[CAR ENGINE ROARING]
MATT FARAH: The one upgrade that could do the most for
your car is oftentimes the one completely overlooked.
I'm talking about the chassis.
And for the last 40 plus years, if you wanted a chassis
upgrade for your hot rod, there's only one
name you need to know--
Art Morrison.
Inside this unassuming building, the chassis
engineers at Art Morrison are hard at work
reverse-engineering old cars to make them stop better, go
better, and, most importantly, turn better.
Inside, you'll find modern tools and skilled craftsmen
with one goal in mind--
make your car do everything better.
Welcome to Fife, Washington.
Today on TUNED, we are going to talk about chassis.
And if we're going to talk about chassis, we may well
talk to the two people who are synonymous with chassis and
hot rodding.
That's right, it's Art and Craig Morrison.
Boys, always good to see you.
ART MORRISON: Matt, how you doing?
MATT FARAH: Great.
I'm doing great.
I've enjoyed driving your cars so much.
We've gotten to drive them on The Smoking Tire, the '55
Chevy, and of course, the amazing '60 Corvette.
We wanted to come see how you guys actually did it.
So you want to show me around a little bit?
ART MORRISON: Absolutely.
Let's start up with a tubing bender.
This is actually the heart of what builds our frames.
This is a reasonably late model bender.
We've had it for about four years now.
But it's capable of bending the two by four rectangular
tubing, but only in a 3/16 wall, a real heavy wall.
Frames we use for, say, a mid-'50s Cadillac or the
Oldsmobile or a pickup, one of those type of
frames that we build.
MATT FARAH: Something heavy.
ART MORRISON: Something heavy, something that we need a lot
of strength.
Let me show you how it works.
MATT FARAH: You going to bend something for me?
ART MORRISON: I'm going to go ahead and bend something.
MATT FARAH: So basically the point of this is to bend the
pipe without crimping it, right?
ART MORRISON: Yes.
And what you can't see is on the inside of the tube,
there's a piece called a mandrel, and that supports it
from the inside and that's what keeps it from--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
MATT FARAH: Bending.
And I assume the structural integrity
stays completely intact?
ART MORRISON: It stays exactly the same.
MATT FARAH: Why do I feel like steel's going to fly in my
face right now?
ART MORRISON: Well, hopefully it won't.
MATT FARAH: Just in case.
ART MORRISON: Just in case
MATT FARAH: This is my eye protection, homeless gloves.
ART MORRISON: There the bend is made.
Now we release the pressure.
Here we have to take one of these shims, knock one of
these shims out.
MATT FARAH: In a shop like this, you can never have too
many big hammers.
ART MORRISON: No.
MATT FARAH: Am I right?
ART MORRISON: And this is the bend right here.
MATT FARAH: Ooh, it's hot.
It's toasty.
ART MORRISON: It's from the pressure of the fact of the
metal being pulled around the corner is what does that.
MATT FARAH: And now we have ruined a piece of metal that
you could use for a chassis.
ART MORRISON: Exactly.
Very expensive tubing that we've just cracked
just for you guys.
'55 Chev, an early Corvette, they're made to be cut.
They just beg for a suspension and a chassis that allows them
to drive as good as they look.
I started this whole thing as a kid when I was 16, 17 years
old, and so I've seen just a gazillion different cars.
Actually, there are things I like about all of them.
There's some things I don't like about all of them.
My personal cars, as you know, you've driven both of my
personal hot rods, the '60 Corvette, the '55 Chev.
And those actually are two of my favorites.
The '60 Corvette, I love.
It's a great car, classic lines.
It could be actually carried right over to a European line,
and that particular car, I love the look, love the drive.
CRAIG MORRISON: Back then, suspension design was
extremely rudimentary, and it did a decent job of getting a
car from point A to point B. But today's day and age with
the way cars are now, there's a lot of expectations that
people have when they build an older vehicle as far as the
way it should corner, should handle, should accelerate,
brake, everything else.
And so we need to take sort of the customer's modern day
expectations and create a chassis that will fulfill that
with an older vehicle.
ART MORRISON: OK, Matt, this is the tool that we build our
early Corvette frame on-- the C1, the '53 to '62.
This is the identical frame that I have
underneath my '60 Corvette.
And the way these things work, the fixtures, is you notice
there's a place, an attaching point, for virtually every
part on the frame, from the rear body mount to the coil
overmounts, sway bar mounts, upper control arm for the rear
end, and so on.
Virtually everything that attaches to this chassis bolts
to the fixture as a unit.
MATT FARAH: So the table itself is the mold.
ART MORRISON: The table itself is the mold, exactly.
MATT FARAH: So you build a chassis, make a table on the
chassis, and then repeat indefinitely.
ART MORRISON: Exactly.
CRAIG MORRISON: Pretty much.
ART MORRISON: This is the Rolls Royce frame that we're
actually reproducing from that old, rusty one next door.
What we did is we used the FaroArm.
We reverse-engineered the thing, and have actually
duplicated all of the body mounts.
This piece here--
MATT FARAH: That looks original.
ART MORRISON: This is original.
This is actually a jacking point on the original Rolls,
so we were able to take that off the original frame and put
it back on here.
So we've located it from everything from engine mounts,
core support, bumper mounts, and so on, and duplicated the
frame, only it's all in a brand-new state.
MATT FARAH: And it also looks much simpler.
The old frame was very complicated with a lot of
bolts all over the place and stuff.
ART MORRISON: And I believe that was an issue with Rolls
that they appear to be built just that way, just with too
many nuts and bolts.
And this one is actually going to go into limousine service
in the City of New York--
MATT FARAH: Very cool.
ART MORRISON: --and for, I don't
know, proms and whatever.
MATT FARAH: One thing to notice is they've got the
holes for the exhaust through the frame,
which is pretty neat.
It's a very cool-looking effect, and I'm sure,
functional.
ART MORRISON: Very functional.
All we've got to do is-- that's one of the things left
to do on this chassis is we've got to put the
ones back here yet.
CRAIG MORRISON: We have a strong following in Australia
and New Zealand.
One of our Tri-5 chassis went to Jakarta, Indonesia.
We have a lot of frames and suspensions that go up to the
Scandinavian countries.
Sweden, Finland and Norway are really popular for building
American cars.
A few customers in France just recently have ordered things,
and then we get the occasional customer down in South America
and South Africa.
It just is a worldwide following, and so it is always
fun to work with somebody in sort of the far reaches of the
world, working on an American car and doing
something really cool.
ART MORRISON: Working with Craig has been the best thing
that has probably ever happened.
Having a father-son relationship, they don't
always work.
In this particular case, it's worked out wonderful.
He has the office right beside mine.
We go to lunch every day.
We have been together tight for forever, so it's been a
good relationship.
MATT FARAH: I see many shelves with many,
many kinds of parts.
CRAIG MORRISON: Exactly.
This stuff here are wheel spacers that we make.
And they're all CNC machined.
This is all stuff that we use for the different chassis and
some frames and suspension components.
MATT FARAH: But you guys have a mail-order
business, too, right?
CRAIG MORRISON: Exactly.
MATT FARAH: Like, can't I go on your website and buy this
spring if I want?
CRAIG MORRISON: Exactly.
All of the chassis that we do, we break it down into the
individual components, like shocks,
springs, cross members--
MATT FARAH: Oh, we've got Wilwood brakes.
CRAIG MORRISON: --spindles.
MATT FARAH: I love Wilwood brakes.
CRAIG MORRISON: Wilwood brakes.
And there's just all the different pieces and parts
that can be bought individually for guys that are
sort of doing their own thing.
MATT FARAH: Sway bars.
CRAIG MORRISON: Exactly.
MATT FARAH: I need a new one of these on my car.
I broke an end link on my sway bar.
CRAIG MORRISON: And, see, the sway bars, we have a lot of
different ones based on the different chassis that we do,
but they're all made specifically for our
individual chassis that we make.
Some of the other pieces--
more lower control arms for a drag race type strut.
Strange Engineering, we do a lot of their coil overshocks--
a really great shock.
MATT FARAH: Main control arms.
CRAIG MORRISON: Control arms, chrome and bare.
And then we get to the--
MATT FARAH: The chrome looks pretty nice, actually.
I like the bare, but the chrome looks good.
CRAIG MORRISON: Yeah, we have a really
great chrome supplier.
MATT FARAH: Bare, then chrome.
I like the bare, actually.
It's my style.
Naohiro Tanaka, you will be getting your parts on time in
[SPEAKING CHINESE]
4810035.
I'd like to have one of these crates show up at my house
with an awesome chassis and a suspension, ready to go and
just plop a body on it.
CRAIG MORRISON: Exactly.
ART MORRISON: And it literally is that way.
Prior to shipping, there will be a block set in place right
in here, and actually the housing will be
banded to the frame.
So it's actually set at right height.
Same with the front end.
There will be a dummy strut set in place at right height,
so a guy can literally mock his car up before he takes any
of his pieces and [INAUDIBLE] parts loose.
MATT FARAH: That's awesome.
Well, as this chassis gets finished, so does this video.
Sorry the weather prevented us from driving awesome cars
today, but we got to break stuff.
And I got to come hang out with two of the coolest guys
in hot rodding, Craig and Art Morrison.
Thanks for having me, man.
ART MORRISON: Thanks, it's been a great pleasure.
MATT FARAH: And we are going to head back to L.A. for the
next episode of TUNED.
Follow me on The Smoking Tire.
Follow this at DRIVE TV.
And check out Art Morrison at--
ART MORRISON: artmorrison.com.
MATT FARAH: --artmorrison.com if you want an awesome
suspension for your hot rod.
I'm Matt Farah, and these cars have been properly tuned.
[MUSIC PLAYING]