VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 Body Bolts

Getting ready to lift my 1938 Coupe body and have been lubing the body bolts for awhile in preparation.

Most look easily removable but there seems to be a few that are carriage bolts so my first thought is to simply cut them off so I don't damage the body metal "square" that holds the carriage bolt heads. Between oxy/acteylene and a cutoff wheel this should be quick and clean and the full body bolt kit is available.

Am I missing something or is it really this easy?

disconnect all of the wires?

If you have been lubing the bolts for a while I would at least try undoing them, you may well get a surprise, the front may well have been getting oiled by the engine for years though the further back may not be so lucky.
Apart from solafide's suggestion I would also remove the steering box so you dont have to juggle around that.
Tony

Ya will try most bolts first but it's the carriage bolts that concern me as once the head spins and the square hole is damaged, it becomes a headache. It does look like all body bolts are easily replaceable? - Hate to find out after the fact that some are not accessible for easy replacement lol.

There are a couple wires and a spring and some emergency brake hardware I still need to remove. It's getting exciting!

It has been a while since I messed with the body bolts but I don't remember any carriage bolts. All mine were hex head, hardened and fine thread. The really silly ones were on the running boards. They had slot heads with sqaure nuts, like you would find in an old chair!

Thanks Fred, you answered a long standing question I had about the running board bolts! Both my boards as well as front and rear fenders had MAINLY 1/4" stove bolts with square nuts. The boards themselves had small carriage style bolts in slots with square nuts. Canadian eh? All replacement kits appear to be hex head...

I looked again and the body bolts look really good so suspect I'll lift the body this week. There are a couple that don't appear to go right through to the interior and appear to be carriage head sitting in a pocket (pocket filled with 80 year old crud so can't be sure). Chevs of 40s bolt kit shows some carriage bolts but may overlap various years.

Have not removed a '38 coupe body but have removed 2 '40 sedan bodies and the mounting bolt on each side at the front of the rear fender well were badly rusted but you could not tell it from beneath the car. On both cars the square holes were rusted so bad that I wound up putting in a doubler plate with a square hole in to hold the new carriage bolt after cleaning up the area.

Body bolts came out easily. No carriage bolts. One bolt forward of each rear wheel threaded directly into the frame bracket but others were regular long bolts fine thread.

Body is VERY light. I'm scrawny and I can lift an end. Frame is surprisingly heavy.

Wow what a great shot. I see that you have the same front suspension as me, kick shackle and all. So I can't see what is suspending the body. It looks like magic!

It was a sunny day so the plywood pieces under each lift pad look invisible.The rockers are solid so I was able to lift the body from outside the frame with only a couple inches of contact area and spread the weight with some 1" plywood. Just need to figure out how to attach the rotisserie.

Magic is the 1980's Commercial 2 post lift made in Denmark. It weighs more than this car. I had to make this garage bigger to work on this car and FINALLY bolted the hoist down a week ago after finishing the garage 5 years ago.

Those lifts are really nice. i have tried to look at the old factory movies to see how they slung the bodies on the assembly line. Your body looks pretty solid. The front mounting area under the firewall are a favorite area for rot.

Looks good. On mine, I had to do a lot of patching on the front wheel wells and when I tried to put the body back on the frame, I couldn't get the bolts through the frame. Ended up having to put a come-along on the bolt angles to pull/stretch the body enough to slide the bolts all the way through the frame.

Brian

I looked at the chev assembly videos too to see where they hooked onto the body for the body drop but would need a lot of height. Man they dropped those bodies roughly.I wanted a calm, easy to reproduce method so I could reinstall it easily later when it's shiny.

Both of my angled brackets on the frame at the front of the body are broken. The pieces fit like a glove so should be able to make it stronger than original. I've seen a lot of these cars with broken brackets so suspect due to alignment issues many were under stress for a long time...