The big day! The Roadster Shop (RS) SPEC chassis arrived in its crate and the ’55 Handyman rolled in from its cross-country drive to Orange County Hotrods (OCHR) in Corona, California.
1955 210 Handyman Upgrade With Roadster Shop SPEC Chassis
If you ask Jeff Thisted if hot rods were meant to be driven, stand back. He’ll tell you about taking his Autumn Bronze metallic ’55 210 wagon (that he found on eBay) from California through Nevada to Bonneville, or how it’s been on the highest paved road in the U.S. (the Mount Evans Byway at 14,130 feet), or hanging outside Illinois’ Joliet State Prison (the one-time home to one of the Blues Brothers) with it, or cruising through the Eisenhower Tunnel in Colorado (the country’s highest tunnel), or driving over the Continental Divide, plus being behind the wheel of it at 12 different Goodguys shows, the C10 Nationals, and driving the Hot Rod Power Tour—twice!
That would be an impressive feat on any hot rodder’s résumé, but Thisted did all of this in just over five months, from June 2 to November 21, 2022, covering each of those 21,000 miles in his ’55 Chevy two-door wagon. Thisted bought his Tri-Five about 10 years ago and has been slowly building it into a reliable road-tripper, but as everyone knows, true hot rods are never really finished, so he’s been chipping away at it ever since. That is until the winter of 2022.
This RS SPEC chassis was ordered with a few upgrades, including the custom 27-gallon stainless steel gas tank, adjustable coilover shocks, the engine mounts installed, a powdercoated chassis, and more.
Though his ride had previously been improved upon in just as many categories as you can think of (Classic Performance Products tubular A-arms, four-way Wilwood disc brakes, a performance small-block, American Racing wheels, sparkly Mooneyes steering wheel), Thisted decided after a decade in his favorite mode of transport it needed a major overhaul and upgrade with the addition of an optioned-out SPEC chassis from Roadster Shop. Add to that Thisted’s desire to run the Silver State Classic Challenge (where you can drive your car on a 90-mile section of closed Nevada road as fast as you can possibly go) meant getting serious about how his wagon was put together. In order to get the gearing right to achieve a high-speed run, Thisted figured he should add a Gear Vendors overdrive to his 408ci, Gearstar 4L80E engine-and-trans combo.
The teardown began with the removal of the wagon’s nose section, wiring, bumper, grille, steering column, radiator, and so on.
Roadster Shop has supplied Tri-Five owners for years with four levels of chassis configurations (SPEC, REVO, Fast Track, and Ride Line), but for wagon owners they offer a Wagon Rear Rail Option that modifies the framerails for that particular body style. Thisted enlisted the help of the fabricators at Orange County Hotrods in Corona, California, to do the chassis swap, and here’s how they made it all work. You can see more of Thisted’s experiences with his ’55 wagon on both his YouTube channel and Instagram.
There are 14 body mounting points on the ’55 Handyman, with two found inboard near the driver/passenger trans tunnel.Two tall guys, OCHR’s Nic Cantrell (left) and Kevin Hamusek, stand with the mockup of the wagon’s drivetrain—all 76 inches of it! The unusual length comes from the addition of a Gear Vendors overdrive off the back of the Gearstar trans.Due to drivetrain’s added length, Cantrell starts the chassis modifications as to where and how the Gear Vendors overdrive will mount.Two areas of the chassis will need to be addressed because of the added overdrive. A portion of the overdrive looks like it’ll rub on the corner of the chassis’ mounting tab, and the forward section of the overdrive (normally in the correct spot to mount the trans’ tailshaft section) will have to be recut and moved to support the overdrive.
Cantrell repositioned the supplied RS trans mount so it’ll line up with the overdrive’s mount, but that means the ends that fit to the chassis will have to be trimmed back a fair amount and new mounting holes drilled.The edge of the overdrive is too close for comfort, so the mounting tab section will be ground down a bit.Wagoneer and social media content provider Jeff Thisted in the middle of telling the world via Instagram and his YouTube channel about the work going on with his Handyman at OCHR.OCHR’s Aaron Hamusek (left), Keith Garcia, and Cantrell all lend a hand getting Thisted’s freshly cleaned, squeezed, and injected 408 engine, the new Gearstar 4L80E trans, and the Gear Vendors overdrive assembly into the RS SPEC chassis.The drivetrain looks like it belongs there, but there are some possible tight fitment issues areas.With the chassis tabs ground back, the overdrive now fits fine.These headers clear the RS-supplied engine mounts and are tight to the block, but the wagon will be getting a new stainless exhaust soon and this area can be addressed.The large 1/2-inch fuel lines for the Holley injection system will neatly fit under the body when mounted. Where 3/8-inch would normally be used in this instance, 1/2-inch line was installed because future plans include the addition of a supercharger.The body mount bolt and washer kit has multiple washers that can be stacked or removed to help adjust the vehicle’s door gaps.A rectangular washer is only used under the firewall mount. All others get the round washers.The ’55-57 Chevy passenger car line utilizes these stubby mounts but are not used in bolting down the wagon body.The first time the body is lowered onto the new chassis the work goes slow as there are many areas to check to see if something is clearing or binding.There were no clearance problems with the Gear Vendors overdrive unit after its mount was modified.Not only is there a ton of space around the transmission and the vehicle’s trans hump but also around the output U-joint.
There is little space between the gas tank’s filler tube and the body, so for peace of mind some may want to clearance the section of the body just above the filler’s location in this small space.Look closely at the clearance between the chassis’ front crossmember and the 408’s oil pan—very tight.The one area on the entire vehicle that must be modified is where the rear chassis crossmember (and upper shock mount) hits a factory brace located forward of where the stock gas tank used to be. This is not a body piece found on Tri-Five passenger cars.With the chassis pulled back out from under the body, you can easily see the factory brace, which was spot-welded in place at the factory.Hamusek drills out all the spot welds and then pops the brace off the body.To also take care of some butchered holes from previous owners, Cantrell fab’d up this floorpan section, adding a few raised sections for improved strength.With the new floor piece welded in and covered with undercoating, the body can again be set in place (this time without any restrictions) and be bolted down for good.With the way the RS SPEC chassis is built there is no problem in running a 3-inch exhaust system and crossover under the wagon.Because the size and location of the custom 27-gallon stainless steel gas tank RS provided, OCHR could now route the 3-inch exhaust between the body and the frame and out to the back of the car tight to the framerail.
