But there are other, equally cool cars that you might take a fancy too and want to restore. Finding stuff can be a problem. My new feature “Wrecked” might help you out with finding those parts.
I’m doing this in conjunction with listing on PartingOut.Com they pull together a lot of cars and many are southwestern cars, that means less debilitating rest on the parts you need. And that’s where I found this very near completed parts car.
So before the ’57 Chevy craze there was the 1956 Chevy’s (really?….yes!!). No glitz of big fins and gobs of super shiny chrome there were the still cool Chevy’s. The 1956 Bel Air was the one of the cool cars.
Chevy can in a several flavors, plain (One Fifty – 1500A), chocolate (Two Ten – 2100 B) and refined mocha mint (Bel Air – 2400C) – which include the very cool Nomad. With over 600,000 Bel Airs produced that year, (approximately 1.5 million produced over all) you are still bound to find some good used parts. (Who came up with the numbering systems – One Fifty – 1500A?)
They all came with station wagon variations but only the Bel Air came in a drop top (only about 41K of those made).
There were only two engines (six cylinder and eight). The six was iron displacing 235.5 cubic inches with overhead valves, a bore and stroke of 3 – 9/16″ x 3-15/16″, hydraulic lifters and four main bearing, producing 104 hp. All this goodness topped with Rochester one barrel on the automatic Powerglide Model 700200 or a Carter one barrel model 2101S and the standard shift, Rochester one barrel model 7007181.
The V8 was iron as well, displacing 265 cubic inches. The bore and stroke of 3.75″x3″ and compression ratio of 8.0:1 helped to produce 162 hp w/the standard or Touch-down transmission (topped with Rochester two barrel – model 7009909 ) or 170 hp with the PowerGlide transmission topped with a Carter two barrel model 2286s.
Normally I’ll stop there but there some cool power train options. Check these out:
– a four barrel Super Turbo-Fire V8 with 205hp and compression of 9.25:1 and any choice of transmission
– a 225 hp dual 4 bl carbs set up on the same engine block
The two door station wagon were call Handyman.
The taillight 0n the left hand side was in fact the fuel door.
1956 Chevy. No glitz but very cool.
Thanks for reading and drop a note if you own 1956 Chevy.
Tim
