[Grendel]

I just bought my first Chevelle, a 69 Malibu 2 door. The car is pretty solid. It's an aborted restoration from years ago and has sat in a field for ten years.

I plan to yank the body, get rid of the 350 in favor of a 502 Ramjet. I also have plans for suspension and brake upgrades.

Anyone have an idea on boxing the frame? I am not shy about fabrication, been building 4x4's for years. A friend at work said he has an Elky frame with boxes. Is this a possible application?

The frame itself is solid, but needs a bit of work to get rid of surface rot, etc.

Also, I've found an early 70's Camaro sub-frame. Should I go with this for the disk brakes and suspension or is an aftermarket kit better?

 

[FO_FDYFO]

the box structures in the elky frame are too long for the chevelle frame. they would be rather labor intesive to remove. you could just weld steel plates to box the frame or find a convertible frame.

 

[Grendel]

Any ideas on templates? It's not too hard to create my own, but if the work's already been done, why do it again?

I've been doing a bit of searching on suspension. What's the best set up for the front end these days?

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Check it out -

http://www.buffnet.net/~airrj/Frame%20modifications.html

Might help. That is fellow TC'er and Chevelle Tech admin. airrj's page

 

[Grendel]

Looks nice. That's some clean welding!

I am a DIY, as far as mods are concerned.

Any ideas on the suspension swap outs?

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Originally posted by Grendel:


Any ideas on the suspension swap outs?

Suspension and Brakes forum. Post what you are looking for and you'll get all kinds of opinions. Brake swaps, 1 1/4 sway out of the junkyard, tubular uppers and lowers, coil overs, etc.

http://www.chevelles.com/forum/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum;f=7

I would post over in the suspension forum and search the board. You will get enough to read in searching the suspension forums and in the archives to keep you busy for months.

Welcome aboard, BTW

 

[airrj]

Grandel,

Welcome to the board. That is my frame that Beaux linked you to. Thanks Beaux.

I boxed my frame and rewelded all of the factory welds. It was a fair amount of work, but I had free access to a friends weld shop and his labor.

As for the templates for the job, I don't have them any longer and most of the work was just hand fitting. As far as the clean welds, that is thanks to my friend Dean. As you can see from my pictures I boxed the center section of the frame, gusseted several places in the rear, and boxed both the upper front A-arm mounts, and the lower rear control arm mounts. Most of this is what we did which all of our Street Stock circle track cars due to cracking or bending.

As for rewelding the chassis, we also had problems with factory welds cracking in the street stock cars, so we ground most of the factory welds out and rewelded them while the frame was still mounted to the surface plate.

What did all this gain me? Probably not allot, but I wanted to stiffen the car as much as possible without going to a cage, and again it only cost me time, and I am working on it for my enjoyment so time isn't a problem. Also, it gained me a real pain in the butt trying to mount my transmission crossmember. I don't have any photos of what I did online yet, but I will try to post some. I would do it differently I was going to do it again. Basically I cut the ends of my crossmember off and welded vertical flanges to both ends. And I installed 4 nutserts into each side of the frame to bolt the crossmember to.

If you have any more questions, let me know I will be glad to help.

As far as front suspension setup, the key is to get a good combination of springs, shocks, and front swaybar that work together well. There are allot of different was to achieve this this tall spindle conversions, stock spindles, and others. As Beaux said read throught the Brakes and Suspension page and be prepared to get allot of ideas.

Good Luck.

 

[Grendel]

I got the car in yesterday.

The frame is somewhat concerning to me. No rot through, but serface rust everywhere and the rear crossmember flexes considerably.

Looks like I may be looking for another frame or building my own.

 

[Steve_69]

Post some pictures for second opinions.

Get it sand blasted so you know what you have for sure.

Steve