own power steering pump and lines. This was not a problem for me. My truck has a 351 Cleveland with all the factory accessories on it. I had been running the steering pump with a by-pass hose.
I won’t bore you with a step by step installation story. You can go to their web site and download the instructions. You have to remove the old steering box, tie rods, drag link assembly and modify the spindles a little.
With all the old stuff out of the way, the rack literally takes five minutes to install.
In my case I had to work around some front disc brake brackets to get the new arms on the spindles. Those are 1970’s Dodge van brakes installed on the original spindles by a creative previous owner.
If you have an updated column in your truck this conversion is very easy. I wanted to keep my stock column and steering wheel so there was a bit more work involved. You have to cut the shaft off the old steering box and modify the end of the column to support the shaft. Have no fear ! POL also sells a “column saver kit” with all the goodies to make this conversion. I wouldn’t call this an ameture level project but anyone with reasonable wrenching skills could pull it off.
After doing the mechanical parts I had some custom hoses made up and was on my way. You could probably find off the shelf hoses and some adapters to connect your system. For me it was faster and easier just to give the specs to my local Goodyear hose shop.
The end result is absolutely amazing. There is zero slop in the steering and the rack is actually a quick-ratio model. I have sports car steering in my old Panel Truck ! Driving and maneuvering in tight parking lots is effortless now. I don’t need that giant steering wheel any more but I’m keeping it to preserve the look of the truck. If you’re thinking about a steering upgrade it’s well worth investigating the POL kits.
Late last year a customer brought in his newly purchased 1972 Bronco. Over all, it was a nice looking truck that made it to the shop under its own power. It had some dated items on it and the drive-train needed some attention but many people would have been content to just drive it the way it was. Our customer however had bigger plans in mind. Andy’s vision was to take the truck to the next level in terms of safety, reliability and appearance. We wish we could take credit for all the upgrade ideas but most of that came from Andy. We just had the fun of executing his plan.
There is an impressive list of upgrades on the truck. We started with a power front disc break conversion and rear brake rebuild. This also included new hubs.
We serviced both axles, transmission, transfer case and did some engine repairs. To tighten up the steering we replaced the steering box and installed a new tilt column. The old leaky PS pump was replaced along with the hoses. The fuel tanks had suffered the wrath of ethanol fuels/moisture and were replaced along with all of the hoses and sending units.
Next we installed a Classic Air AC system and upgraded the engine fan to an electric system with programmable controller. Here’s the engine compartment before and after. And yes, power brake boosters for early Bronco’s are strange looking.
Andy had ideas for a major dash upgrade. Here are before and after pictures. As bought, the dash had diamond plate covering and some tempermental gauges and switches. We stripped everything down to the bare factory dash and built it back up from there using Andy’s vision. We rebuilt the gauge cluster and installed an original factory style radio with modern features.
The build continued with rust repair (a standard operation on old Broncos…) body and paint work, custom lighting, new upholstery, door panels and custom console, a new soft top and nerf bars. All work was performed by our shop. Here are some shots of the final product. Needless to say, this truck gets lots of attention everywhere it goes.
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