When Derek Dejonge became the caretaker of his father's mildly customized '50 Olds 88 fastback, he knew he was being handed the keys to a cool ride. What he didn't expect was the crash course in modified suspensions he would receive.
Like so many customs built a quarter-century ago, the Olds was lowered the way it would have been in the '50s-by torching the coil springs until they collapsed. The resulting ride height was certainly cool and, in another time and place, the ride quality and handling seemed acceptable. In modern Southern California freeway traffic, though, Derek found the Olds' road manners, shall we say, less than inspiring.
In his quest to make the Olds safer and more enjoyable to drive, Derek-a newbie to the old car scene who happens to be a fellow Primedia employee-came to us for input and advice. He explained how he wanted to improve the car's brakes and make the suspension more responsive without sacrificing the lowered stance. In the process of pointing him in the right direction, we ended up creating this story.
It only took a little research to discover that, with the exception of Chevrolets, there's surprisingly little aftermarket support for early '50s GM products. Gutting the front suspension and starting over with an aftermarket IFS or Camaro subframe was more work (and probably more money) than Derek wanted to tackle at this time, so our challenge was to see if we could achieve his objectives using the existing suspension.
Fortunately, we had an ace up our sleeve. We remembered that Jamco offers customized disc brake conversions for "non-mainstream" vehicles. We called the company and, sure enough, the guys there said they could assemble a disc brake setup for the Olds, provided we could send them the spindles for a few weeks. So we pulled the suspension apart, packed up the spindles, and shipped them off.
While the crew at Jamco was machining the spindles to accept GM brake rotors and building brackets for the calipers, they were also working on another one of our requests: custom coil springs. They built new front and rear springs designed to provide about a 3-inch drop from stock, but with a higher spring rate to prevent bottoming out and create a more positive road feel. Jamco also supplied us with the necessary master cylinder, power booster, combination valve, and residual valves to help complete the brake conversion.
Finding rebuild parts for the front suspension was easy enough. One call to Rare Parts and we were hooked up with new control arm bushings, lower control arm cross-shafts, and tie-rod ends. We also put in a call to Wheel Smith to have a new pair of chrome front wheels built, since the disc brakes changed the bolt pattern from 5x5 inches to the more common 5x4.75 inches.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of our parts hunt was finding someone to rebuild the original lever shocks, which are part of the upper control arm assemblies. We flirted with the idea of converting to tube shocks, then discovered a little shop called Five Points Classic Auto Shocks just a few miles from our office. Five Points specializes in rebuilding lever action shocks, and was able to make the Olds pieces just like new. In fact, the guys there made them better than new by clocking the control arms to compensate for our shorter springs, and increasing the shock damping qualities for a more modern road feel.
Once we had the parts in hand, we hauled them over to the Primedia Tech Center, where Jason Scudellari helped us reassemble the Olds' front suspension. From there, we headed down to KA Custom, in Huntington Beach, California, where shop owner Kevin Francis lent his fabrication skills to tackle the most difficult parts of the upgrade: building a new under-floor brake pedal assembly and frame-mounted bracket to hold the new power booster and master cylinder. Kevin also took care of bending up and plumbing new brake lines to make our improved brake system functional.
While the Olds suspension revival ended up being much more than just a Saturday afternoon affair, the result should be a car that Derek can cruise more easily and enjoy more often. It also provides a more solid foundation for future changes Derek would like to make, like adding power steering, swapping on new wheels and tires, and eventually freshening up the bodywork and paint. In short, it helped give new life to this old Olds.
