Good Art for Bad Eggs. Marc Nischan .com presents lowbrow art from the trenches of pop culture.
V-8 NIGHTMARE: A Bargain At Any Price
I spent most of the winter tearing apart the front end. I wanted to find a way to lower the car and put disc brakes on the front without spending a few hundred dollars on an aftermarket brake upgrade kit and dropped spindles. Also, I found out that many of the aftermarket kits increase you track width on the front end, and I didn't want that.
I got on the Internet and dug around some of the message boards like hotrodders.com, chevytalk.com and the HAMB looking for clues on how to get this all to work. I looked through old service manuals, scrutinized all of the aftermarket stuff, called the manufacturers and asked questions, went out to the garage and measured, and drew up some plans. (If you want to know the gory details, you can read this blow by blow account of how to lower a 49-52 Chevy and put disc brakes on it.)
I lowered the car 3 inches, and with an adapter kit from RB's, replaced the old juice jar master cylinder with one from a '68 Mustang. I put disc brakes from an old Chevelle on it and plumbed the whole thing up. After all was said and done, what with the time and finding all of the pieces, I could have saved up and bought the kit and put it on in a weekend. Ironic, isn't it? But I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't. I figured it out, its safe and well engineered, and I didn't have to pay someone else to do it. I'm glad I didn't because I'm proud of what I put together.
The Chevy was finally ready for
its maiden voyage, and accompanying docudramas.
maidenvoyage.mov
(160K) 10 sec. clip
DashboardJesus.mov
(7.4MB) 45 sec. movie
The maiden voyage was a 15 mile round trip to my buddy Mikey D's house. It took me 20 minutes to get there, and then the car died in his driveway. Mikey is a crack mechanic, and he swore we could tune it up and get it going, but in a couple of days I would strike a deal that would irreversibly change the course of this project.
