1957 Chevrolet Belair convertiable

Vehicle Details

Chevrolet Bel Air/150Up for sale I have a nicer than normal driver, located in Honea Path south Carolina. If you have a question that is not covered in the add ill respond if you have a question that is covered in the ad I will not respond it means you are too ignorant to read or too lazy........Not interested in trades.I’m selling for 3 reasons………….1) because I bought some other cars and have too little time to stagnate on one of them.2) When I was 14 I fell in love with a 57 rag-top, never thought I’d own one but now that I do I can honestly say I’m not a rag-top man. They are sexy that is for sure but its just not me, besides that I am a swine and this car is too nice for me I have to clean up to drive it.3) I got discouragement, a bad taste in my mouth from dealing with liars.THE CAR ITSELF. it has a1965 283 in it which worked well since i installed a 350 turbo trans, the car was originally an automatic car and it was a power steering car also, but it has a manual upper steering column (there is no gear selector pointer) I had a turbo 350 sent to Pruitt Trans in Anderson SC to be professionally built. It has the extra clutch in the direct clutch pack, better band material, a shift kit, a new stock torque converter, higher pump pressure, and whatever else Pruitt makes standard on their high end builds so they can stand behind it. Its way better than a factory slush box trans. I wanted the car to look like the ones I lusted after when I was a young’in, so that meant the copper top radiator, the oil bath breather, a bench seat, the original hubcaps with spinners, big white walls (the tires are NOT bias-ply Coker they are radials from Diamondback classics in Conway SC) I wanted the long generator with the power steering pump behind it, I think they are sexy: So I bought one of them long units it lasted a few months and the pump locked up. I bought another and the same thing happen I called a crap company called double nickel in Athens Ga to have them build me one. They had none in stock so they had me mail mine to them and I never got it back. After 60 or more phone calls over a 16-18 month period I finally gave up. They will not give mine back they will not build it they will not do anything I guess they needed a core to build to have on the shelf and decided to use mine to gain a core. So I put an alternator on it but never had time to go put a power brake booster on it so it has manual brakes and manual steering right now. I don’t mind I grew up with them, but if other young folks drive the car some make mention of it. (you cant run power brakes (in the traditional way) if you have the long generator/pump combo unit, not enough room behind it on the firewall.) It has the original rear 3:55 gears, new driveshaft, new brakes all 4, disc on the front, new steering gear put in this summer just before the 2023 Hotrod power tour. (Its not painted like the rest of the car) and one of the tires is worn from me purposely setting the toe-end out so i could go on the power tour, i could not get a steering gear fast enough. so i sacrificed a set of tires. The 4 rims are brand new because of the disc brake front axle. The spare is an original 57 rim because the modern tire and rim will NOT fit into the spare tire well in the trunk. So if you have a flat and need to use the spare the spare will only fit on the back axle. The wiring is a mix of the new stuff a Dakota digital dash with extra gauges Chevrolet did not have back then, and a few things i put in that was not with the car when i bough it as an abandon project. The seats were brand new 31 years ago but never installed in a car. Here’s the story on that…….A chap was restoring a 57 convertible but got an offer on it he could not refuse before he finished it, so he sold it, the new owner sent the car to Chuck Miller in Piedmont S.C. to be street-rodded and he wanted bucket seats. So Chuck stored these in his attic in plastic wrap until I bought them from him. So the seat padding is older but the vinyl seat cover is new, I ordered a complete kit from Ecklers. I added backup lights in the rear bumper it does not run off revers gear selector but a toggle, the horn does not work I cannot find horn parts for inside the steering column. And have not found good info on how to make it work if I had parts. I have gone through two trunk locks that fail in a few months, so I have been using a flat tip screw driver in the last 18-20 months (I simply have no time) I separated the body from the frame, I welded a ¼ inch plate in where that stupid rust trap GM put on the convertible frame rails was. The only part of the sheet metal that is 1957 is the front fenders hood upper ½ of the firewall and enter fenders both front and rear. All new floors from firewall to taillights, new outer rear quarters, new complete doors, new top half of windshield, new trunk, new upper and lower valance above and below the trunk, the only 1957 chrome is the pinch weld stainless around the convertible parts and up, all the other pieces from there down is new (with one exception) is new from Danchuk. The paint is PPG and it has been painted 4 times (another of my discouragements). The car was a matador red car, I lusted after turquoise when I was a kid, so I paid $927 per gallon to get turquoise, PPG Concept, and screwed it up. It had so much orange peel I had to wet-sand it smooth and repaint again:…..hah, …………...did i mention the paint was $927 per gallon. And……….I screwed it up, again! So i drove it to a specialist who told me to wet-sand then clear coat to save my self the $927 per gallon price again. So I did….and my son screwed it up, by killing my air supply in mid-spray. So I shot it a 4th time with a less expensive PPG paint. It is NOT and exact tropical turquoise match, but 100 percent of the people (that are not tri 5 purist) that have seen mine next to an original tropical turquoise say they like mine better, they have use terms like: “it pops”, “its more beachey” “its happier” and: “its less washed out and pale compared to the original color”. So the car has plenty of paint on it. The carburetor to my knowledge is not a 1957 I was told it was a 1960, not that it matters, it looks correct and most important to me it fits the oil bath breather that I wanted to run. But it does have two issues. 1) it does not have a choke, it is the heat riser type and I did not have the tube, I intended to get back to that later, but time ran out on me. 2) the rubber boot/plunger for the accelerator pump does not hold up to the modern ethanol gasoline. I put one in it and it last about 3 weeks and it swells up and rolls/flips upside down so it no longer has the ability to push fuel through the passages, instead the fuel passes by it and that makes the car “touchy” at green lights. It basically never stalls once it gets warm, I have learned to feather the throttle and it does fine. My son runs a mid 80’s carb on his 68 chevy and it runs fine with modern gas, I have a quadrajet carburetor to go on the car with and older looking intake (the intake with the oil filler-neck in it) but again time is not on my side and since the car runs fine when I baby the throttle I have not given it any more of my time, especially since I have to modify or give up my oil bath breather to run a quadrajet. The heads are 1957 power-pack heads and was fresh from the machine shop when I bolted them on. All the glass is new, the interior workings in the doors are new, the air duct pluming is new, new cables for the defroster and heat, (they need something I was told that makes the new electric motor a 3 speed, (it currently runs on high speed) but by the time I learned that there was another piece I had to find and add to the car my discouragement level was too high.) And since I’m on that subject of discouragements ill explain some. When our local Tri 5 chevy guy was selling me parts I explained that I wanted the old look but was not trying to do any kind of numbers matching stuff since too much the car was missing. He in turn sold me things I did not need. Telling me: “you need that for judges and buyers notice if it has that on there it looks like you did a cheap job building if serious buyers do not see that” So I would buy it and 5 months later he forgetting I was the one he told it to would say: “Some guys buy that item but you don’t need it, it was only used on the assembly line, but GM was not going to remove it, it cost them more to remove than leave it. It cant be seen when the car is finished.” Another discouragement is the canvas on the top. The lying upholstery man in Honea Path S.C. told me he had done “13” 57 chevy tops in his 30 years of upholstery………..turns out mine was his first, and he did not get it right, I took it back, he did not get it right. It does not look smooth at the seams and it will not set down all the way on the top of the windshield on its own. (shown in pictures) My 25 year old son just pulls it down, I carry two 1 inch ratchet straps and pull it down, its a quick, easy job, but it pisses me off that he lied. It does NOT leak it seals good at the windshield, it just does not close properly. I have talked to several rag-top owners and they they say “welcome to the convertible world” So maybe its normal for convertibles. Another discouragement is: I do not know how to tweak the rear quarter glass to roll up properly and line up with the top and the front door glass. (as shown in the photos) I have tried many times taking it all apart and cannot see what I need to do. That is one of the reasons the interior is NOT finished. I left it undone on purpose so that whomever buys the car does not have to take the interior panels loose to do whatever it is that needs done to the back window. I have a more modern (cable) wiper system on it that has the pulse or delay for light rain. I’m not crazy about it but it does work, but hey, its a rag-top meant for cruising with the top down, so wipers have been of little concern to me. To my knowledge there is nothing else it takes to finish the car as far as parts. I HAVE EVERYTHING BUT TIME. So whatever you do not see in the photos on the car comes with the car and they are new. I also have a new turquoises carpet since this one has been stained. So with the combination of me being lied to for my money, spending more hours to do this than it should, and now since COVID not having good help in my business, so I can play with other my toys, I just got to draw a line somewhere. So one of you chaps that have build these rag-tops before take this off my hands and do it justice. It is priced so that you can still pull $20,000-30,000 out of it after you tweak it into shape, most rag-tops for this price are tired 25 year old restorations. My business keeps me too busy to put time on something I have lost interest in, when I got plenty of other cars to “entertain” me. If I cant get what I want out of it ill disassemble it use parts for a 57 hardtop I have and sell the rag-top as a major project instead of a minor one. I’ll give you the history of the car as I know it, and in the story explain the build and the details up to the present. When you read keep in mind I am a trucker not a mechanic I did work on Cheys from the 70’s I have NEVER built a car from scratch only maintained them. I did NOT take this car apart, it was in boxes as a roller when I got it. So I had no idea what was missing and where the parts I was looking at went, on the car. I did not find the internet that helpful. I literally built this car 3 times. First time, I had part A and C, but in my ignorance not knowing there was a part B missing. I would spent hours getting them installed just to find out I could not connect A to C. So back to the phone, internet, and books to figure out what was missing. Many times I would install part B wrong, after I got it, but not know it until I had hours in it, then the 3rd time get it right. And for you guru’s out there “right” may be only my view point. And its actually wrong for a restoration. But one thing is for sure the general public sure does not know the difference they LOVE it when I drive this anywhere. And i find it pleasing to provide my fellow man with a smile and a blast from the past.THE HISTORYThe original owner drove the car up till it was too tired to drive and by that time the tri 5’s were going up in value especially the rag-tops I got the car in the late summer or 2019, began collecting parts for the build (about ½ from Danchuk ½ from Ecklers) then came the COVID 19 and I built the car during the covid shut down. When we started going back to work is when my time began to go away from me. Ever since the COVID you cant get people to work! It soooo hard to get help! So what I did not get done on the car in the shutdown took me a long time to get done. I got the car running the following summer, made reservations in Biloxi but ran out of time before I could paint the outside of the body so I have photos of me in it at Biloxi Ms. (cruising the coast) in primer with the turquoise showing on the door jams and all. The following year all I got done to it was paint. And that is the point it is now. I took it on a few other cruises: Charleston SC, Somerset Ky 2 times, Union SC. 3 times, Power-tour 2023, I drive it a fair amount and took it back to Biloxi in 2022. (It just reached 73?? miles)