Been working on the design for the newest kit to our line. The 1955-1959 GM Truck Dakota kit. We will have this ready by the end of September in two forms. Our standard kit that accepts the stock ’87-’96 Dodge Dakota componentry and this will be our first venture into a tube control arm and coil over front end! Yes, you read that right we are going to offer tube control arms very soon. I have been working on the design and the fixturing to get these to a reasonable cost. So look for an official release of the newest kits very soon.
We have also been working on engine mounts and bolt on anti-roll bar mounts. I have some almost ready to go for Ford and Chevy engines in the 35-56 F100 kits. I need to check fitment on the others before we release them.
The first run of the newest generation Dakota kits for the 53-56 F100s will be run by the end of this week. We already have a handful of pre-orders. Look for them to be listed in the store this weekend!
I have frames for 1953-56 Ford F100 and 1955-59 GM trucks sand blasted and ready for prototyping. Stay tuned here and on our Facebook page for updates.
Have one of our kits installed in your ride? Send in pictures or links to or of your stuff with a short descriptio and I will post it in the new tab under “Photo Library”
I have discontinued all the Studebaker products and do not have a desire to continue the product line. Our fixturing was damaged in our move in the beginning of 2020 and the low volume of sales does not warrant the reconstruction of the fixturing. I am not interested in selling plans to build your own. I will entertain a licensing program for those with the capacity for production only.
We have been working on a complete replacement frame for the Studebaker coupe. We had built a complete frame for a customer a few years back where we integrated one of our Studebaker clips and an early C4 Corvette rear suspension. We also learned what does and doesn’t work to make a frame that fits the stock body without modification. Well, very few and simple modifications anyway. Those tiny foot-well boxes behind the front seat have got to go. What we are delivering is a frame with significant improvements in strength. And almost all the stock body mounts are located in stock locations and stock body rubbers are used. No need to alter your front fenders, stock components fit.
Straighter frame rails and more clearance for exhaust systems. We keep the entire frame profile slim for good ground clearance as well as give you room for future modifications. We made the rear kickup quite a bit different by utilizing more space under the stock floor. This gives us better places to attach the triangulated four bars and still not have to modify the floor. This rear kick up is also slightly narrower so that if you decide to do a mini-tub on the rear you have frame clearance to run up to a 275 wide rear tire on a 9″ wheel.
Noticed some interest in the chassis we did for Brad Butler’s 64 GT. You might want to stay tuned as I just took on a 1954 Studebaker C Coupe and were going to do a full frame build for it.
We are already doing rust repair, the frame and body are prepped. I will be doing my initial setups this next week.
Here is the final drawings of the kits for the 1965-1966 F100’s. I am in process of making a few stamping dies and cutting new parts.
Bill Wilson is the lucky guy that gets the first official installation. He brought us the donor frame we have been prototyping with. Last Saturday he dropped off his actual truck frame for installation of the new kit.
Complete crossmember kit for 1965-1966 Ford F100 trucks
Kits are $750 and will come with boxing plates, crossmember and spring towers as well as upper control arm mounting hardware and shims. You will need a donor front end from a 1987-1996 Dodge Dakota 2wd with 4 or 6 cylinder springs. The V8 Dakota springs are best for applications where you want to keep the ride height tall or are running an engine in excess of 750 lbs.
Click the SHOP button at the top of the page, you can order one today!
After squaring and leveling the donor frame from Bill Wilson, I set a Datum at the original Axle centerline. Then Taking careful measurements I can construct a representation in Alibre’.Added the rear half of the frame from previous. Also changed the way the bumpout for the core support works. Not technically correct but works with my software.Locating all the critical holes needed for current and future projects.Alibre’ 12 isn’t as sophisticated as it could have been. Doing a mirror of the Right frame rail wasn’t as easy as a command. I had to re-generate each sweep, boss, and cut the opposite way to generate the Left side rail.Tried an approximation of the stock transmission crossmember. I may go back and re-draw it. Added the rear body mount crossmember and gussets as well as the forward crossmember for supporting the rear springs.Very similar to the 61-64 kits, this one requires a taller boxing plate and different locating holes. The longer boxing plates should solve the problem of the long and unsupported front frame section once the stock Twin-I-Beam crossmember has been removed.
Latest out of the shop is Ray Castor’s 1957 Oldsmobile. Ray brought us this car last year just before we got really deep into the 51 Chevy PU For Metro AA. It initially came in for some front suspension work. As we are to understand this car was purchased from Desert Valley Auto, same guys with the TV Show. It had already been sand blasted, painted and subframed with an early 80’s GM full-size clip. Most likely an Oldsmobile because ray told us it had an Olds 455 in it. He found a 1958 Olds 371 J2 engine and trans, had it rebuilt and installed by yet another shop. The problem came when he went to put his tires on it, they didn’t fit under the fenderwell very well at all. The tires actually stuck outside the fenders by a half inch or so and the front crossmember was less than 2″ off the ground.
Notice the hood fitment and tire locations.
So the first thing to determine was what condition the car was in and what we could do to fix the botched front clip installation. On tear down things became very evident that the persons installing the clip made more than a few mistakes besides choosing the wrong clip for the car.
The entire clip besides being mounted very low on the chassis, was off center a bit and the right side spindle was a full inch behind where it should be as well as being a few degrees off, lower on the Left side. You can see just how high the engine was placed in the chassis. So high in fact that the installer trimmed the upper webbing out of the center X member for transmission clearance. The wobbly engine mounts were pretty comical too. It was about at this point we realized just how hard of a hit this car had taken at some point. There was evidence of a fairly severe diagonal in the whole car.
Next move was to get it on the chassis table and square it up, then start the decision making on what to repair this car with. Of all the choices available, one stood out as something new for me to try. The late 70’s to mid 80’s Jaguar XJ sedan. My friend Scott Zekanis did a similar installation on his 1957 Buick sedan a few years back and has had good success with it. I did my research and found that the Oldsmobile is less than 100 pounds heavier than the Jaguar and had very similar weight distribution. Plus the track width was in the range we were looking for. The stock Olds front had to be close to 59″ wide. The rear axle was right on the money at 59″ so it stands to reason at this point in automotive history that the track widths matched, that and a bit of careful tape measuring and internet sleuthing.
A few phone calls and internet searches, I had myself a line on a 1985 Jaguar XJ6 Vanden Plas. Nice enough car and the price was more than good. Time to strip both cars down, Ray made the decision to use both the front and rear suspensions from the Jaguar (good choice!) as the rear axle in this car was also an unknown. It was stock but if the car was wrecked pretty bad, there might be issues with bent axles or what not. Besides, it just made perfect sense to do a fully independent suspension. Brian and Dr Marvelus AirArced the front clip off after locking the car to the table and Brian and I also disassembled the front and rear subframes from the Jag.
Pressure washed clean and time to start figuring out how to make this all work. This was more work that any of us figured. Still not sure if dropping the engine out the bottom was a good choice or not. Regardless, it came apart and the suspension was pretty decent.
Old clip off, Jaguar front mocked into place, I made my measurements and drew up new frame rails in my 3D software. Made the decision to use as much of the stock Jaguar suspension components as possible. This meant also rubber mounting the front and rear suspensions to give the old Olds the best ride quality possible.
One of the things that was going to make this a difficult build was the owners insisting on keeping the Factory AC and heaters in place. If you will notice the large black box where we would normally hang a power booster from, that is the AC Evaporator case. This didn’t cause us problems for the frame and engine placement.
Frame clip installed and ready for the engine and trans.One of our Winged Early Olds engine mounts in place as well as the new shock mounts.
Front end finished to a stopping point, we turned our attention to the rear suspension. It really surprised us how well the whole Jaguar IRS fit while still in it’s cage. I determined that to rubber mount the stock Jaguar rear cage, a section of frame rail would need to be replaced and a bit of the trunk floor coped in for the new bit of frame rail.
Trunk floor coped and frame sections ready to install Frame rail sections installed and the rear axle assembled for mock up of the trailing arm mounts
The stock Jaguar trailing arms are critical if you intend on rubber mounting the cage like we did here. If you leave them out you will get some serious tire shake or worse. We also installed this rear axle with 3º of pinion up which goes against all the internet experts out there. I am not willing to just follow trends, so actual investigation went into doing this. The three degrees up not only allowed for a better driveline angle for our universal joints, it also gave us a tiny bit of anti-squat! Yeah, traction is cool!
The wrap up was fairly boring stuff, rush to finish meant the camera phone was in my office out of harms way for the most part. We had a custom made radiator done, rebuilt the core support, ran brake lines, installed a hydroboost system with the stock Jaguar master cylinder under the floor, built an exhaust system that snaked it’s way through everything and made engine brackets to hold the air compressor and alternator properly. Didn’t get any final pictures before it left, but if you attend the Goodguys shows, you are likely to run into this car.
almost doneDr Marvelus working on the throttle linkageEngine and brackets installed
Fired up and running, next stop is getting it tuned up! Noice the wheel placement now as well as the slightly lower ride height!
The little bit I got to drive the car was pretty darned cool. Very smooth, very controlled. I think once Ray gets the engine and transmission sorted out, he is going to have one hell of a daily driver on his hands. You can say I am a believer in the Jag conversions. Not an easy job compared to other popular choices out there, but for an ambitious home installer or a customer that wants pretty much the best of comfort and good handling this is a solid choice.
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