Thread: 53 Is back from the Body Shop

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Originally Posted by firebird77clone

Perhaps I see what happened:

He made the pleats match the ribbing on the door panels.

That part was pure luck, he had the seat but not my pickup

OK, it was dumb luck, but it does flow.

Starting getting some safety stuff in. I had to add a 6 inch strap to the bracket to get them to where I wanted on the floor. I may be a sally but I'll feel better driving this thing with seat belts in it, even if its only lap belts.

Better safe than sorry...................

I'm super happy about this. We couldn't find any before pics of the 53 and I was digging through shoe boxes and after a lot of laughs of seeing pics of dumb things we used to do, I found these.

20 yrs later

Don't ever think safety belts are for silly sad people as they only have to be put to the test once to verify they worth. When I had my Roadster certified to be able to register her, I had brand new lap only belts for her but decided that the shoulder lap belts off the roll bar were going to make me feel safer when driving her, so stuck with them and funnily enough, they are more comfortable to wear than the standard belts in the front of my BMW.

Congrats on the trophy and all of your hard work, truck looks excellent, and wife looks pleased as punch!

In the first "before" pic.. is that an early Vette on the other side? And thanks for sharing them all!

Originally Posted by 34_40

In the first "before" pic.. is that an early Vette on the other side? And thanks for sharing them all!

No, that car has T-tops. I'm guessing it is his T/A. Unless he's holding out on us?

The old truck looked to be in pretty decent shape to start with too.


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Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe

No, that car has T-tops. I'm guessing it is his T/A. Unless he's holding out on us?

The old truck looked to be in pretty decent shape to start with too.


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Yep, that's my T/A in the background, here's my T/A now. Sorry Ryan, the pile of stuff on the Camaro is slowly going away so you know what that means, but you can still buy the T/A though The truck really was in pretty good shape to start with. They always look better in pics and original paint than what they really are though. The floor was gone and the cowl and cab corners were gone like they all are. That being said, if I bought that pickup today I think I would leave the body alone, rivet some floor pans in, fix up the interior nice and update the drivetrain and drive it how it was. It had great patina, but back then I don't think anybody was doing that kind of rod with leaving the body alone. I was talking about that to my wife tonight, leaving the body alone would have made it cool as ship, but having it all redone makes it awsome

Quite the transformation, you've got to feel good about completing a tough project like that. Looks good.

i got the belts all in, I hope I never have a crash test though. We can dump the center belts behind the seat cause I'm sure they'll hardly ever get uses. The floors seem to have the thinnest metal on the pickup so instead of using just the large washers they gave me, I ran a piece of flat steel underneath as well.

Nice work. I love before and after pictures, especially on major projects like yours.


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Ditto that should work well. Always try to remember how to attach. I guess if the seat is bolted to floor sheet metal, then belts should be too! I think I remember reading about no no's of belts attached to frame, while seat isn't. Sortsort of a crunch issue of one moving and the other not!