1951 GMC Bookmobile

[Flame Broiled]

Hello everyone

Thought that I would share a metal working and metal shaping project that we are building. Its a 1951 GMC Bookmobile that was from Atchison County, Rock Port, Missouri. In 2000 I found this beast on ebay, it was the first thing I had ever bought off there. I had it shipped up to Vancouver BC, Canada, where it sat for several years while I dreamed up what to do the big girl. After several cold pops and bs sesions a master plan was devised.


So this is what I started with.







As you can see it has little patina, Intially I thought that I could repair what I had...... oh boy!! the further I looked the worse it got. The original 6cyl was stuck and full of water. Good thing cus that little motor was not going to keep up with highway speeds. As I stripped the Interior I exposed the wood structure and that was rotten from end to end.

So a new plan had to be devised!!!

As browsing the interweb I found a wrecking yard in Michigan that had a chassis that would work perfect for what I wanted to build.
The had a brand new workhorse chassis that was destined for a shuttle bus, with a "Front Wheel" drive Duramax Allison combo.....just perfect.

Had the frame shipped up and cut it all up to my specifications, shortend 6' off the back, shortened the wheel base 4' and removed everything else that was in my way.








So with chassis cut down to size I had a rendering done of what I would like to see it look like.





Now the process of tearing it down, We squeesed it in the shop and started cutting, the hoist is going to have to come down to get it back out.

















We placed the Front section that was left over from the original body, over the chassis. Its way narrower than what the wheel base is on the chassis. The front end is going to have to grow 25%, well every thing on this beast is growing by 25%

We thought it would make more sense to work back to front. So up went the jail cell.












After getting the back section all tacked together, we moved on to the front section. First we removed some of the lead to expose the seams.
We are going to do a bit better than this I hope.


















Taking off the 60 year old running lights it became clear that I had made the right choice to go down this path.

Sema Approved stamped on the light, Awesome!! The world best car show is where its headed then....