Project StinkBug: I Brake for Restomods

I decided to leave the brakes as the stock non-power drums on all four corners along with the single pot master cylinder for a stock appearance. But I'm in the middle of replacing everything for safety.

The crusty original brake and suspension pieces needed an overhaul, but fortunately (non-chrome) parts are generally cheap for a '57 Chevy.

After replacing the brakes, cutting the stock springs, adding new shocks and more, plus cleaning and painting everything satin black, the job is looking better. The spare parts pile included aftermarket front and rear anti-sway bars from 20 years ago, so I installed them where there weren't any originally. I used brake shoe self adjusters (and some steering linkage pieces to replace bent idler arm and tie rod ends not shown) from another Craigslist score.

The Low Down On Lowering

When I assembled the car, I had noticed that the front was a little too high. The distance from floor to the top of wheelwell in the rear was 25.5" and 26" in the front. So I set about removing the springs to cut them down a bit.

The springs are 620 one-inch drop springs from Mustangs Plus. They are about 12" tall and IIRC are rated at 560lbs, which is actually pretty high. I had a local shop cut them down with a cutting wheel. There was no way I could hacksaw or jigsaw through these things. I had only 1/3 of a coil removed.

While the coil was out, I replaced the old rubber spring perch bushings with a set of polyurethane bushings. I greased the pivot shaft and the perch rocks back and forth smoothly now. The roller bearing spring perches are popular, but since my perches were in nice shape and just needed new bushings I went this way. I can feel a big difference driving the car now, as the perch allows the upper control arm to move freely.

Here's the coil and perch installed. I had to use an internal coil spring compressor with approximately six inches of steel spacers on top of the threaded rod to fit these short springs. I borrowed the compressor from Advanced Auto, but ended up buying it since it worked well enough for me. The previous owner had installed a set of Edelbrock Performer IAS shocks (Edelbrock 33237 Classic IAS Front Shock Absorber) a couple years ago, so I left them in. This is a good shot of the Baer Racing 12" brakes too.

Amazingly the front now sits at a perfect 25.25" after driving a couple miles to get the springs settled.

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Wheel Wells Revisited

I had wirewheeled the rear wheel wells previously but recently scuffed them down and resprayed some SEM Paints (SEM39693) self etching primer (green). Mike used epoxy panel bond around the seams.





I taped them off and sprayed some 3M Rubberized Undercoating. (This is also a pretty good view of the 12" Baer rear disc brake kit.)