Removing the body from the chassis questions

[fljags95]

  I have a 1953 K Manhattan. I had to quit work on it the last two months in order to replace my knee. I will start work again next week. I have the car sitting on jackstands with no engine, Trans or rearend. I will be removing the front clip then i have to replace the floor pans. I will remove the doors and then I plan on removing the body. When I do this does it mean I need to weld in crossmembers to keep the body straight as it comes off? Will the body flex a lot if I don't? I need to find three floor pans so I need to know who might have them. I made a mistake and bought a left rear off EBay and like everybody says it wasn't correct. I hope this is the last mistake I make on this renovation. {ha ha} I have been looking at putting a Ford 300 six in it as the oil pan looks like it might fit. Open to discussion. Dan

[Fid]

If you look in the Kaiser Forum and find the thread called "51 Kaiser restoration"  you can see how jreeder41 did it. In fact, I think you can contact jreeder41 via this website and ask all the questions  you may have as he has done it recently.  Regarding the floor pans, you may want to contact Bill "Kaiser Bill" Brown at  www.kaiserbill.com  as I believe he makes them.  I've heard the ones being sold on ebay are really bad and don't really fit but may be better than nothing if Bill can't help.

[Orphanauto]

I would love to see photos as you do this. It would be of great interest not only to me, but others I am sure. I would recommend, that if you are thinking about putting in a six, why not keep it stock? The KF red seal super six is really a great engine. Also with such a frame off restoration, going stock would make it worth more, in my opinion. Is yours a 3 speed W/ overdrive, or automatic? going stock color, or? Please keep us posted as you do your work, and let us know what your doing, how, ect... Thanks for sharing...

[fljags95]

My original plan was to make a daily driver out of it. The original engine and auto trans has a high cost to rebuild even doing the labor myself. If I go with a later model engine I bypass some of the poroblems. I plan on some upgrades in brakes, fuel and power steering. I will post some pics as this happens.

[HJ-ETEX]

fljags95: Putting in a Ford 300-6 sounds nice, except it tends to be too long. You are going to find that it is about 4 inches too long and if you insist on using that engine, you will have to do a lot of cutting on the sheetmetal that holds the radiator. There are several V6s you could use and of course there is always the Chevy SB V8. Many people don't want to use a Chevy SB V8 just because everyone else does. However, these sort of people don't have any experience in motor swaps or they would understand that the wide selection of oil pans, manifolds, mounts, and cheap after market parts are exactly the reason why Chevy SB V8s are common choices for motor swaps.

[jreeder41]

Thanks fid. Here is the link to my thread. http://kfclub.com/forum/index.php?topic=421.0  It is not too bad of a job to do. Our car had very good floor in it. It has only one hole in the drivers front pan, so we did not brace it. It only took me and another guy about 15 minutes to remove the body bolts. The only ones that were tough were the three that had the rear tail panel to the rear crossmember at the very end of the frame. I could not get my impact or air ratchet on them. I had to use a gear wrench. The rest of the bolts I held a wrench underneath the car and Bret ran the impact on the top side.  It is best to have a couple friends or a lift. We did not have a lift at the time so we used a engine crane four metal saw horses and two ten foot 4x4's. Basically once all the bolts were out we lifted the front end high enough to clear the tires and stuck one of the 4x4's under it. Then we repeated the same in the rear. Then just rolled the frame out from under the body. The key is having stands tall enough. We built some just for doing this kinda thing. Then we sat sat the body on a rolling wood cart. Hope this helps! Contact me if you need any other info.

[lacyf]

hi; I'm alittle late with this post......but would like to put my two cents in. I have in the past ,and am about to start another project,this time with a Kaiser...I build all my cars to drive,and have found the old chevy 350 to be most reliable ..but I purchace a camaro sub frame to put it in ,, I take the front clip off the project car and actually saw the frame off  with a sawsall..but first measure, measure measure to get the wheel base the same...then cut the camaro sub frame to fit to the project cars frame..this the time for a lot of clean up and engine compartment painting..Install the engine and trans of choice,,I;m useing a 700r4 and a camaro rear end,(all the wheels the same)If done right, this combination is hard to beat...thanks

[HJ-ETEX]

lacyf: Don't bother with a camaro stub frame. There are people who used a 77-83 GM (Caprice-Pontiac-Olds) chassis and put the Kaiser body on the GM chassis.

[lacyf]

hj etex,,Thank you ,that sounds like maybe a lot easier...

[Weaz]

Yeah, you can read about a project like that here: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?s=d9dd7335b2628fd1c3c397c5727ab3f3&t=272171