Our '57 Silver Hawk Restoration

[drrotor]

Here are some pictures of "Hazel", our '57 Silver Hawk. We purchased it out of Houston, Texas and brought it back to Renton, Washington to build it. The first picture shows the car before any work was done. The car was inherited by the seller from his Father, and he began restoration in his honor in about 2007, I believe. After paying a "professional" shop a lot of money over a 2 or 3 year period, he gave up in frustration at the expensive and slow pace, and put the car in storage. Fast forward to 2014, he had been paying monthly storage for a long time, and finally put it up for sale. We came to an agreement over the phone on price (2nd picture is the car the day we picked it up in Texas), and My son Joe and I took a very long road trip together and towed it all the way from Houston to Seattle. (3rd picture in Moab on our way home). Boxes and boxes of unidentified parts were piled inside, and the seller was told by the shop that "everything was there"... Have any of you ever heard that before? Ha! Well, when we got home and began inventorying parts, of course we could immediately see that many things were missing. Ebay and Brent Hagen's 56J parts in Portland have become our friends! I'm telling you, I can't believe haw many NOS parts Brent has been able to come up with for us! Well, we've gotten a long, long way along on this project since then. I'll be posting more pictures and story in the coming days as time allows (and hopefully I'll get faster at figuring out how to upload pictures!). Enjoy!

[Jett289]

Looking forward to seeing the progress on the Hawk .. Its a lot of work but when you get to drive that car it will be all worth it .
Moab desert is a very beautiful area ..

[drrotor]

Well-- Hazel has turned in to a body-off restoration. The frame and body were acid dipped, primed and sealed, and then the rebuild started We've replaced every single nut and bolt. Completely rebuilt the suspension and steering, new spring bushings, tie rod ends, king pins, every brake part renewed, hydraulics, drums, cables-- well, you get the idea. Engine is completely rebuilt. + .040, and transmission rebuilt including torque converter. As you can see, the car had manual steering, and we were really lucky that our friend Mark Chance had a rusty '57 Golden Hawk parts car with complete power steering, and made us a great deal on it. (When we were going to get the power steering rebuilt, we called Lares [the Experts!] and got a quote. Then I found out if I sent the parts to Rock Auto for rebuild, they in turn send them to Lares, and it's significantly cheaper than if I sent it directly to Lares! Funny!) I really prefer the earlier Saginaw power steering like this rather than the newer ram-style units... and here's something cool-- The manual steering was 6 turns lock-to-lock, the Saginaw reduced that to 4 turns. Then I converted to Avanti quick-steer arms from Studebaker Int'l. and now the steering is 2.9 turn lock-to-lock. What an improvement! And the steering feels light and smooth, and drives much more like a modern car. Much more to come...

[Charlie D]

That is a project you can take pride in!! It will be very interesting to follow your progress.
Charlie D.

[wdills]

That is some beautiful work you are doing. That steering setup sounds awesome.

[TWChamp]

Nice work, and it sure will be a nice car when you finish it. Can't wait to see it with the new paint.

[drrotor]

So next we turned our attention to the interior. I figured we should do that early on, because I wanted Rene Harger (Southeast Studebaker) to stitch it up for us. This is the 2nd interior I've had him do (first one was on our '64 R2 Daytona) and he does really nice work. But i learned last time that it takes a really long time to get the order done-- close to a year both times, so we decided we'd better get our order in right away while we were doing other restoration work. Kathy and I designed our own interior. We chose our own colors and materials that we selected from a local upholstery shop, and sent the material back to Knoxville to Rene. We asked him to make a Golden Hawk interior that would fit our Silver Hawk, because I told my Wife that if we restored this car, we could design it together just the way she likes it. We had special door panels made that look like Golden Hawk ones, but added GT Hawk chrome and carpet to the bottoms of them. We had the seats done in the much nicer Golden Hawk stitch pattern. We also restored the dashboard and upgraded to Golden Hawk spec's... added a tachometer that we had Redline instruments in Calif. convert to electronic guts, added a clock which we had converted to Quartz, and added a NOS '56 Golden Hawk vacuum gauge. All other instruments were rebuilt and reset to zero by Brent Hagen 56J in Portland. Nice work.

I've included a picture of the parts I used to repair the worn-out shift collar on the steering column in case it could help any of you. It's common to find the roll-pin on the shift lever has worn itself sloppy in the pot-metal casting. So I devised this fix: I bought two 12-24 Allen bolts, drilled the cast collar out to the diameter of the Allen bolt heads, and tapped the shift lever out to 12-24. Then I polished the knurling off the Allen bolt heads, and cut the bolts down in length until they were just the right length to screw into the shift lever from each side until they meet. Screw them in through the new holes in the collar and into the lever using loc-tite, and "viola!". Shifter works better than new.

[drrotor]

The big and unwelcome surprise we found when doing this car was that the previous shop that worked on it had literally carved the rear end out of Bondo. All other previous repairs looked really good, but apparently someone having a bad Monday did the rear end. So I sourced a rust free rear clip and undid all their previous work. I replaced all the ill-fitting sheet metal in the rear, going right back to the factory spot-welds to re-fit the inner quarter panels, rear fenders, and trunk lid. Found a pair of much better rust-free fins, POR-15 inside the fins and sealed the upper fenders (Have seen too many Hawks with heavy rust under the fins!), and installed them using Classic Enterprises' new pre-curved pin-strips. MUCH better than the old ones, but still no picnic to install them! Anyway-- the rear end now fits just like new. Yay!!

[TWChamp]

Always nice to see a quality restoration, especially when it replaces someone's sloppy hack job.

[drrotor]

I've always felt that the Silver Hawks were awfully plain compared to the fancy Golden Hawks. But I also think the Silver Hawk is an easier car to live with: a little less likely to squeak and rattle, a little easier to keep the rain out of, a little simpler to keep running properly without the supercharger. And this being a President-level car, it has plenty of power with the 4-barrel 289. So we chose to build a Silver Hawk for these reasons. However-- we wanted a lot more flash! So we have searched out all the chrome and stainless that we could find from various years to "dress her up". The trim around the windows is from a '55 Commander Regal, we added a roof "Halo" from a '56 Golden hawk, also Golden Hawk fin "Chevrons", wheel opening moldings from a GT Hawk, drip-rail trim from a '60 Hawk, and then I found a set found '55 Speedster Wire Wheel Covers (actually, 7 of them-- had to rob spokes from some to replace missing ones on others to come up with a good set!)
Pictures here show fitting some of the trim, and the car as she's being dropped off at the paint shop... Bodywork finally done!

[colt45sa]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]57882[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]57883[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]57884[/ATTACH]I've always felt that the Silver Hawks were awfully plain compared to the fancy Golden Hawks. But I also think the Silver Hawk is an easier car to live with: a little less likely to squeak and rattle, a little easier to keep the rain out of, a little simpler to keep running properly without the supercharger. And this being a President-level car, it has plenty of power with the 4-barrel 289. So we chose to build a Silver Hawk for these reasons. However-- we wanted a lot more flash! So we have searched out all the chrome and stainless that we could find from various years to "dress her up". The trim around the windows is from a '55 Commander Regal, we added a roof "Halo" from a '56 Golden hawk, also Golden Hawk fin "Chevrons", wheel opening moldings from a GT Hawk, drip-rail trim from a '60 Hawk, and then I found a set found '55 Speedster Wire Wheel Covers (actually, 7 of them-- had to rob spokes from some to replace missing ones on others to come up with a good set!)
Pictures here show fitting some of the trim, and the car as she's being dropped off at the paint shop... Bodywork finally done!

That's going to be a really nice car when you are done. Since it's not going to be bone stock, you should look into '60 quarter mouldings. I never cared for those on the '57. And parking lights in the grill like a '60 rather than perched atop the fenders would clean up the lines a bit. Keep up the good work~!

[StudeRich]

/Cut/you should look into '60 quarter mouldings. I never cared for those on the '57. And parking lights in the grill like a '60 rather than perched atop the fenders would clean up the lines a bit. Keep up the good work~!

Bah, humbug! To each his own I guess!
Funny, BOTH of those changes are what I hate about '59-'61's!

The Fender Top Parking Lights look very Classic, distinctive and more noticeable, and the Fins look unfinished without the Half a Golden Hawk Fin and ESPECIALLY the Fin Top Moulding with the Point, all gone from '59-'61's.

I call this '58, with the President Chevrons that are being added to the "Doctor's" '57, JUST Beautiful!

[drrotor]

Home from the paint shop and we began to install the interior, dashboard first. Looked very nice, that is until we rolled it outside! Yikes! The color we had chosen to refinish the dash and steering column looked great in the shop, but in the sunlight it turned from rust color to a salmon pink shade. Positively horrid. So we carefully masked the freshly restored dashboard and painted it black (which was stock anyway, so that's fine I guess... Grrrr.) Anyway, we sound-proofed the floors, and the roof all with a Dyna-Mat type material that we found in the roofing section at Lowes. Worked perfectly. And much cheaper. That's my Wife under the dash working with me on the interior. What a great wife, Huh? Well-- next installment will be the "Big Reveal": The color. the Chrome, The whole enchilada! Stay tuned...

[Scott]

Bah, humbug! To each his own I guess!
Funny, BOTH of those changes are what I hate about '59-'61's!

The Fender Top Parking Lights look very Classic, distinctive and more noticeable, and the Fins look unfinished without the Half a Golden Hawk Fin and ESPECIALLY the Fin Top Moulding with the Point, all gone from '59-'61's.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]57900[/ATTACH] I call this '58, with the President Chevrons that are being added to the "Doctor's" '57, JUST Beautiful!

What color blue is that?

[drrotor]

All Right! Here she is! Our Debutante: "Hazel" She's basically all finished (are they ever completely done?). A few more adjustments to make, a few leaks to plug, a lot more clean-up to the engine compartment after the painter got over spray all over the freshly painted inner fenders ( Growl!! Grumble!!), and air conditioning yet to install. But we've now got about 1500 miles on her, running like a clock, and getting smiles and thumbs up everywhere we go. Would love to hear your opinions on the colors, trim, and upholstery we chose. My shoulders are wide enough to take it.
Now what to build? a '50 Land Cruiser? a '58 2-door Hard Top? a '56 Wagon? Hmmm... any suggestions?