1951 Chevrolet Fleetline Fastback
Back in the summer of 1961, my Grandfather bought a new 1961 Chevrolet Biscayne 2 dr, 6 cyl, three speed manual on the column. The car was Jewel Blue with an Arctic white top. When he took delivery of his new Biscayne, I inherited his old 1951 Chevy Fastback. I was in heaven—my first car.
Back in the summer of 1961, my Grandfather bought a new 1961 Chevrolet Biscayne 2 dr, 6 cyl, three speed manual on the column. The car was Jewel Blue with an Arctic white top. When he took delivery of his new Biscayne, I inherited his old 1951 Chevy Fastback. I was in heaven—my first car.
I drove the car for a few months, and while it was a good reliable car, I had the urge to make it faster. I didn’t like the gray paint, and the gray cloth interior, but the car was free. By 1962 I had all the parts and pieces to make it a V8. I bought the motor mounts and the transmission adapter to mate the V8 with the transmission. I had all the stuff to convert the electrical system to 12 volts. I went to the junk yard and looked in all the cars to find some gauges that would fit in the dash and work on 12 volts. I discovered that ’55 Buicks had the gauges that fit and they were 12 volts, problem solved. Then I had to find a radio that would fit in the dash, and run on 12 volts. Again I scoured the junk yards to find a suitable donor for my car. All the radio’s that were 12 volts would not fit in the dash, so I ended up using a ’52 Chevy radio and put a voltage reducer in the line to drop the volts from 12 volts to 6 volts, problem solved. I had to replace all the lights in the interior and the dash lights and the headlights and tail lights to operate on 12 volts. Then I began to fit the 283 Chevy V8 in the space where the 6 cyl. was. I had to cut some firewall braces, and fab up some brackets to make the motor mounts fit on the frame. I had to weld up some exhaust headers to fit on the engine and also fit in the frame. I worked on the engine swap for about 3 weeks. The engine was a 245 horsepower 283 with 2 four barrel carburetors. One night I had everything hooked up enough to make the engine run, but the front fenders and the hood were not installed yet and the radiator was not installed. There was no front sheet metal on the car, only the engine was in front of the firewall. It was about 12:00 midnight, and I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to hear it run and drive it, if only down the alley for 1 block. Cousin Eddie was there to help me, and we started the engine and boy did it sound nice without the mufflers. I drove it out of the garage and down to the end of the alley and turned around for the blast back to the garage. When I turned around and started back, I stalled the engine and we had to jump out and hook up the battery to start the engine. We got it running again and I floored the accelerator and flew down the alley in a earsplitting rush. The tires were spinning, and the open exhaust sounded like a P-51! As I raced down the alley, the lights in the houses came on and some of the kids in the neighborhood came running over to the garage. They all were waiting for the first blast down the alley, as they knew I was close to having it running. What a rush, and all the late nights and skinned knuckles were worth it all. As the weeks went by, I assembled the front end and made the car driveable, so I could take my girlfriend (who ended up being my wife) out in the new, faster ride. We went everywhere we could, it didn’t matter that the car had no heater, and sometimes the floor shift linkage would hang up and I would have to get out and reach under the car and jiggle the shift linkage to free the shifter. She always knew when I was arriving at her house, the car could be heard from a block away, it surely was not stealthy.
I then proceeded to do some body work. I always wanted to try to “French in” the headlights, so I tried to do that. It took me a few times, but I finally was satisfied that it would look like a pro did the job. I had seen a Corvette at Nickey Chevrolet on Irving Park Rd. that was painted Honduras Maroon at the factory, and fell in love with that color. So I sanded down the old gray paint and sprayed some primer on the car. We drove it that way for a few months and then I took it to a body shop for a professional paint job. When it was finished, the car looked pretty good. I eventually hooked up the heater, and aligned the shifter so it worked all the time. We were really riding in style, and I bought an entire Pontiac Catalina bucket seat interior, and it was maroon in color too! Now I had the car just like I wanted and everyone agreed that it was a nice custom ’51 Chevy.
As time passed, the drive train proved to be the weak link. The power of the V8 engine would just wear out the internal parts of the transmission. Considering the transmission was designed to transfer power from a 90 horsepower 6 cyl., I was amazed that it lasted as long as it did. The one saving grace with the whole setup was that the tires would break loose before the transmission would break, and then the right side axle would break, thus relieving the transmission of some abuse. The problem would arise when I would speed shift into second gear! I knew when the trans was on it’s last legs when it would make a certain growl. It was when I heard that growl that I began searching for another transmission. I would go up to a junk yard in Waukegan on Green Bay road as they had 50-60 Chevy’s from 1949 to 1954. I could use the trans and the axles from any one of those cars and it would fit. I would get 3 or 4 transmissions at a time and a few axles and as the old trans would break, I’d replace it with one of the transmissions from the junk yard. Some of the transmissions were just as bad or worse than the one I took out, so I began rebuilding transmissions from all the transmissions I had in the garage. If I needed a part that was worn out and all the parts I had were worn out too, I would make a trip to the junk yard and get 3 or 4 more transmissions. I got pretty good at rebuilding the transmissions and always had at least one ready to install. I finally gave in and installed a complete stronger drive line from a ’55 Chevy. I had to change everything, bell housing, trans mission, drive shaft, complete drum to drum rear axle, and the leaf springs from the ’55 Chevy donor car. I had to fabricate some transmission mounts and install a new shifter to fit the new trans. Luckily I found a donor car with all the parts I needed, including a 4:11 gear ratio. So I put all those parts in and then I stopped breaking parts in the drive line. My friend Jim, who lived on the next block wanted the old 4:11 set up that I took out, so I gave it to him. He installed it in a ’54 Chevy. I drove the car for another 6 months and one day I was taking my friend George to work. He worked at the Chicago Tribune newspaper in downtown Chicago, and I was on the Kennedy expressway, when the driver’s side rear wheel came off and damaged the driver’s side rear fender. That was the end of the ’51 Chevy. Soon after that I took out all the good stuff and sold it to my friends who could use the parts to make their car better. It was a sweet ride and I learned a whole lot about my ability to repair a car and the patience to see a task through to the end.
