This is a chassis for this 36 Willys sedan delivery of which I finished late last year and the car is back in the workshop for some more fabrication. I am building the floor frame that bolts to the chassis, all of the body panels, cowel and doors shall hang off this frame. The floor will have the seat mounts and seat belt anchors incorporated into the frame so it needs to be strong and well thought out.
I have been along side Laurie while he races his 41 Willys at different events around Victoria, taking note of how it behaves and any adjustments needed. It has been performing well, however I recently fitted a Competition Engineering rear torque bar [sway bar] to the diff and it has really heped the car accelerate flat without the body torquing over. Improved the 60 foot times too.
41 Willys coupe on display at the Sydney Hot Rod show, all bare steel body with a Kustom Bitz gasser modified chassis under it.
41 Willy Coupe chassis fabricated to original dimensions yet extra strength provided in the depth of the chassis and via tubular centre X member and many tubular cross members to take the weight and torque of a big block Ford drive line. This chassis will have an original steel body fitted to it and the owner wants the whole car to resemble an early 60s drag car, right down to the rear radius rods that look like ladder bars, however it has to have nice street manners and pass ASRF construction guidelines for safe street rod engineering. Now many may argue a leaf sprung front end and rear end is not the best handling street car and I would agree, but there are always trade offs for the look you want and the right combination of parts installed with the correct geometry can still yield a very nice driver with a really cool look. When driven responsibly this 41 Willys will provide hours of enjoyment for the owner cruising around.
Chassis by Kustom Bitz [our custom designed rails], Engine Ford Hemi V8, T400 auto, 9" diff installed on leaf springs with diff housing floaters designed by Kustom Bitz for street use [so we have flexibility and suspension give], Super Bell front I beam with disc brakes cleverly mounted to parallel leaf springs without any mods to I beam and not relying on welded parts.
See our section on Hot Rod Chassis construction for more images of our various Willys Coupe chassis that Kustom Bitz has built.
The Toyota Crown ute is progressing along, the body is fitting the modified original chassis and this is how it will look when it's dropped ... I think it has the right stance ... The framing you can see is holding the upper body together as the floor and lower sections are rusted away and have been cut out, then to be completely refabbed by us. The frame allows us to lift the body on and off as we please during this stage.
Kustom Bitz just completed a 35-41 chassis, stepped up at the rear and a reversed centre X member allow this chassis to sit 40mm off the deck. It runs a Rod Tech IFS, big block chevy and L80E auto, a 9 inch diff with floating hubs, all on modified original rails. Kustom Bitz has developed our own boxing plates that suit the original rails near on perfectly. Original Ford rails are curved from front to back there are no straight sections, so to get something that fits right we had to jig the chassis up and map them out. This is what we do, when it just needs to be done right to make it a well engineered car. This allowed us to make a nice transistion for a high step at the rear. We have designed in 6 inches of travel at the back, so this car can have a normal, almost stock ride height then dumped to the max when parked.
Recently in Victoria some engineers have called for the upper and lower mounts for the rear coil over shockers to be a double shear bracket. The thoery is that the bolt has too much twisting force on it and it will break. Well thats why on Hot Rods we use a 5/8" grade 8 bolt in a single shear bracket application to over engineer it so it does not break. A typical OEM application uses a 1/2" bolt in a double shear bracket. However to please the engineer we have thought out a simple plate kit that can be welded in on the upper mounts as you see here to satisfy their requirements and should fit into most applications without too much effort or rework. We have a lower mount bracket nutted out as well.
We set up this winters quickchange rear end in a 34 Ford chassis on a set of our hair pin radius rods and coil over shocks. This 34 Ford will be a hiBoy style hot rod so we bobbed the rear of the chassis and finished it off nicely so all the rear end will be on show, very nice .........
This 32 Deuce Coupe was in for some maintenance and it reminds me to mention that here at Kustom Bitz we do more than build chassis and turn key cars. We have done a lot of problem solving over the years on all sorts of models as well as general maintenance.
Shown here is the rear mud guards I made from scratch for the Morris J Type van. Made from cold drawn panel steel I have shaped them to suit the new drive line, the body mods and the shape matches closely to the modified front guards so that they don't look out of place. I am pretty happy how this custom Morris delivery is turning out.
