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  #1  
Old 01-18-2021, 11:41 PM
Hotflint Hotflint is offline
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Default 1938 Pontiac Silver Streak Touring Sedan Restyle

I have a pretty neat story. My wife has had her eye on this Pontiac ever since she was a little kid. When she would go to visit her grandma in a small town, it would always sit in the yard of a trucking company. It came time that the man that owned the company was gearing down for retirement, he always had plans to get to this car, but never got around to it.


We approached him and were able to purchase the car. We later found out that this car was used as a limousine at her grandmothers wedding. (we even found a chauffeurs license from 1945 in it)
Here is a video on our small bit of history on it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ1c3Mm2sWQ&t=3s
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Old 01-18-2021, 11:57 PM
Hotflint Hotflint is offline
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We spent many hours cleaning the car. It sat in the yard for about 30 years and became infested with mice. Unbelievable how much wool and bits of paper were packed into the trunk, YUCK (I did not get a picture of this) It took weeks to get it clean, I even removed all of the interior and sprayed it down with hospital grade disinfectant and it still stunk, Oh well... eventually it will come clean

Anyway, back to the good stuff......

After hours of discussion and planning on what my wife wanted for this car, we compromised and came up with some major points.
1)stops well
2)Rides and handles well
3)modern power and reliability
4)Comfortable interior
5) More cab space so we can fit inside it (I am 6 feet tall and 260 pounds, my wife is 5'11") so when we sat in the car we were shoulder to shoulder

My local junk yard had a P71 code (cop car) in it. Scavenging this car would hit most of the points.

I pulled the front suspension out of this car since they are bolted on. Its very common to use these front ends in 60's Ford trucks. It is pretty wide, but more details on this later.

I also pulled the rear end out of this car. Much stronger than the civilian cars.
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Old 01-19-2021, 12:10 AM
Hotflint Hotflint is offline
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After doing a ton of measuring and documenting, we found out we have to widen the car 7 inches. I did a really crappy photoshop job to see if the proportions would go weird

The top pictures are stock and the bottom pictures are 7 inches wider. Apologies for the low quality picture. Everyone I speak to asks, "So, you are just cutting this straight down the middle?"

No.... really... No..... Its much more complicated than that.

I took some initial measurements and found that the hood and truck lid and grille can be cut straight down the middle. The body is much more complex.

The front windshield looking from the top is a v shape. So the windshield frame on each side will be widened 3 1/2 inches each. So when the body is widened the Vee (center) will also have to move forward. The back will also need to do this, but it is less pronounced and will move outward less
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Old 01-19-2021, 12:21 AM
Hotflint Hotflint is offline
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I lasered the middle of the car to determine a datum point to measure off of



Apologies for the sideways pictures, they were proper on my computer.

From this point I could start jigging the car so that I could widen it and keep everything square. I am doing all of this in my home garage so it is no feasible for me to build a frame table

You can see in the following picture the start of my Slider. The telescoping square tube will ride on the other when the center moves forward

I will be supporting the frame, the interior and building more attachments to move the cowl around. When I started working on the interior I had to remove the tar on the roof. Some of it was up to a quarter inch thick. I tried a lot of things, until My wife helped me come up with this solution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ5XLIJ3gYY&t=180s
Right now, I have very little work left to make the roof spotless (Oh, and now that all the insulation is out of the car my garage smells normal again) I am hoping this week I can have the car completely jigged and start cutting and moving it around in a month or so. Then its time to start metalshaping!!

Last edited by Hotflint; 01-19-2021 at 01:03 AM.
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Old 01-19-2021, 03:54 AM
steve.murphy steve.murphy is offline
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That is a great project, I will be following this one for sure.
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Old 01-19-2021, 04:18 AM
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Gojeep Gojeep is offline
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Having gone through a 9" widening on my build, I know what you are in for!
Be great to see how it all goes together.
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Old 01-19-2021, 07:32 AM
Hotflint Hotflint is offline
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Thank you, I appreciate it!
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Old 01-19-2021, 07:38 AM
metaldahlberg88 metaldahlberg88 is offline
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Sweet car. Eager to see how you manage it all
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Old 01-19-2021, 11:19 AM
Hotflint Hotflint is offline
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Thank you!
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Old 01-19-2021, 05:36 PM
Pehr Pehr is offline
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Super interesting project to follow
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