New guy. No hearse, but always have my eyes open for the right one.

[garyc]

Long story short - I'm 28. I build hot rods, customs & motorcycles. Strangely developed a pretty good following so far, which is pretty damn awesome but yet still weird to me for some reason. heh. Been looking for a '51 Caddy hearse on and off for a while. Probably goes against the grain to most, but I'd like to gut the rollers, redo the chassis in it's entirety, toss a fuel injected big block & overdrive trans in, set it on air and turn it into a parts hauler. Always loved Professional Cars and have gone to quite a few of the local pro-car gatherings. Browsed the board & hearseclub.com for quite some time, just never bothered to register. Came across a few threads where I could throw some information into the thread regarding restoration work, as I've got direct experience in that area so I figured may as well finally register and offer up some suggestions as I've been down that path *many* times before.


Anyway. This is the kind of stuff I do.
I do high end paint, body, fabrication, etc. work - so if you guys do have any restoration related questions, feel free to ask away and I'll do my best to help there.

Took a '60 Elky and fixed all the rot, shaved some things here and there, sectioned the rear bumper, cleaned it up and resprayed it a cheater candy.

Let's see if I can figure out how to link on this thing...


Before...
Obviously rot is always a LOT worse than it looks once you get into them. I had to rebuild the inner wheel house, along with re-skinning the quarter. Nobody makes elky quarters, so I used the front & rear donor repop pieces geared towards a coupe and made them work. Fabricated my own inner, modeled off the stock pieces I removed.


Reskinned it.


Skip forward a lot of work. This is how it turned out.




Obviously wasn't complete in those photos, I've got the finished ones...somewhere. Shaved & smoothed the firewall too.

'55 I did. And am currently redoing - doing a much higher end show caliber build, rather than the 'driver quality' it was.



Random tank I did for a buddy's bagger.


So yeah.. should give you an idea of what I do and what I'm all about & build.

I pretty much plan on hanging out here & mainly reading threads and will hopefully be able to help steer folks in the right direction from time to time. At least when it comes to restoration related questions as I've seen and dealt with a hell of a lot thru the years and get a kick out of the fact there's such a large fan base for Pro-cars.

[Psychoholic]

Damn dude, that is some nice work. Welcome!

(more pics of that truck if you've got'm)

[garyc]

Thanks much. And I have a ton of that '55. You want more pics from before I cut it apart, during the rebuild or currently? LOL.

I'll dig up a bunch and throw 'em in a post in a few minutes.

[garyc]

Here's a couple pictures from before. I took a wedge out of the stock hood, to lay the nose down. So at that point in time that was the body mod done. Other than that, just pretty much a stock resto / basic driver. Had a fuel injected 350, overdrive trans, 9" rear, disc brakes all around. Etc.




Sitting next to the '41. That one might go blk cherry & dark maroon in the near future as well. Also a FI small block, OD trans, 9" rear. Etc.


This is why the '55 got tore into. Typical for these trucks. They just fit for crap. All the sharpie is notes I made to myself. Things I didn't like (seam in fenders, gaps, etc)





You can see how the back of the door slightly sticks out proud of the cab. No amount of adjusting would take it out - the cab corners were replaced at some point years back and whoever did it sunk them in too far, so I could never get a good gap out of the thing.
Blah blah blah.
Started tearing it down.


Cutting, welding and redoing all my gaps to a uniform & smaller panel gap.
In process of doing that.




And so forth.
Also 'baby frenched' the headlights. This is how they fit stock.



So I welded in 3/16" rod & extended and fit the fenders to the surround.


Which looked like this finished.

Also shaved the rain gutters.

Stock. Goes way wide and has a large uneven gap, and looks like...well, Bad.
Mine - again welded in steel rod & did away with it completely at the back of the cab. Faded them in and out, so they are there - but very subtle and match the body lines.



All done in steel. No copious amounts of filler. I hate filler. With a passion.

[garyc]

And more.

Fixed that lower panel that was way off.


Covered by the bumper...but.

Also flipped the bumpers over & fit them to the body. (seriously).


Which a *pile* of work later turned into these.



Which were then welded back onto the center section. To give me this.



Here's the finished cab. The bed was treated to just as many things as the cab. Shaved lights, other marker lights installed. Rounded corners. ALL seams were welded solid and smoothed in (stake pockets, tail gate, etc.).

Reflection of the shop in the cab's paint.

panel fit.



I've got tons more, but this is probably boring. Apologies. Should give the idea of where & what the truck became / is becoming.

[Psychoholic]

I'm loving this thread - the metal work pics are awesome. I love seeing how that is actually done and done right.

[churchtruck]

Very nice work.
Where are you based out of? May help locate a decent coach.

[garyc]

Thanks much - I appreciate it. Here's some more metal work for you.

This was doing the bumper on the Elky.
Factory fit.


Cutting them apart.

My fit.


not only did I remove width and reangle, I also added a filler piece in to shape it to match the body lines. You can see it welded in, in this picture.

After metal finishing. Still had some futher work to do (polishing mainly) before I shipped them off to chrome. But they then got shipped off and rechromed and turned out freaking sweet. I'll have to find all the final finished pics of that one. Turned out pretty decent.

Sectioning a '70 C10 hood. (see a pattern? I pretty much slightly tweak & rework every panel, on everything I do. )



Skip forward.


And then..

All loaded up on the trailer behind my daily driver.


I TIG most of my stuff. Typically use ER70-S6 filler rod. It leaves a very nice and malleable bead.


Doing yet another hood.








Leaves very little final cleanup work when you do the metal work right, weld it the right way and know how to metal finish them off. Time consuming, but well worth the process, imo.

I've got tons and tons more..but I feel like I'm probably boring most people. So, I'll leave it at that. Thanks again for the welcome.

[Dickey]

Gary, are you on the garage journal forum by chance?

[garyc]

Very nice work.
Where are you based out of? May help locate a decent coach.

Thank you much, I appreciate it. I'm based out of the Chicago area. That said, I've had my truck and trailer to both coasts frequently. I'm pretty free range when it comes to picking up projects. Pulled stuff & brokered deals for folks all over the country. Up and down the entire East coast, West coast very frequently, South all the time. If there's something cool to be seen, bought or sold or a good show to attend, I hop in the truck and go.

Gary, are you on the garage journal forum by chance?

I can't say as if I am. I used to be on the hamb, but kind of fell out of there. I'm too street rod, too lowrider and too custom for a lot of the people there. I don't build strictly traditional, nor do I care to. I build what I like. Never checked out the garage journal though. I know it's Ryan's site - along with the Jockey Journal..well, used to be. I used to be there too (JJ), but post sale to motorcycle.com... I haven't been back. *shrug*

Edit: and thinking about it. I never really went to the Garage Journal as I assumed (probably wrongly) it was just a forum about garages. So I never really bothered to hop on there, as I always figured it would be more about the garage itself, than what's inside the garage?

That being said, is a neat forum worth checking out?

[pyro]

Wish I had your skills and shop space

[Dickey]

Edit: and thinking about it. I never really went to the Garage Journal as I assumed (probably wrongly) it was just a forum about garages. So I never really bothered to hop on there, as I always figured it would be more about the garage itself, than what's inside the garage?

That being said, is a neat forum worth checking out?

They do focus on the garages mostly and some of the cats with big dollars do own shops that are just jaw droppingly awesome but there is also a lot of fabrication and such that they discuss too. I have yet to tire of seeing tig welds that look like a roll of nickels slid over on its side. A lot of the time there is talk over old lathes and what not which can lead to some pretty wild DIY solutions. I really like the forum and seeing the fab work that some of the guys do but haven't had much time to post there this past year. You might like it, it is a different crowd from the hamb. I don't post on the hamb at all but I do enjoy seeing all the rides those guys have.

[Psychoholic]

I for one never tire of seeing someone with some skill working. You'll find that this forum is rather unique amongst most car forums - we let drama play itself out, we aren't sticklers for subjects (ala - there is really only so much hearse talk you can have), and most are just straight up car people who are into whatever. You could post a thousand pictures of your fabrication and the only thing I'd get bored with is my own lack of skill on the subject.

[Tulsa Guy]

Love the Elky!, and the 348/409!
I'm a 58 Chevy guy when I ain't hearsin'!

[Weirdo]

Awesome thread! I love threads that contain cool metal work. When i go across it again, I'll show this really cool thread off the HAMB about a full on Kustom 61 Cadillac. Like.. Full on. I use to have a 60 Bel Air a while ago now, 60/59 Chevy Quarters seem to be the devil when it comes to cars, haha. Oh yeah, Welcome to the forum too!