The first step was to return everything to the bare OEM components and to rebuild the frame, the brakes / suspension / steering part of the car. After all, the car is going on 65 years old, and the original wear & tear parts are well-worn by now. Everything on the underside was equally surface-rusted, dusty and dirty, but it did all look in decent shape.
After everything had been disassembled every single piece-part proved to be in great condition. There is no structural rust anywhere, nothing has ever been in a collision & re-straightened, it was all in dirty-mint condition. So, everything got shipped off and powder-coated at HighPoint in Leander TX, and then re-assembled will full sets of new wear parts from Kanter Auto. Neither of them are necessarily the cheapest, but both of them do amazing work, thorough, fair-priced, just all-round kudos (no sponsorships, just my honest opinion).
Looking at the weight-before vs. weight-after, it looks like I can rebuild the front part of the car and come in close to original weight. The original V8, radiator setup, transmission, exhausts etc are almost all solid steel parts, and 1,250 pounds (500 kg) is entirely reasonable. What I’m putting in is not light-weight. The motors w controllers and wiring is probably 500 lbs, and the battery is another 1,250 lbs. Let’s round it all up to 2,000 lbs coming back in. 500 lbs of that battery now sits under the trunk / way in the back, and the original setup had maybe100 for a full tank of gas. So, I have upped the grade of the new coil springs to “stiff” to deal with the overall increase, plus I have installed rear shocks with coil-over springs for an extra boost to deal with the rear battery. It should work, and if it doesn’t then I can switch to airbag suspension (that was an option for the original car) and pump it all up a little further.
As for the brakes, I have left the rear end original, but have upgraded the front to disc brakes. The original version’s brake performance was never great, it worked but in an emergency it was decidedly meh, and with an extra 1,000 lbs of weight I wanted to be as safe as I can make this project. The bolt-on conversion kit fit great, and it should do the job just fine.
