62 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk

[semaj4712]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXm0ZTxRrTU

, Ive seen these before, this seems a little safer than the due who puts his car on jack stands and does the same thing with the cars cruise set at like 30...I think Ill buy new white walls, right now the tires are mis-smatched anyway and I am not a huge fan of that...not that it matters, just personal preference

BOOBIES

Widened steelies with a dog dish would look sick

Like these
http://ekhatch.files.wordpress.com/2...2a04abc4_b.jpg

I do like those, but I have to be carefull about going too wide with this car, I need to find a happy medium, I am thinking thats along the right idea though, maybe just not quite as wide...plan on running a relatively beefy tire as opposed to something I would normally run on my e30

[jacbo]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXm0ZTxRrTU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXm0ZTxRrTU[/ame]

[RubbderDucky]

So awesome. I've always wanted a old Studebaker.

[rice4life]

BOOBIES

Widened steelies with a dog dish would look sick

Like these
http://ekhatch.files.wordpress.com/2...2a04abc4_b.jpg

[Xtra Big Kahuna]

That's pretty awesome.

[semaj4712]

I like it. Keep it up.

I feel bad for you when you have to do an oil change though. Unless all the oil drains out of the filter before you remove it. Then you have it easy. Not sure how it works since I have never even popped the hood on one of these

nope, its a bitch...but thats why I like my mechanic, he changes it for me while its in getting other things worked on, whenever I drop the car off with him he always says, hows the oil

[Xtra Big Kahuna]

I like it. Keep it up.

I feel bad for you when you have to do an oil change though. Unless all the oil drains out of the filter before you remove it. Then you have it easy. Not sure how it works since I have never even popped the hood on one of these

[semaj4712]

So after sending my seats in for reupholstery, they said my seats were fixed, and would operate like brand-new...well, the passenger seat didn't, in-fact, it was exactly the same as the day I bought it, stuck in recline.




As you can see, everything looks great minus the passenger seat in recline. So I removed the metal cover on the pivot point of the seat to see if the problem was easily fixable.




With the cap off I could see there were screws missing and everything was all loose and felt pretty well broken.

You can see that this piece...

Sits on this piece and needs to slide back and forth, but because one of the guides had sheered off it wasn't keeping the sliding part in place...

You can also see the pin that was home-made to fix the same problem probably once before.


I ordered the replacement part on studebaker international, you can see the old one versus the new one, where the pin is the right size and can be tightened to make sure the chair cant be pulled apart. Most likely what caused the problem to begin with.


The sliding piece is held into those grooves and the spring on the lever keeps it all locked up. Pretty simple really.




It was a bitch trying to tighten the nut on to the seat frame, mainly because it was so hard to see what on earth I was doing.


All together and tight.


I loosely lined up all the screws, to make sure it would all fit properly, and to get the spring into place.


With it all tightened up and spring in place, time to see if it works before putting the chrome cap back on.


So far so good, the seat matches the drivers seat, and holds me up strong...


It folded up pretty easily to allow someone into the backseat.


Success, it also locks into upright position number 2. All done, chrome plate back on and job completed

[semaj4712]

So I have been around on the forums for a little bit and stalked for several years before actually joining, many may have seen my other car my 91 318is, still working on lowering that one as well but for now most of my time and energy in my studebaker.

A little background on this car, I know pretty much nothing about this particular car other than the Gran Turismo Hawk is based on the Golden Hawk that was quite successful in the 50s. However the GT Hawk came out towards the decline of Studebaker as a last ditch effort to breath some life into a dying motorcar manufacture. While they made the most GT Hawks in 62 with around a 8000 and 1000 for international sale, they only made about 15000 total, which by today and even then is considerably low for a mass produced automobile.

I bought this car 1 year ago and it spent the first 7 months of my ownership in my mechanics garage getting the engine, carburetor, and fuel system rebuilt. Unfortunately I didn't get excited enough to start playing with pictures during the rebuilds, but when i took her home the first day after we snapped these shots.









It even got a nice appearence in the music video Everybody Talks by Neon Trees.

Neon Trees - Everybody Talks (couldn't figure out how to embed a youtube video)



After driving around for a little while, the generator decided to seize up and lock...we temp fixed it with a shoe polish cap which allowed us to get the car home some 20 miles. Destroyed the Belt, but it needed to be replaced anyway.

So after a new Generator and since the exhaust was literally falling off, we through a set of Flowmasters on the car which makes it sound 100% better.

Then when I bought the car the front seats were in pretty poor condition, while the rear seats were in pretty great condition. Probably because few people ever rode in the back since the seats were so beat they couldn't even fold forward, only recline...in fact the passenger seat was so beat, it only reclined. So I had the car sent off to get the front seats repaired and reupholstered. Unfortunately I didn't grab any pictures of the seats in their original condition, but this brings us to today. After spending nearly 2 months trying to find the sliding seat mechanism I finally got the car back last weekend. Just in time for the 4th.

While it was in the shop I also got the radiator custom rebuilt (since we couldn't find one new anywhere).

So this brings us to today, here are the pictures as she sits today, still have big plans for her, but hopefully you see some potential in this car.






Car came with and we rebuilt its 249 V8, you can also see the rebuild carburator and its custom radiator which was pretty well built to look 100% OEM.




The Interior has been my main concentration thus far, spent a weekend wiring in a two speaker system into the doors which is controlled by iphone and turned on or off from the original stock radio. Non of the gauges work except the amp meter and oil pressure. This is probably the next project is to replace the bulbs in all the gauges and get them working properly. I say properly because currently the fuel gauge works, but full is half way on the gauge and empty is 1/4 full on the gauge. Pretty difficult to get an accurate sense of where I am at.




The rest of the interior and newly upholstered front seats.


You can see the shiny new Flowmaster exhaust that really made me love this car 10 times more, sounds like a real classic.


And because I don't own a car without its own pair of shoes...


Heres the whole family...

Future projects...

Slam it on Bags - This will probably or hopefully happen this summer yet, but we will see.
Rebuild the Tranny - Right now it needs a new clutch, and the linkage is pretty well shot, although its not terrible trying to shift around its 3 spd, it could be a lot better
Larger White Walls - I know it is right to the year to only have a 1 inch whitewall tire, but I really like the beefy whitewall look and I will probably do something like a 2.5 inch whitewall when I lower it.
New Wheels - not sure on the wheels, possibly just steelies, but if anybody has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.
Finish the trunk and sound system - I have plans to fix up the trunk, fatmat it, through in a 10 inch sub, and mount the two amps, also carpet it and also through the air-compressors and tank in there for the bags.
Edelbrock Carburetor - My buddy just through on an automatic choke carburetor in his 71 Chevelle and I cant pass that up.
Edelbrock Headers - when we rebuilt the engine I just rebuilt what I had, but now I want to throw in some Edelbrock headers.
Finish the interior restore
Paint - at some point I do wanna respray the car, but I really like the rat rod flat red at the moment, so I am still thinking about this one.

I hope everyone enjoys the car and let me know if you have any suggestions or opinions