Thread: 57 Chevy Cruizer

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Originally Posted by Dave Severson

Been thinking about the rear suspension..... Don found this picture for me of a set of long ladder bars. Trying to decide if I should build something like these in the pic, or would it be more gasser style to use a piece of rectangular tubing taper cut towards the front with a pair of the big heim joints on the end. Also, would you guys rat me out if I added a set of housing floaters between the leaf springs and the rear end housing?????? Oh yeah, think the wheelie bars pictured would be close enough to era correct for the '57?????

I like those bars! I remember seeing many of that style back when (They do look upside down, though (as cffisher said). Nah, we won't rat you out on the floaters. They wouldn't be readily visible and nobody will know you have them unless they crawl under the car. You could even put coils under the rear if you wanted to (they were used sometimes back then). As for the wheelie bars - I don't recall seeing wheelie bars on anything until sometime in the 70s, but someone else's memory may be better than mine...

You won't need wheelie bars with an injected sbc. Early wheelie bars tended to be more straight up and down devices, largish wheels and right at the rear bumper, they were found on the blown gas cars.
The ladder bars shown are not upsidedown, they look kinda modern because of the pinion angle suggests that the rear sat well up into the body as opposed to 'back in the day' where the ride height was higher and the pinion angle would have been quite different.

float the axle with ladder bar is how i roll in the chevy ...dave thats the only way i would go i made up my floater stuff so you have to look hard for that

Think I'll just plan on building a set of floaters, sure does free up the rear end and get all that binding out of it.

Semi elliptic leafs where also used..........But the rebound and unload of traction made the ride interesting.

Not much to update. Should get the Plymouth out of the garage and off to the upholstery shop this week, hopefully I can spend some time at least blowing the car apart and getting the body and frame over to the sandblaster.

Latest bit of research is the possibility of running the FAST EZ-EFI dual throttle body setup on a tunnel ram. They say it will work fine. Would sure beat the heck out of having to tune the twin Holley's everytime the sun went behind a cloud or the temp changed 3 degrees....or I'm just getting old and lazy???

I think your just gettin' old N' lazy.

I must be too because I think the EFI is a good choice.

Originally Posted by pro70z28

I think your just gettin' old N' lazy.

I must be too because I think the EFI is a good choice.

Good to hear it's not just me, Gary!!! Sure would be kewl to have the nostalgic tunnel ram look with the EFI driveablity!!!! Guess it only cost about $3K to try it out, heck, it's just money, right?????

well.... i did not see the UPS guy with any sbc heads from uncle dave

Originally Posted by pat mccarthy

well.... i did not see the UPS guy with any sbc heads from uncle dave

Not yet, Pat..... should have some time freed up this week to start getting some of my own stuff done and sold!!!! Working on a customer car just seems to keep the bills paid and not much left for me......

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

Not yet, Pat..... should have some time freed up this week to start getting some of my own stuff done and sold!!!! Working on a customer car just seems to keep the bills paid and not much left for me......

yep i know that all to well the more customer work i do the more it costs me

Originally Posted by pat mccarthy

yep i know that all to well the more customer work i do the more it costs me

I've always said that if I was in to building Hot Rods and Drag Cars for the money......I wouldn't be in it!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

I've always said that if I was in to building Hot Rods and Drag Cars for the money......I wouldn't be in it!!!!!!!

well yep bill collectors do not see it that way still have to eat and keep warm

Got the '57 in the garage for the weekend and spent my time taking things apart and getting it ready to go to sandblasting. No big surprises, knew the quarters and floors needed work so the fact that they're a bit worse then I thought really isn't an issue. Going to replace them anyway.

Also got the fugly (and dangerous) front suspension off the car, got the door glass and quarter windows out, doors removed, dash panel out and some other stuff.

Spent the rest of the time planning the build and starting a parts list. Really fun working on my own stuff for a change!!!!

Here's a shot of the progress so far.

I remember a lot of the tri-five gassers had '40 to '48 Ford axles with split 'bones shoved under the stock front crossmember. Somebody did a frame stub transplant with boxed tubing on this one; that was "state of the art" back then. Very cool. What was the "fugly (and dangerous)" front suspension that you removed? Was it just shoddily done or inferior components? Is that firewall recessed in the center? Body doesn't look bad from this angle...