The 1958 Chevrolet Story

1960

this is a true story about how in 1961 and 1962 I customized a 1959 Chevrolet

into an outstanding street “Hot Rod”

Witten 09/10/ 2012 3,938 Words By Howard Yasgar

I don’t advise you to read this story, unless you are a do-it-yourself mechanic, a

automobile customizer or just a 1959 Chevrolet convertible car lover.

This is a story about the customizing of my 1959 Chevrolet Impala.

I started the project in 1961 and completed it in 1962.

This customizing project was something that I just had to do, I needed to prove to myself that I possessed the skills that were needed to do it, or on the other hand, perhaps I was just a person with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I am going to explain, step by step, how I took an already beautiful car, and customized it, to make it into a work of art, a car that got everyone’s attention wherever it went.

I started work on the project in my back yard garage in Westville Connecticut, I was 21 years old at the time.

Ever since I was 15, I had always been working on automobiles, for several years I had worked part time at a neighborhood Gulf gas station, it was at the gas station where I learned to do all kinds of minor automotive repairs.

We did regular oil changes and car lubrication. We also did engine tune ups, tire repair and quite a bit of muffler and tailpipe work.

Because the gas station was small, I didn’t gain any experience doing major repair work until I went to work for a full-time mechanic who was located on Derby Avenue in New Haven.

As far as doing any customizing of cars, all I knew was what I had seen and read in custom car magazines.

Back in the 1960’s All the magazine racks were full of hotrod and custom car stuff, consequently there were tons of do-it,-yourself magazines.

In the 1960’s, customizing cars became a national craze throughout all of America.

Customizing was probably a worldwide craze, but only in America did we have such an abundance of beautiful cars to work with.

California became the leader in the custom car industry with customizing body shops opening everywhere.

But soon the customizing race became nationwide, with custom car shops everywhere all competing for who could build the best-looking cars.

It was a magical time for people with innovative ideas.

Beautiful Candy Apple paints were invented; polyester resins came on the market. and soon auto body fillers like “Bondo” became common items to use in customizing cars.

Before polyester Bondo came along, all auto body work was done using hot melted lead.

Using hot lead to do auto body work was a highly technical skill, it was something I had wanted to learn, and I did by accident.

One day, I was trying out a friend’s motorcycle when I accidentally crashed it into a wooden shed.

I was then obliged to buy the dented and bent up motorcycle, and I had to repair it,

and that’s how I learned to use hot melted lead to do repair work.

However, once Bondo was available, kids could do their own auto body work right in their own backyard, and they did.

In the 1960’s many cars had chrome hood and trunk ornaments, so most kids started customizing their cars by removing the ornaments.

Removing the hood and trunk ornaments became easy, because good craftmanship or bad craftmanship, everyone was able to fill in all the screw holes using Bondo.

So back in the 1960’s it was common to see lots of cars on the road with hood and trunk ornaments being removed.

I must tell you, another skill I had acquired early on. It was rebuilding a Ford engine, from my very first car, a 1940 Ford convertible.

I had run the heck out of that poor car, until the engine simply wore out, eventually it started knocking and needed rebuilding.

I did the engine rebuilding in my backyard garage, under the watchful eye of my good friend Billy Flynn.

My friend Billy was the guy who later went on to become the head of Chrysler’s race team.

In the early 1960’s custom pin striping became popular, and the store where I bought my auto body repair stuff also sold horsehair pin striping brushes, so that’s how I became a self-taught pin striping artist. Pin striping everyone’s car for free. I would pin stripe designs on the cars of anyone that would let me do it.

However, the only real knowledge I had regarding customizing an entire car, only came from my reading a lot of magazines.

I think that by the 1960’s, I had probably looked at several thousand pictures of customized cars, most were cars that were professionally done by car customizers in California, and the costs became out of reach for most people.

So, by 1960, I had a little experience in doing major customizing myself, so it took quite a while before I got the nerve to think about customizing my 1959 Chevy.

It’s not that I didn’t have lots of good ideas, but I just didn’t feel that I had enough skill to do them and possibly ruin a beautiful late model car.

However, by the time I had finished customizing the 1959 Chevrolet, I had gained a lot of confidence, and fortunately the car came out good, and I was very proud of the end results.

I would like to point out that during the 1959 Chevrolet’s customizing process, I did make my share of mistakes, but fortunately I was able to correct all of them, and some with a little help from experienced bodywork experts at my local Chevrolet agency.

To try and pinpoint exactly why anyone like me wanted to engage in the radical customizing of an already beautiful car is anyone’s guess.

As I said, in my case, I think I was motivated into customizing the 1959 Chevrolet Impala just to prove that I could do it all by myself, and once I started the project, failure was not even an option for me.

My 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible was powered by a 348 cubic inch, 315 HP engine, with factory “Tri-power” (Three carburetors), it also had a factory installed 4 speed Corvette transmission and a positraction differential.

The gas station where I worked part time had a hydraulic car lift, so when things were quiet, usually in the evenings, the station manager would let me put the Chevy on the lift, and I was able to study the underside of the car. I then developed a few novel ideas, starting with the car’s suspension.

A popular look at the time was called “The California Rake”. It was when the rear of the car was raised higher than the front.

To raise the rear end on most cars was just a simple matter of installing spacers under the car’s rear leaf springs.

However, the 1959 Chevy was completely different, it had a coil spring suspension in the rear.

I had seen special airbags that were offered in catalogs, they were designed to fit into automobiles front coil springs. The air bags were used to repair cars that had a spongy ride, due to weak front coil springs.

I thought that if I installed the air bags in the 59 Chevrolets rear coil springs, I could then raise the rear of the car as much as I wanted.

I knew it was going to be tricky installing them, as those rubber air bags were not intended for the purpose that I had in mind.

I ordered two of the air bags, and then trying to install them, became a very scary proposition.

I enlisted some help from friends and with all of us using tire irons, and a lot of prying, we were eventually able to remove the rear coil springs and install the air bags inside them.

Wow I was surprised when my idea worked. The air bags lifted the car’s rear, and depending on the amount of air I put in them, it could raise the rear of the car so high it would make you slide forward, off the seat.

I think my 1959 Chevy now had the most dramatic California rake in the entire city of New Haven.

Since I had access to the hydraulic car lift at the gas station, my next project was looking into the cars exhaust system.

The 59 Chevy already had a dual exhaust system, and I had plenty of experience in welding and repairing automotive exhaust systems.

I then designed what I thought was a unique exhaust system, it was one that was both functional and good looking as well.

I found catalogs that offered all the special chrome exhaust system parts that I needed to do the project and I ordered them.

Once all the pieces had arrived, I brought my welding outfit to the gas station and I started welding up a completely new exhaust system.

The first project was on the two exhaust pipes at the rear of the car. I welded on chrome triangular flanges; each flange had a triangular flange cover which was attached to the flange by using chrome nuts and bolts.

I only used 1 bolt, and I rotated the cover to allow the exhaust to come out.

If I wanted to close off the exhaust pipes, I could loosen the bolt and rotate the cover to completely block the exhaust.

I then welded in two additional exhaust pipes; both using the same chrome flanges and covers.

These two exhaust pipes bypassed the car mufflers and exited just behind the front tires. These front exhaust pipes used the same chrome triangular covers as the rear exhaust pipes had, but had their triangular covers rotated in the closed position. This was

done to keep the exhaust from escaping and the car could be driven normally in traffic.

Now, if I closed the triangular covers on the rear exhaust pipes, and I opened the

triangular covers on the exhaust pipes that were behind the front tires. The exhaust gases were now diverted from going through the mufflers and exhaust came out the front pipes.

When I did this, the noise the exhaust now made was horrendously loud, and I loved it. Now whenever I opted to let the cars exhaust come out those front pipes, inevitably someone would always pull up next to me wanting to race.

Back in the 1960’s street racing was a pretty common thing to do, we all knew that it was illegal, but we still did it.

The original 1959 Chevy had a 348 Cubic engine in it, and it was a fast car, but because the 59 Chevy just looked like a missile in flight, everyone expected it to be faster than it really was.

Unfortunately, that 1959 Chevy convertible weighed in at 4600 pounds, and the 348 cubic inch Tri Power engine was only 315 horsepower. It really wasn’t a car or engine designed for speed, so I lost my share of races.

That’s when I got to thinking about “Souping up” the 348 cubic inch engine, so it would develop more horsepower.

My idea was that if the car was going to look and sound fast, it should go fast.

So that’s when I started asking around as to what could be done to the 348 cubic inch engine to raise its horsepower.

By 1962, I was receiving a lot speed shop catalogs, and suddenly many of them were offering high performance parts for the big block 348 cubic inch Chevy engine.

Oversize high compression pistons were now available, as well as high performance

camshaft.

A company in Chicago was even making a special spring to make the engines oil pump put out more pressure.

From my investigation, I learned that when the Chevrolet 348 cubic inch engine was first introduced in 1958, and it was primarily to be used in light trucks, not in cars.

By early 1962, enough speed parts were available, and since I had decided to do major customizing on the cars body, I thought it was a good time to pull out the engine and “Soup it up”.

Unknown to me at the time, Chevrolet themselves had already started trying to modify the engine, and they had already altered it to produce 350 horsepower.

Had I known this, I would have realized that Chevrolet themselves knew that the 348 cubic inch engine was a dud, and they were already seriously thinking about dropping it’s

use in cars.

But I was just a kid from the sleepy town of Westville Connecticut, and I had no way of knowing what the Chevrolet division of General Motors was doing.

I learned later that as a last resort they had redesigned the engine, calling it a 409 and they boosted the horsepower to 425. After that they tried using it in a few trucks and muscle cars then they just gave up.

Had I known all this, I wouldn’t have wasted my time and money trying to make the 348 engines into a powerful engine that it could never be.

So, not knowing any of this, in 1962, I proceeded to pull the engine out, while I worked on the car’s body in my back yard.

After completely disassembling the engine, I brought the cylinder block to New Haven’s premier automotive machine shop, to have it bored out.

That was when I learned that to bore out the 348 cubic inch engine, the machine shop needed a special 17-degree angle plate to allow their boring bar to do the job and they didn’t have it.

That told me that I was probably the first, and possibly the only person in New Haven who was ever going to try souping up a 348 Chevy engine.

Eventually the 17-degree angle plate for the boring bar was ordered at my expense.

While I was waiting for the angle plate to come in, I took the engine cylinder-heads down to our basement.

On our workshop bench, by using an electric drill and rotary abrasive stones, I ground and polished all the ports in the heads, to allow more gas to enter the cylinders and allow the exhaust gasses to escape faster, I did it exactly how I had seen it done in the hot rod magazines.

Once the engine block was bored, I was then able to re-assemble the engine, with the new oversize, high compression pistons and the racing camshaft.

I then put the engine back in the car and it ran perfectly.

That’s when I knew my friend Billy Flynn who had taught me how to rebuild engines had done his job well.

However, my testing of the engine on the street would have to wait, as I had already started to do the major work customizing the car’s body.

I had seen oval chrome portholes on the side of the fenders on 1955 Buicks, so I installed six of the portholes in two rows of three each in the Chevy’s hood.

I admit that cutting the holes in the hood of the Chevy was a very traumatic experience, as I was now drilling right into the metal of that beautiful hood.

I did the job with a round hole saw I bought in a hardware store, and an electric drill.

As I was cutting the holes, I was so afraid that I might ruin the car, and I had to make sure I wasn’t drilling through the stiffening struts on the underside of the hood.

When I was done, the chrome port holes in the hood came out excellent.

You can see what those chrome portholes looked like by looking at a picture of a 1955 Buick on Google.

After doing it, I started worrying that I had made a big mistake. I thought that rain might go into the portholes and affect the engine performance, but it never did.

Now that I had installed the port holes, I had the opportunity to use my pin striping skills, so I pinstriped designs in red and white enamel paint.

Once I saw that the port holes came out so good, I was inspired to go forward with more customizing ideas.

The next project was to change the 1959 Chevrolet’s front grille.

I removed the Chevy’s original louvered horizontal grill.

Then I went downtown to the New Haven Studebaker dealer and I ordered five chrome, 1950 Studebaker front nose pieces, they fit perfectly into the 59 Chevrolet grill cavity, fortunately they were the right height and fit perfectly.

Those chrome Studebaker nose pieces are another item that you can see on Google by looking for a photo of a 1950 Studebaker.

Now that everything was coming out so good, that I started to think about doing something a little more daring, so that’s when I focused on the rear taillights.

The 59 Chevrolet taillights were already novel looking, being long tear drop shaped, with an aluminum frame.

I decided to try using my bodywork skills.

I removed the aluminum taillight frames and the red plastic lens. Then by welding 3/8 diameter iron round rod, I fabricated what was called a “Frenched” taillight.

Frenching was the term used at the time, it meant you created sort of a tunnel effect, creating depth.

I kept the original taillight shape, but by welding 3/8-inch diameter round rod, I brought the taillight out around two inches and in the center of the taillight creating a peak.

After welding the shape in round rod, I then brazed sheet metal over it and I used the hot lead technique I had learned to do and it smoothed everything out.

For lenses, I installed in each taillight three bullet shaped, red plastic taillights that were formerly used on 1959 Cadillacs.

You can see what those beautiful bullet shaped Cadillac tail- lights looked like by finding a picture of the rear of a 1959 Cadillac on Google.

While I was doing the taillights, I removed the center section of the Chevys rear chrome bumper. The Chevy rear bumper was made in three pieces, so I just eliminated the center piece, this entirely changed the cars appearance

I was very proud of the work I had done, so now I was ready to tackle the difficult task of changing the chrome on the sides of the car.

The 1959 Chevrolet had one long chrome strip that ran the length of the car on both sides.

I knew that if I removed the entire chrome strip there would be several holes left all along the side of the car, those holes that would be difficult to eliminate, and they would have to be welded up. a tricky proposition.

Whatever I was going to do to the car’s sides, I knew I needed to do something that would cover up all those holes.

I had always admired the side trim on the 1958 Ford Fairlane 500, it was a long chrome strip combined with gold aluminum insert. I thought it looked like a bolt of lightning.

The best part was, I thought it might cover most all of the holes left over from removing the Chevy’s original chrome strip, and it was almost perfect.

I went down to the New Haven Ford Dealer and ordered the complete 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 side chrome parts and all the installation clips that were required to install it.

You can look on Google for a 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 and you will see why I fell in love with the chrome and gold side design.

In a week, all the Ford side trim parts came in, so I brought it home and I temporarily taped it on the Chevrolet using masking tape to hold everything in place.

That’s when I noticed that I had miscalculated.

There were two or three holes in the Chevrolets body that the Ford’s side design didn’t cover up.

I tried moving the Ford’s chrome in all directions, but I couldn’t cover those holes, they were located on both sides of the Chevy on the rear quarter panels.

Having those holes exposed presented me with a dilemma, because they were in a place that was very dangerous to weld.

I knew that the heat from a torch could warp the metal and ruin the entire side panel of the Chevrolet.

I thought about it for two days, I was thinking of all the tricks I could use to keep the metal from warping, that was when I attempted to weld the holes closed.

So, after two days of thinking about it, I just took the torch and welded the holes and it warped the Chevy’s rear quarter panel.

For me, it was a disaster, I never mastered the trick of how to shrink metal and cure a warped panel, so I was ready to commit suicide.

Then instead of suicide, I spent the rest of the day working to remove the warp, and I finally got it where it looked pretty good, but not perfect.

I knew that my skill at fixing warped metal just wasn’t that good, I had failed.

The next morning, I was totally depressed, so I decided to drive the car down to the body shop at the Cooley Chevrolet agency in New Haven for advice.

Once there, I showed the head salesman the damage I had done.

He called over to the head of their body shop.

The body shop foreman had me drive the car into their body shop where he called a meeting with all the experts that were working there.

I watched them as they studied what I had done to the car.

They all scratched their heads as they had never seen a 59 Chevy customized like that before. They couldn’t believe I had done it.

Then they all looked at the warped area where I had attempted to straighten out the side panels and they all had a good laugh.

They said they did this kind of stuff every day, and they knew how to fix the problem.

I was told to leave the car there.

The next day, I returned to the Chevrolet agency body shop to see what they were going to do.

To my surprise they had already done it, they had all stayed that evening and straightened out the warped area, and they also had welded up all the other exposed holes.

It was only nine in the morning as I watched as one of the body men as he was sanding the formerly warped panel, he was using a four-foot-long piece of wood with fine sandpaper taped on it. He was preparing to paint.

The head salesman came in, and he told me my 59 Chevrolet used a new and very special type of black acrylic lacquer, it was paint that had to be special ordered.

I was getting nervous as I was just about to be out of money, and I knew I couldn’t afford to pay them to paint the car.

The salesman said, don’t worry, they were going to paint several black cars that day they all used the same paint.

I came back later in the day, and the car had already been painted, and it looked like new.

When I started the car up, to take it home, the entire body shop crew was standing there clapping their hands.

Cooley Chevrolet in New Haven never billed me for any of the work they did.

I drove the car home and I finished installing the 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 chrome on the car’s sides, my customizing job was done and it was beautiful.

The end.