Custom 1955 Pontiac Project - Chopping the Top

This car has been in my life for a number of years, and was only mine for a few of them. Awhile back, a friend of mine Kevin, was working for me in my body shop. He has since gone off and joined the Air Force, but that's another story.

When I sold the Pontiac to Kevin, it was basically a stock 1955 Pontiac Laurentian 4 door. I was a little reluctant to sell it to him because I had big dreams about modifying the body drastically and adding some custom paint. I explained the ideas to Kevin and he liked them, but wasn't sure if he wanted to do them. He bought the car and decided later to do the modifications.

Aside from the Cavalier Z24 hood leaning against it, this is how the car looked when we began our modifications. It helps to have a good, solid car like this one.

The car made it's way back to my shop where we discussed the body mods. The designs for the body modifications existed only in my head except for a few quick sketches to show Kevin what the heck I was talking about doing to his car. Once he was on board with the changes, the next step was stripping out the interior and all exterior moldings and trim. Since glass has a habit of breaking if I just look at it the wrong way, (and I don't just mean mirrors), I had my glass man Jim come in and remove the front and rear glass from the '55. We stored that in the attic of the garage at Kevin's dad's house so they wouldn't get broken.

Here my finger is pointing to the point I want to lengthen the doors to. The rear side window is rolled down to approximately the point the roof will be at when the car is finished.

All the glass has been removed from the car and the tape line shows approximately where the roof line will be once it's chopped and lowered. The doors had frames around the windows as well, which would have to be cut off, modified, and welded back in to fit under the lowered roof.

The fun part started when we began to cut the body. The roof was first, but had to be done in a certain way. Since we were planning to use the existing front and rear glass, and not cut it, that meant the front and rear window frames had to be cut out as well, and welded in at a lowered angle. We knew the roof would have to be shortened to accommodate the angled window frames, so we cut the roof off in front of the rear window, and behind the front one.

We used a masking tape line to mark where to cut the roof, just in front of the rear window frame. We did likewise at the front of the roof.

Once the roof was removed, we cut out the windshield frame and rear window frame so that they could be repositioned at a lower angle to allow the roof height to be lower.

Here Kevin (far side) and I are removing the roof's main section now that it has been cut off of the car.

Here is how it looked with the main part of the roof removed and the front and rear window frames still in their factory positions. That was about to change.

Here Kevin is cutting off the post that used to be behind the rear door, separating it from the small corner glass. Note the angle of the rear window frame, as seen where the side window area met the rear window frame.

Kevin is grinding on the windshield frame so it will fit better in it's new angled position.

Here Kevin is adjusting the angle of the rear window frame, by hand, so that I can see how it looks, and where I think the proper angle should be.

This shows how closed the angle of the rear window is now.

This close-up shot of the angle of the rear window frame now. This is what is going to give the roof a super sleek, low appearance.

Now the roof has been set back on. Time to build us a door to fit in that big opening. Notice that we had to cut the front door shorter, since we wanted to retain the rear edge of the door, with latch, and handle. We later installed a filler piece using part of the rear door from that side, and then reattached the rear section of the original front door behind that.

In this picture, you can see that we temporarily welded on a section of angle iron to keep everything straight while we lengthened the doors, right on the car. Doing this directly on the car made life easier, as we could see without reattaching anything, exactly how it would look. Also the angle iron kept everything perfectly lined up.

Here Kevin inspects the lengthened door, with the filler panel in behind it. It took a while to believe how beautifully the big doors open and close.

Once completed, the doors will have window frames welded back on, which will be made up using pieces of the original window frames sectioned together. At this time, no definite decision had been made about whether or not to put a vent window back in the front doors. They would have to be modified too, and we're not sure if it's worth the effort, especially considering how small they would end up being.

No, this isn't out of order. After the roof's frame was welded into place, the skin of the roof had to come back off so we could attack the rust on the roof's framework. It wasn't bad, but we didn't want it to come back to haunt us later.

As is the case with any rust on a vehicle, if you don't eliminate it completely, either by grinding, blasting, or use of a chemical, the rust will eventually come back. You may think it's hidden, so it doesn't matter, but rust has a nasty habit of travelling. Sooner or later (likely sooner) it will reappear. When that happens, you'll wish you had fixed it while you had the chance.

Come on back next time and see what surprises are in store for Custom 1955 Pontiac Project!