1956 Studebaker sedan

nicky

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Several years ago I purchased a 1956 Studebaker sedan on Ebay. It was an Arizona car so there was very little body rust but typical of many Arizona cars the rubber around the glass was rotten and while sitting in outdoor storage near Detroit it accumulated a lot of water under the floor mats which destroyed the floor. I started working on it 1 Oct. 2010 striping out the interior and rebuilding the floor. I had a bead roller so I made my own floor panels duplicating the original ribs in the floor and mig welding them in, my first attempt at mig welding.

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5RFflr.6.jpg4.left frnt2.jpg7.LFflr.5.2.jpg6.56-left2.jpg

c72b_12.JPG 5RFflr.6.jpg 4.left frnt2.jpg 6.56-left2.jpg 7.LFflr.5.2.jpg
 
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Nice fabrication Nicky.

Looks like a great project.
 
Three years ago we started building our new shop at home after selling our shop and store in town. It took us about two years to get every thing in place including building the machine room across the back and a spray/sandblasting booth along one side as well as a service bay in front of the spray booth in which we installed a new hoist. That is why we finally started working on the car Oct. 2010. We worked on it until May of 2011 when we had to get back to outdoor work and soon will be starting back to working in the shop when the weather gets bad here.
Pictured here you will see the car up on the new hoist and the lifting off the frame.

Last year in the two weeks before Christmas we built a rotisserie to clean and sand blast the frame and body. We built this rotisserie following the best ideas I found on the internet in both commercial and home built machines incorporating them all into one. You will notice how we can fine tune the balance point with our screw and clamp head. As a mater of fact you can see that my wife Jessie can easily spin the frame with one hand. When we stopped working on the frame in the spring we had all the suspension and rear end off it and all the crud cleaned off ready for sand blasting. This is where we will be picking up from this fall.

3.56 stud2.jpg11.body lift1.jpg12.rollout2.jpg2rot.-22.2.jpg1rot.-33.2.jpgjessie & rotisory1.jpg

Also this past spring we rebuilt the engine. It is a 186 ci six cylinder engine. One wrist pin had come lose and gouged up the cylinder wall so we had to have it sleeved. While we were at it we had it line bored, all cylinders bored .060 over, new pistons, crank turned, new valves, lifters, springs, guides etc. We found that where the rear seal rides it was badly pitted, hence the terrible oil leak it had. We mounted the crank in our old 1920s Barnes lathe and carefully machined a bit off the seal journal and than built it up with JB Weld and than machined it back to size with a very sharp parting tool and finished it with a square file with some extremely fine emery cloth wrapped around it.

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3.56 stud2.jpg 11.body lift1.jpg 12.rollout2.jpg 2rot.-22.2.jpg 1rot.-33.2.jpg jessie & rotisory1.jpg crank4-1.jpg crank3.jpg engine1.jpg
 
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Excellent, H-M needs more Automotive stuff like this!
I hope you update this as progress is made
 
The spring of 2009 we were able to purchase the last 3 yards of original fabric that Studebaker used for my seats. Since then we have had the seats and door panels rebuilt by a professional team and they turned out beautiful. The sun vizors were also done by an other company along with the head liner. Then another company made up a new set of matching carpets for me. So now all we have to do is get the body finished and painted and we will have all ready to finish the interior. Over the past 2 years I also had the bumpers re-chromed, found new bumper guards for front and rear, NOS pairs of parking lights and tail lights. New grill and as new upper and lower grill mouldings, new hood ornament, as new trunk handle, new sill mouldings and new replacements for any damaged side mouldings and a new windshield. So that pretty well gives me every thing I could see I needed. A couple of dash gauges were bad as was the speedo so I got the two gauges new and picked up a speedo head that combined with my old one should make a perfect speedometer. I also have all new brake hydraulics, new gas pedal, new brake cables, new front exhaust pipe and tail pipe. Just need a muffler yet once I see how long it needs to be. I also picked up some add-on accessories such as original radio and gas door guard. All my small parts were all rebuilt last winter such as starter, generator, distributor, heater fan, manifold, front suspension part etc.
They were all cleaned in Evapo-Rust and then painted ready for assembly. All linkages were given the same treatment and look like new. Transmission gone over etc.
It may surprise you how easy it was to find parts for a post war Studebaker, Probably easier than a Chevy.

seats.jpg

seats.jpg
 
Here are some of the special tools I had to make so far.
The first is the set of dies for forming the floor pans.

View attachment 28662

The next is a set punches for the press I built for removing and replacing the control arm bushings in the front suspension.

View attachment 28664View attachment 28663

Then we had to make a set of tools for the engine rebuild.

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The small tool on the left is for installing the camshaft timing gear.
The centre tool is for holding the wrist pin when installing the connecting rod to the piston and securing the pinch bolt holding them all together.
The one on the right is for removing the font crank pulley and crank timing gear and re-installing them. I made these from drawings and the centre one from a photo of the tool in use and had to guess at what it looked like inside the wrist pin. It worked perfectly.
That should be all the special tools I need that I didn't already have from my mechanic days.
 
rol.die.jpgpress.jpgpres.pnch.jpgtool1.jpgtool2.jpg

Somewhere along the line the pictures for the last post where lost so here they are again.

rol.die.jpg press.jpg pres.pnch.jpg tool1.jpg tool2.jpg
 
Looks like you will have a very nice old Stude when completed! I've always loved the Studes and although it's been several years, I have owned several of them. My favorites are the 53-54 C and K models. Also had a few Larks,63 Gt Hawk and a couple of t-cab pickups. If you haven't already you might check out the "Studebakers Drivers Club", a great club with chapters nationwide.
 
I remember being trimmed by a Golden Hawk on occasion, in the early sixties. Big motor, light car.

Nice job.
 
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