Learn me: Step-Down Hudsons

I recently had a near-miss moment with a running 1950 Buick Stright-8 that led me to some related cars, one being a family whom saved old Hudsons- mostly Hornets- and another private seller with a 1949 Commodore. I did some preliminary research and I got interested in their potential, but there's very little info on the deep details- I learned a lot from Jay Leno's episode on them and old stories/HAMB posts and the like, but no pictures and no build threads. Does anyone here have any experience with them, especially on the suspension/body side? 

We've got a 1954 Hudson Hornet in inventory. Full load car, convertible, continental kit, wire wheels, twin-H power engine.

What do you need to know?

Hm, I guess if it's true they ride like today's cars, and how fun they would be for my first hot-rodding project. Or just how fun they are in general, they stick out to me.

They ride like a 60 year old car.

They're very smooth, a "drive your couch down the highway" sort of thing but they don't handle like modern cars do. They are a unibody car so less squeaks and rattles.

They're roly-poly, they will understeer, if they're on bias-ply tires, they will follow every rut in the road. Brakes are good for the time.

They're great cars and lots of fun but the ride and handling are like everything else from the era.

The six is smooth and reliable as gravity, the big advantage they have is large displacement compared to all the other sixes. On par or bigger than comparable V8s They're a side-valve engine so they're simple to work on but getting them to breathe better will be more work than an OHV engine.

The convertible top system and power window system are hydraulic and share a pump. They system uses brake fluid, not ATF like later cars. If it develops a leak, it will rot the paint on the doors.

Sort of like how everyone thinks 60s muscle cars have crazy horsepower but in reality they have ok horsepower with terrible tires and poor suspension.

I think the one-piece windshield started in '53 or '54, the later cars look much better IMHO. 

I think their big advantage back in the day was a lower ride height and more compliant suspension which probably handled the poor track conditions better.

Okay, so they ride worse than I thought. How much can their suspension be played with and improved? Do they use ball joints, or something older?

It's been a while since I've been under ours but I seem to recall that the front is upper and lower arms with coil springs and kingpins. The rear is a stick axle with leaf springs.

If it's an automatic, it will be a 4-speed hydromatic which is damn near indestructible but super heavy. 

They did pretty well in Nascar when cars were "stock".

Even with a 6 cyl. engine.

When Hudson was racing in NASCAR, teams could send drawings for "improved" parts back to Hudson who would then give the part a Hudson part number as "heavy duty" parts.

So yes, they were "stock".

Kingpins, that's what it was! I've never worked with them before. Any advice? 

Well, the easy button would be to cut off the front stub frame and weld in something newer. G-Body or F-Body would be my choice because of all the circle-track bits available. Use whichever width is best. Build brackets to hold the front sheetmetal.

The stock front suspension is upper and lower arm with a vertical shaft running between them where the two balljoints would be. The spindle runs on bushings on this shaft (believe AMC and Hudson called this a "trunnion"). There is a coil spring between a frame pocket and the lower arm.

This is all stuff they would have done back in the day:

Lowering the front consists of drilling out the rivets that hold the spring pan to the bottom of the lower control arm and using spacer blocks and longer bolts (replacing the rivets) to drop the spring pan down lower and reduce the ride height.

They have swaybars and tubular shock absorbers (easier than the lever shocks that were common back then) so finding something else that fits and is beefier would be a good start.

You could build clamps and clamp the front half of the leaf spring packs to reduce wheel hop and stiffen the rear springs.

Yep, I remember it now watching some videos of old AMC Javelins- seems like they continued to use it into the 70s, but if it ain't broke...

Sounds like aside from that, they really aren't *too* much different than say, a common truck when it comes to front springs and rear leafs, especially with riveted parts that need to be replaced by bolts (90s Dodge RAM, I'm looking at you). How much space is there under the hood? Enough for say, an Atlas 4200 Inline 6?