Welcome To Chris Pinto's 1953 Chevy Hot Rod Belair Wild Custom Site!

  • Garage
    • Cool Stories of my ’53 Chevy Hot Rod – The Blog
    • About Christopher Pinto, Designer/Author
    • Mystery Novels by Christopher Pinto
    • Privacy Policy
  • In the Beginning…
  • Why, Man? Why?
  • Body
    • 1990 Backyard Restoration
    • Second Restoration, and Changing the Body
    • The Fins
    • How I Did It
    • 2020 Pearl Paint Job
    • Driving Around 2000-2020
  • Interior
    • 1938 Digital Dash Cam
    • Trunk
    • Cabriolet Top
  • Power Plant
    • Brakes, Wheels, and Mechanical Mischief
  • Futurama
  • Photo Galleries
    • ’53 Chevy Belair Stardust Vintage Photos
    • ’53 Chevy Belair Stardust New Photos

The Trunk

I ain’t got no junk in the trunk, kitten…just krazy, hip & wild purple velvet velour snakeskin print panels and royal purple carpet! Get a load of this crazy jazz…

So, here’s the deal with the trunk. When I bought the car in 1990, the trunk was full of weeds, an old beer can (not old enough to be interesting), dirt, remains of the original rug, a spare tire that hadn’t held air in 40 years and had no tread, and a lot of rust. The trunk floor was almost gone, with large areas rusted out. The spare tire well was an open-air affair, and in the 70s or 80s someone had used a New Jersey license plate (the 70’s yellow kind) to “fix” the hole. Ok, that was so incredibly silly I decided to leave it, and it’s till on the car now. But the rest of the trunk I gutted, scraped out the rust, and fiberglassed in a new floor. Yes, in the 80s we used fiberglass to fix things, as neither my father nor I knew much about metal working, plus metal was expensive and hard to find ( for us because we didn’t know what we were doing). A sheet of fiberglass and a can of resin was less than five bucks at the local Rickle’s hardware store. So, there.

This was like this when I bought the car. I kept it that way.

When I first restored the car in 1990, I did the interior in brown. We got a remnant of brown shag rug from the same Rickle’s Home Center for I think $5.00. It was enough to do the whole interior, plus the trunk. So I had a shag carpeted trunk. We manage to somehow plug up the leaks that had led to the rust, so I had a nice dry trunk, with a shag carpet. Did I mention we bought a shag carpet and used it in the car? It stayed like that for 10 years.

This image from the original 1953 Sales Brochure shows what the trunk interior looked like when new. The “new low sill” is kind of moot with my custom Continental Kit.

When I moved to FL in 2000 and started the next resto/custom job, I ripped all the rug out. With it came 10 years of beach sand from going to Jersey Shore towns like Ocean City and Margate, a few small shells, a couple of old maps, some rust, an assortment of brochures for South Jersey attractions like Lucy the Elephant, and a bottle of 30-weight oil that I’d bought in 1990.

Working on the custom trunk, 1953 Chevrolet Belair, 2014

Unfortunately, I don’t have any “before” pix of the trunk. At the time, I wasn’t interested in documenting every little thing with the car, plus I was using either actual film, or digital cameras that held 10 or 12 low res photos. My how times have changed.

Anyway, when I put the purple rug in the car in 2005, I bought enough extra to do the trunk. I also found this wild purple leopard faux furrish material, and went nuts. Took a while to get it done, like everything else, and I finished it in 2014. No point in saying much more than that, this is how the trunk still is now, complete with a cooler in the spare tire well and an auxiliary battery hidden behind a matching leopard box. Here you go…

  • That’s me, 2014
  • My Wife, Colleen
  • Stereo Amps
  • Ready for a liquid lunch picnic, ’50s style. (Don’t D&D, kids)

Recent Posts

  • Gotta Replace 2nd Gear in the 1953 Chevy Belair Custom
  • New Photos of the 1953 Chevy Custom Belair
  • ’53 Chevy at the Mai Kai, Fort Lauderdale February 2021
  • Living in Spotlight Hell with the 53 Chevy
  • New Door Striker So I Don’t Fall Out – 1953 Chevy

Recent Comments

  • Pat Lanspery aka TikiPaka on ’53 Chevy at the Mai Kai, Fort Lauderdale February 2021

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Note: All photos and stories ©2020 Christopher Pinto. All rights reserved. Any duplication of any part of this site, text, or images for commercial use and/or without permission the owner is a violation of copyright laws. Please only share photos for non-commercial use (no selling). Please feel free to “Pin” photos or share on social media (non-commercial use only).

Pages

  • ’53 Chevy Belair Stardust New Photos
  • ’53 Chevy Belair Stardust Vintage Photos
  • 1938 Digital Dash Cam
  • 1990 Backyard Restoration
  • 2020 Pearl Paint Job
  • About Christopher Pinto, Designer/Author
  • Brakes, Wheels, and Mechanical Mischief
  • Cabriolet Top
  • Cool Stories of my ’53 Chevy Hot Rod
  • Driving Around 2000-2020
  • Futurama
  • How I Did It
  • In the Beginning…
  • Mystery Novels by Christopher Pinto
  • Photo Galleries
  • Privacy Policy
  • Second Restoration, and Changing the Body
  • Stardust…The Famous Finned ’53 Chevy Belair!
  • The Engine
  • The Fins
  • The Interior
  • The Trunk
  • Why, Man? Why???

Archives

  • November 2021
  • March 2021
  • November 2020
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  • September 2020

Categories

  • 1953 Chevy Stories (6)
  • 53 Chevy Repairs & Mechanical (1)

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1953 Chevy Hotrod Wild Custom Belair ©2020 Christopher Pinto