Custom 54 Chevy Build - Full Custom Garage - S03 EP02 - Automotive Reality

right now in this special edition

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Master Metal Man Ian Russell continues his journey through time I always want my work to evolve Created in 2010 This film features another classic

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. It took us about a month to finish this car for Las Vegas. Gotta do this all guns blazing plus an inside look at the world of 50's costumes. See everyone see it. Man. Mercedes. People stop next to it. Look how cool and direct. Homeless people on the street with old people and trying to create things. that haven't been done before and Next Generation Builder Builder High number two,

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, thank you.

Some people might say the engine is the most important thing, but for me that's not it, it's more the look and feel of everything I do with all my cars. it's old stuff I just don't like ordering things from catalogs I like to

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everything myself and I'm not talking about a new car with a computer I don't know anything I don't want to know a couple of people have asked me You know, where did you get this car ? Where did you find this car? You know, you know, we did it abroad, here looking for a new car.

I want to do something pre-1955 custom, preferably a two-door and, uh, trying to get that. I'm coming to Vegas in two months, there's a big show going on, so I really like getting out into the world and seeing what the heck is available. I mean, I don't have my sights set on anything specific, I'm just hunting and watching. to start with something and try to reach a good agreement, talk about a weirdo. I have never seen one. I mean, it's not really a custom, but if you put this on the ground and made it a full controller, this thing would steal. the show, this thing is huge, not really the look I'm going for, this car has potential, but it's not the same, it's more than I'm talking about another DeSoto 40 something 41, who knows it has cool features in all . these different cars, but I don't know, I just don't feel it.

I've been looking around for a few days. I've been to five different places, and when I see it, I'll know. I just didn't find it here, my friend Roman, he has a line about this 54 Chevy, it's at his friend's house, so I think let's check it out, this one is perfect, man, I mean, this is exactly what I was looking for , It was never like this. He's crashed or been really hit, he's just old. Typically, most people would like a running car with very little rust, but I don't care, I'll chop it all up. I'll just build what we need.

I think I'll take it, okay, thanks for the 54, everything mechanically is rubbish so I need to find a car I can get all the new stuff out of. It's all the way back, yeah, yeah, next to that dumpster. What I want to do is update the transmission. This Skylark is a perfect example because it has the latest model 350 V8, has power steering and brakes. I can get everything I need out of this thing and put it in the new car. Thanks Gus, I appreciate it. We are going to do this car in two months, no joke, we are just going to get it out in a hurry, there is no other way, I have to attack this with all guns blazing, so my friends Roman and Trent will help me.

The only thing I wanted to say about the '54 was the two pieces of glass on the rear front windows and the body cladding. We just got rid of all I'm looking to do is upgrade the transmission, it's typical car subframe so that's what I do. What I'm going to do with this time, honey, the reason I'm substructuring the car is two points. I'll have a chance to Z the frame and lower it and it will update all the steering, the engine, all the mechanical parts. be newer, yeah, okay, now all that's left to do is everything, let's see.

I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. I have 12 projects going on right now. My first car was a '28 A coupe and I don't really know what to do with it. I put an antenna on it for a fox tail. You know, it was cool to put a fox tail on your antenna. I didn't have a radio, but I had to have that fox tail. This is my paint booth. I started the paint mixing, we call it fading or blending. This is one of my Gene Winfield mixed paint jobs.

You can see how I go very dark, very black, blackish green here and then gradually work towards the lighter green in this area, but that's a Wind Field Blend or a Wind Fill Fade, this is a Merc 51 and brought it to me as a pretty much stock body so we cut it up, raked the post, rounded the corners and molded all the door handles and made a Here where we welded the front fenders to the hood and made this piece here with a drip rail and everything by hand, you know, to put this together and it looks good on every custom car that the client is doing. statement, whether they realize it or not, they are making a statement with that car.

How old are you now? 82. and you're still working oh I work 12 14 hours a day every day I'm at home if a guy retires and he's just going to sit in the chair and watch TV you know he's going to die you know you had to stay active and keep things running abroad. You can see here the old leaf spring that used to be mounted here, but what I'm doing with the ones on the Buick is. I'm moving them on the frame rail board and placing it on the floor of the car so you can see the difference.

I mean, it's about a six-inch drop. I think it will work well. I had done it. a lot of racing car manufacturing and street racing cars and these guys were doing what they call a mini tub. His idea was that it would give them more clearance for thicker tires. I saw it as a way to move these leaf springs on the frame board. Lowering it effectively I'm going to have my two beautiful assistants prepare the shaft for delivery and shortly after I'll do it with both of them. I came up with this idea for purchasing the rear leaf spring.

I'm going to put two inch and a half crossovers. tube through the frame and the springs will sit between them on these cross braces now that I have this frame nailed to the car it will be suspended. I'm going to stop right here and I'm going to cut it. I just want to see how the ride height looks with the Chop Top because they have to look good together. It's like building a house. I really just wanted to start with a solid base, establish the front clip, rear suspension and then work from there at first. 1950s, when customization probably wasn't all that common.

George Barris was the one who promoted it and made it popular when Barris moved from the Compton Avenue store to Linwood. He had both buildings, this building and the building next door. This was a note that he sent when I called them and told them that I had rented this building and what the whole plan was and everything. This letter came in the mail like a couple days later, when he was in high school, there was a rotten personalized magazine that came out. There was an article about Baris in the early '50s and I showed it to my friend and said, hey, you know how cool it would be to work there in the early '50s, this was the parking lot, that's what this wall is, here you would be standing.

Pretty much where this Lincoln type bumper is, ideally it would be cool to have this shop where people could come and see what's being done and it really feels like you've gone back in time, this Ranchero is going to be a disc car. He first brought us the car and with this photo he said: I want to build something like this and it was like, well, if you like this car, you know that when we build this car we try to get people to choose a time that is not like that. I limit it, but it gives you just an idea, a small spectrum of what would look good when everything is done primarily by us, we try to stay with that in the small era of what the customer wants, okay, I want my 55 Cadillac. to make it look like it was made in the late '50s and then you have pretty much everything laid out on what you want to run with most of the things we use if we start with something that hasn't been altered yet before we try it. do it with lead, we don't have a lot of modern tools and stuff, so we thought, oh, there's our niche, it would be nice to just have old stuff that you know to use all the old tools, tools that are twice as old as you are , but I like to do everything I can to fix the soldering and stuff, it's great to have that kind of stuff around, it just feels comfortable, it feels like I've done this job before, all I have to do is keep doing it , do you know if?

Someone asks me to cut a car again. I look at it and make sure the top flows. That's the most important thing to me is that the top flows and you do it directly through the rear window so the whole rear window and everything flows with that roof, so the important thing is the flow of the top for some reason . I'm fascinated by this sloping roofline and maybe I'm wrong to use cars like this because I've tried it twice so far and they were both a bit over the top, but I think if I soften it up and not be so drastic about it, I think it will be good.

I'm not going to do anything like, oh, a three-inch cut on the back, two inches on the front or whatever it's not going to be like that, I'm just going to cut the roof off and see how it looks. The hardest part of cutting the top is the glass. You have to build the top around what you are doing with the glass. I didn't like the B-pillar, so I came up with the idea of ​​tilting the roof back and just replacing the entire rear window trim. It's like that moment of truth. Everything is cut. I just have to figure out exactly where I want to cut. the windshield pillar to angle this down one of the concerns I have is that the molding as it comes out follows a nice smooth line so if I rotate it here the molding will go up unless I cut it right above the trim line and then just put the windshield down, turn it here and then they'll go up a little bit.

I think that's what I'm going to do, so I decided I wanted to keep the original size of the front and rear windows. I don't want any of that. make my cars look really calm, I want them to look a little bit strange, a little bit different, I think leaving the front glass at original height and just tilting it will give it a cool look, I think I think I've achieved that, no. I know what to say other than it's going to work perfectly I've got it, it's cut, it's down, that's the line that's still developing, maybe with this characteristic flavor, but I always want my work to evolve, it's like a Picasso where you put a torch. and a cutting wheel and Ian's hand and what you get is finding a Picasso in the

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I have an Ian Roselle in my garage. I would say Victor has been my biggest supporter since I opened the store because I couldn't. I didn't find anyone who could make my thoughts come true until I met Ian. The guy is literally one of the best artists I've ever met and I love art, so you can tell by all the things he's done with his hands or what could come. in his mind with imagination and more than anything else, that guy is an engineer, well the best thing about the way we work together is his vision and he just lets me execute it, he comes and critiques it and it's really just a It's a great exchange.

My main concern with this window is how the chrome strip will fit. I would love to reuse the original chrome that comes around here, but because the windshield and rear window are at different angles relative to the window. body, Chrome may not work. I'm not sure I'd keep using the word compelling and a lot of the things I've been building lately because that's what separates those who know what they're doing from those who don't. You see that the way the molding is going to fit doesn't match up a bit and it's not convincing. Putting the window back in is the hardest part of the job, all it takes is one wrong move, that's it.

I'm excited about the journey. this window fits. I'm going to take my time to weld it well so I don't warp the roof deck it's on. I mean, we're there, it's just a matter of going ahead and making sure these guys fit before we get any Later on this, yeah, that's cool, just trying to check if this roof skin is distorted with the pillars , but it's cool, okay, we have about a month to finish this car for Las Vegas. I think we got it, let's see everyone check it out. man it's funny because like even in Mercedes people pull up next to it and say it's cool and straight up the homeless people on the street think it's cool and people just enjoy seeing it or seeing someone so I probably don't have the best.

The deal is on but seeing him walk by and smile is cool, you know it's a 51 Chevy Fleet line that has been cut, side trim removed, door handles removed, headlights are French, hood emblem removed and the trunk and took off the tail. The lights move down into the bumper guards. I drove it stock, you know, just like it was when I was working with George Barris and told him I wanted to do a jobpersonalized, he shrugged like there was no money in it and You know I should stay with him and we'll do movie and TV stuff and car shows and stuff like that.

You know I don't really care what I pay or whatever. You know that's what I wanted to do. That's when he said to go work with Bill. I do not know where is he. I don't know what I really want to say about him. I mean, I just don't know. It is difficult to explain. You have to do it. explains his treatment, he does what he likes to do, that is the best, he has the experience that no one can match him. I'm not a teacher, all I do is point out mistakes, nobody makes mistakes, I know that.

What to do about itI had to correct all my mistakes, no one helped me with mine, it was like going to college in a way, you know, just the way he works with things, his patience and he never, ever yelled at me He didn't even shout at me. Frustrated with me, George was yelling, you know all the time, it was different, it was a totally different vibe. We did this car in the evenings and maybe one day a week when he was working there, Bill worked it out afterwards. I looked a little I knew what to do I only did it with experience a lot of German talent it was easy to put together I don't have a plan I don't have a pencil mark everything comes out of my head, what are you?, fat back, like that, has it ever been done like that.

I've done this top and everything is completely different than anyone who did the first car we cut here. I brought Bill to see it, you know? and he looks. He looks at it and studies everything and says: "it looks like I did it", he takes pride in his own things and for him to say "it looks like he did it", that is the best compliment you are going to receive from him. I love the work. seven days a week and I said well I'm 88 years old, I wasn't afraid of it, I always wanted a Fastback and also the fact that Bill and I worked on it together it's like I don't want to get rid of it.

I don't really want to use the original 54 taillights, they are typical when you look at the car, he identifies them immediately, so I had the idea of ​​cutting and rounding the back of the fender so that it doesn't stick out. something about the way the roof line flows this bothers me how it sticks out like something idk this is so rusty on the back I'm going to replace the bumper and I have to cut this whole part off anyway so I'm thinking about cutting it off and split this piece of pipe there and attach the fender to it.

I think it will work and I think this fits pretty well. I think I'll just splice it in. Right here I don't even see a reason to remove the rest of the tube. I was thinking about cutting it in half, but I'll just put the sheet metal on it and I mean, that's incredibly strong, it's a little weird. put a big pipe on the quarterback of the car but it's what I need it looks great we have a strict deadline I could spend two months making a quarter pounder this will be a piece of sheet metal I'll form it For the body contour, this fender has A somewhat funky shape, it is a curve composed in different ways.

I'm just going to lock it in place and then hammer it with a dolly. I think this exterior will continue well. It's a really complex shape and shaping it freehand with shrinking and hammering and all the other crap you have to involve would have been a lot of work and I just clamped it and welded it and hammered it as I went. It worked well because this is more of a sculpture, it's just a shape that I have to look at in its entirety, so I just want to finish the taillight fender area and then color the whole car gray so I can have some sort of concept. of what it looks like, I mean the idea is just to get what it looks like in one color and I'll be damned if it doesn't look like a car, yeah it's cool, you could have fun with something until the end of time, but I think by making those two simple things, raking the original front, rear glass and lowering the taillights, it's a different car, it's really cool.

I think the roof line is nailed down. I think it's done. What are you doing? Roman just doing this part. Nice, we are in San Fernando, basically, now what we are doing is bringing in the rest of the friends. It's a little cruise night every Wednesday here in the valley. My experience with cars. I started when I was a little bit. kid where I used to live, like I said every Friday, you see the bombs breaking their pipes and with all the cute hyenas and everything looks good, that's basically it, I got caught up in that little movement, my style would be that most people I would consider it Chicano style.

I don't like to modify anything at all on my cars. I like to keep them in stock. He just came in one day and said he wanted to learn. He learned something and he taught me something too. He has different points of view when it comes to cars. and I have mine, we balance each other. I am starting to be bilingual and learning Spanglish. I know a thing or two about low-riding in its own respect. He's a tough guy. He knows what he does. I would consider myself a traditionalist, but I'm not. stuck on that edge like, oh, this is who I am, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, no, because if you do that it gets boring, I like to see new things, try new things and listen to the comments. of people what they say if they don't like it then that's a shame it's my car in the lego forest for sale you never know the car is so low it will drag the bumper into things so the closer it is the body bumper, I'll help it a little bit with the clearance, but I also like the look of it being a little more hidden.

Thanks, I just welded that rear pan up so I'm just trying to find a location for the bumper notches. pass through stand I made the tray lower than the stands just for aesthetics just so when you look at it it looks a little cleaner it looks perfect I'll take it yeah that's pretty much what I was looking for that's cool , what are you doing? I don't think you can even tell what we did. I keep reiterating that it's easy, it's making a car like this, you just know I want to do something crazy, this is just timing, it looks cool, it's just not my best vision.

I like three-legged Siamese twins. dogs, here, it's a space junkie, five years of frustration, it's a 1931 Chevy, I call it the space junkie, we just won best in show at the show here at the Hard Rock, this is more of a play of art than a standard car, something I always wanted. Look, it was just a crazy Hot Wheels, a weird car and a show car that had a sunroof, it has airbag suspension, 20 inch rims with wooden spinning wheels, I mean no one has this, it's its own thing. , it is completely new. I built the space junkie because I just wanted to go crazy, I wanted to turn it into something wild, that's all, it had no parameters.

This guy's leg was completely torn off. The whole leg was hanging down and it was just like bone and muscles and Mike was like, “Hey, there's this.” cat in the backyard like he was run over or something like he was about to die. I was like "okay, let me give it to you like it's his last meal, you know" and I grabbed his foot like that and he didn't like to squirm or anything like that. Before we went to Kansas last year, we cut out all the meat and made a slat out of stir sticks and taped it all together and made this cone like a Taco Bell cup and taped it all back together and now she's surfing . “When I look at a grill or a grill opening on a car, what I do is I study it for a while and then I come up with some sketches and try to create things that haven't been done before,” Roman said.

He came up with the idea of ​​using multiple bumper guards for the grill teeth. It seemed like a good idea to know how to cast aluminum parts. I decided to do it. It's nice. It has a very attractive appearance. It's another pretty strange thing. Hey, Roman, oh, Bruce isn't done. However, it seems that Tow Mater until later was different, we are about two weeks in at this point and there are a lot of things to do. I removed the taillights so I want to put them in the rear bumper guards. I found these cool little ones.

The problem I was having with the glasses at Trucker's Mart is that they were just sitting there, they needed a way to keep them in place. What occurred to me was that I was thinking about what's super lightweight and aesthetically appropriate, so I was looking at a regular soda can and This lens is the same size. Oh, I didn't find any catalog that has the part I need for this. It's a very delicate aluminum stamped shape that would be very difficult to recreate, otherwise why not? Some people have a real problem with lately in mainstream custom culture, building cars those two things using scrap metal and building cars have completely opposite polarities, neither of those guys will have a decorative ring like this.

I guarantee that most of the people who have responded to the work really like the fact that I just take things and manipulate them to achieve my goals. Come on, that's fucking golden. We are about a week away and I need to call for all the help I can. It's time to get this working. uh we're on our way to the Burbank airport to pick up Big Bob Gore or as someone else has put it, stalwart Bob Gore Bob is an eccentric who stalks me in cyberspace and has come to the store a bunch of times and helped me with My cars are great, so he wanted to come and help with this one too.

One thing is for sure: I will be the happiest guy in the world for the next few weeks. There's nothing, there's no way around it, it's just a guaranteed fact, considering one of my best friends is a man, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, what I do for a living is restoring cars, fabricating metal and also I am a bodywork man. Painter Bob is my friend from Wisconsin, he saw the first DVD and was excited about it, so we met on the phone and he came over a couple of times to help me work on my cars, which was good for my claim.

About being Ian's biggest fan is the fact that I drive my family crazy because almost every day, you know, at the end of the night that I post the video, sometimes you need something to inspire you to come and paint the car because that It's what he does, he's just committed to the cause, it's incredible. I think you could say it's a low-rider inspired car, for sure, and what I saw with those cars was a lot of simple paint work, but people went crazy with the roofs and me. or dig, it's like wearing a fancy hat or something.

The idea of ​​having a finished roof on a car that was Primer doesn't work for me. I think it's the wrong choice because it's almost like wearing a shoe on one foot and going barefoot. the other Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, the Pope was telling him how to paint it when in

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he knew Michelangelo knew it should be like that, so that's me man, I'm in my position, yeah, you're Michelangelo's octopus . I didn't see what he was seeing. I felt it was the wrong path. I'm used to painting a whole car at a time not just a section and we'll get used to it man I'm sitting at the dealership we had a disagreement on how the car should be painted the bottom line is we have to finish this paint job so We can finish the rest so I just let it go, it was the first time you and I faced each other, it's frustrating in this period of time it was the cycle, I mean it's crazy especially if you want perfection.

I get in the car and the first impression is the same and the car just imploded, it just sucked up all the light in the shop, it wasn't pleasant. I don't like it at all after the events and everything you know obviously we are behind schedule. Etc. Honestly, I don't see the car going to Las Vegas, no, I mean, we're not going for it, it's going to take a while. much longer to finish everything, that's just what it's like to show an unfinished piece at a car show of this caliber. There's just a lot of pressure on it, you know, we're trying to make something cool where it's really nice and finished. and it can't happen in two or three more days and what I was trying to do, I think I made statements from the beginning, has been pigeonholed for these sloppy Rusty cars because I built a couple and they're super fun, but the biggest criticism I've gotten so far is that you know everything I've done with Rat Rods and it's just not the case, and you know with the other car I've done the last two cars.

It's been finished and nice and I just want this to represent, you know, a better level of finish. I was enormously depressed, uh, and it was like when we ran afoul of the paint job scheme. I felt the same if I could stretch it. I would stay back and redo, you know, paint the car the way Ian wants it done and show people what I can do and, uh, but we couldn't because I was a little speechless, it's You know, it's bummer, I mean, it really hurts me to cancel it, everyone was expecting it, everyone was planning for it, it's my decision and you know, I'm kind of a failure, these guys are bubbles, I don't know, man.

That's the harsh

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of things that people like to make out like rock star stuff, but it's not really the bottom line: this is my Mark. I'm not going to do it halfway, it has to be right and I don't care how much. The effort that is needed is not done until I say it is done,We finished everything on the car I wanted to paint, it looks good, we put the upholstery on and took it to this show in Ventura, it's finished, boom, let's keep bringing this pain to bear. It hurts, we made it, we drove down the highway and everything is fine, we made it here and it looks great, it's a pretty nice drive, it's all pretty impressive and a lot of work and they just put a lot of thought into it. and I worked very hard on it so that each custom has a personality that is yours, your ideas, your thoughts, everything goes to your car, so that creates a custom right there, okay, I swear, I saw spaceships from space foreigner, thank you foreigner.