I haven’t posted lately, but I have been working! Last weekend my dad and I managed to get the lower control arms and the spindles/brake assemblies mounted. That was a huge relief to see all of the shiny new parts going on the car! Along the way we discovered one hiccup. The center hub on the disc brake rotors is 2.6″ in diameter. I knew that stock 14″ wheels wouldn’t work with the disc brake set up, but I hoped my stock 15″ wheels would work. They would have, except for the center hub. The center hub hole on the the rims is 2.3635″. So close! Some guys that have done this swap have had the rotors machined on a lathe to reduce the diameter of the hub, but this would mean removing the rotors and there was no way I was going to do that! As luck would have it my uncle Tom had a set of 15×7 wheels he took off of his ’57 Chevy last year. They were dual bolt pattern and had a 3.25″ hub center! I had my tires mounted on them this week. They look goofy, but will work for rollers for now.

I thought for sure with Tom’s rims I would be dancing on 4 wheels again in no time, but during the process of installing the lower control arms I screwed up. I managed to screw up the front bolt that runs through the frame and the control arm bushing. I think what happened was the control arm was not quite centered on the hoe in the frame and when I drove the bolt through it clipped the edge of the control arm or the bushing and it folded some of the threads over. Of course this is a specialty bolt due to it’s size (5/8″) and it’s thread (18). If you know about threads you know for most bolts there are two threads – coarse and fine. Coarse is 16 and fine is 20. We had a die set that had the right size, but not the right thread. The only option was to order a replacement bolt from Mac’s. So while everything else is together I still can’t put it on 4 wheels. The bolt should be here Monday. The moral of this story is don’t screw up this bolt! It will cost you $30 to replace it.

So while I wait for that bolt I decided I would hook up the tie rods and center link and get my brake tubing run. The tie rods and center link went together without issue. I was little concerned about this step because another HAMB member that did this on a ’55 had issues with the tie rods. He ran them all the way in and the alignment was still out by about 1 3/8″. I don’t seem to have that problem. I just eyeballed the alignment and it looks pretty good. Plus I still have some threads left on the tie rods for adjusting. I don’t have a steering box mounted up so things may still change, but I think I’m in the clear.

Lastly, I ran my two hard lines for the brakes. I went slow and used the old lines as templates and everything came out perfect. I decided that since I have so much tubing to run I went ahead and bought a pro style flaring tool from Summit Racing. It is so nice and quick! I know I can get a perfect double flare every time with it. Well worth the investment!

Enjoy the rest of the pictures!