1959 Chevy Kingswood project

15's fit with no problem and do allow for disc brakes, not the huge 13" 6 pistons disc brakes but a gm style caliper will easily fit

 

Now, if you bought full wheel covers (hubcaps) for your car, they are for the 14 inch wheels and won't fit a 15 inch wheel. Dog Dish caps will, though.

 

Yes, that occurred to me today that I'd need to trade the hubcaps. Luckily, the lady at the shop said I could trade the ones I bought for a different size, if needed.

Are the dog dish caps the small size that allow a lot of the wheel underneath to show through? I like that look, and I think that was how the Kingswoods were equipped at the factory. I hope the lady has some. What diameter are they?

 

This sounds like the way to go. The old drum brakes scare me a little, and I'll be hauling three kiddos around, so safety is definitely an issue.

 

Plan on 15" wheels and tires and a disc brake front conversion. If you shop around kits can be bought and parts off the shelf to do it for nearly what a drum brake update and replacement will cost. Also the dual master is a wise choice even though a few will say the old fruit jar is fine. Out back just replacing the shoes and hardware will do well.

I've been driving our 1955 Chevy with rebuilt disc brake parts, Corvette master, rebuilt Camaro rear and brakes, since the early 90's. May not stop on a dime. But I haven't hit anything yet.
As for the LOOK. To keep it more original a set of 15" rallys and rally center caps is popular. Altho I'd rather have chrome reversed wheels with baby moons or Crager spokes. All add that 60's custom look. Any wheels/tires makes or breaks the look but can be changed repeatedly.
As for buying white walls or any tires from Coker just explain what you have and what you want to do. Most people there are very helpful.
Look at cars like yours at shows and all the pictures you can find.

 

And the speedo would only have to be recalibrated only if you use larger-diameter tires. If you source lower-profile tires for 15" wheels that are the same diameter as the original 14" wheels and tires that were installed at the factory, you won't need to recal the speedo. There are web pages that convert the SAE tire sizes to Metric, and other pages that show what tires with lower profiles match the diameter of the other tires.

 

i have also have 17x 8 for the front and 17 x 10 for the rears. the rears are a pain in the neck to change as you have to lift the car by the frame and disconnect the shock for the rear to drop enough to get clearance between the rear and inner fender

 

I'd go with a dual master cylinder with a power booster and disc brakes. Everyone's safety rides on that.

 

The speedometer gear inside the transmission is an easy swap - any transmission shop can do this. They will need to know what size of tire you end up with and they will use that together with the existing gear to determine what the replacement needs to be. They may instead want to know the rear differential gearing but they should be quite capable of figuring that out as well.

We focus on safety first given it is not just us in our car but others on the road who trust us to have the appropriate updates to make the car fully functional in today's world of fast cars, fast highways, and some really scary "other drivers".

Brakes first, along with high quality tires, then seat belts all around (lots of aftermarket companies provide them both original style and "new" style). I also added LED light bulbs for the tail and brake lights - for me it was just a bulb swap and the extra light they emit is very helpful given our old cars usually do not have a 3rd brake light unless someone has added one.

Your Falcon's speedometer should be fairly easy for the transmission shop to address as well. Because people were able to purchase different transmissions (automatic, standard) and different rear gear ratios, there were different speedometer gears for the transmission.

 

This appears to be the dog dish hub cap for the '59 Biscaynes.
http://www.rkmotorscharlotte.com/sales/inventory/active#!/1959-Chevrolet-Biscayne/134057/209924

 

We always pull the plastic gear from the tranny near where the speedo cable goes in. They are different colors. Tell the parts guy or gal how far off your speedo is and they will sell you the next size up or down gear. You may need to do this a few times. The gears are cheap and it is an easy fix.
Or just follow traffic and learn to figure how far off you are.

 

I have a GPS that provides speed, distance, etc. Not mounted on the window or top of the dash, just below out of the way but still quite visible. Gives me an accurate speed and also the posted speed limit. I also have the factory speedo which is out a bit, not enough to get me a ticket, but I find I appreciate the speed limit factor on the GPS.

 

Again, thanks for all the information. I'll venture into this wheels/tires/brakes matter with a little better idea of what's going on, and what choices there are.

Today the shop called and asked me to pick the blue paint color for the interior metal and exterior. I wish I had known the answer to this question before I drove over there: Was the color for the interior metal the same that was used on the exterior (which was Crown Sapphire)?

They got the paint codes from the door tag, and from that they picked a color family closest to the Crown Sapphire color. There are probably 30 shades of blue on that car, inside and out, and after accounting for fading and aging, I ended up picking a color that I liked the best.

This is the color I picked. After I got home and thought things over, I wonder if this is a touch too sparkly. And it looks lighter in the photo than it did in person. Maybe it would be a better exterior color, and something creamier would be better for the inside. It's just hard to know how a tiny variation in color will look when it's covering an entire car. Not unlike painting a room in the house!

What do you all think?




This is what will be painted first; the metal panels for the linoleum decking in the cargo area. Here, they're prepped and primered, made as smooth as possible for the trim shop.

 

Personally, I'd go with what you chose. I think the metalflake enhances the interior look, especially when kept polished.

 

Very nice.