Avanti Eye Candy

There's nothing prettier than a really loving restoration. Brad Bez, who owns a shop called Bez Auto Alchemy in Washington state, has been blogging lately about an R4-powered Avanti upon which he's executing a painstaking body-off restoration for one of his clients. Check out his blog for the latest installment and follow along! I know it's inspiring for me... maybe you too? There's only one portion of Barney's frame that's as clean as the one shown here, and it's getting less shiny by the day ;)

Installing a Studebaker Windshield

Up in Washington state, my friend Dick Steinkamp is restoring a very nice '63 Wagonaire. As part of the restoration, Dick needed to install a new windshield. There's an art to doing this, especially in an older vehicle like our Studes. Dick got an installer out to his place, and photo-logged the entire process. Check it out here.

Even if you don't plan on doing this yourself, this is a valuable lesson in how the job is done!

Repro Studebaker C/K Fenders on the way!

One thing that owners of more popular marques - like Chevrolet, Pontiac, Ford, etc. - have long enjoyed is the ability to order reproduction sheet-metal for their cars. Heck, you can buy entire body tubs for '57 Chevys, but new body parts for Studebakers? Dream on.

(OK, sidebar: our friends at Classic Enterprises have a good assortment of structural steel pieces for our Studes - torque boxes, floor pans and such - but no body stampings.)

Anyway, Steven Tomblin of Goodmark (one of the aforementioned providers of GM and MoPar sheet metal) posted today on the SDC Forum that reproduction C/K rear fenders are just about ready to be released. Their prototypes are in the test-fit phase, in fact.

This is amazingly good news. While front fenders are probably needed more due to the rust-encouraging way that Studebaker designed them, the fact that a company - and a major one like Goodmark, no less - is beginning to reproduce Studebaker parts is a bright light indeed.

Maybe, with luck, we can look forward to new '59 - '61 Lark front fenders, or '64 - '66 trunk lids one day. I know, it's a pipe dream, but maybe...

Keep your fingers crossed!

Studebaker Front End Rebuild Series

 

One of the most popular topics on my blog has to be the How-To series I wrote about rebuilding your Studebaker's front-end suspension. This is the topic of more questions than any other, and get more hits than any other here on the site, too. So here's a listing of all eight parts, now in one convenient carry-home size!

• Part 1: Tear-down
• Part 2: More Tear-down! 
• Part 3: Miscellaneous 
• Part 4: Kitchen-Table A-Arms Bushing Installation 
• Part 5: Bell-crank Removal 
• Part 6: Steering Knuckle Bearings 
• Part 7: Kingpin, A-Arms and Bushing Installation 
• Part 8: Spring Installation and Completion 
• Ancillary Information: Shock Cross-Reference  

Now go get'er done!