Building a Hearse, From Power Saw to Purple Velour
Building hearses was simpler before 1984, when General Motors Corp.’s Cadillac division stopped making a stretched chassis especially for the funeral and ambulance industries.
Until then, funeral coach makers began with a completed platform. They needed only to modify the body and build an interior with a strong floor and wide doors.
Today, the builder buys a chassis that has an engine, braking system and drive train specially engineered for use in hearses and limousines but is available only in standard sedan length. The shop must slice the factory chassis in two and stretch it--the same method that limousine makers use.
The manufacturing process at Krystal Koach Inc. begins when a Cadillac hearse-package Fleetwood is bolted to a special rail-mounted jig. Workers then cut the vehicle in half with a hand-held power saw.
The next step is to strip the sheet metal off the back half of the vehicle and roll the two sections about 24 inches apart. (For limousine making, the cars can be stretched by as much as 120 inches.) The frame extension is welded in using specially fabricated beams. Workers then add a drive-shaft extension, new wiring and brake fluid tubing, and a new floor pan.
When completed, the hearse is slightly more than 21 feet long and six feet high.
Krystal designed its own rear shell--the roof, rear sides and rear door unit that give the sedan its characteristic hearse profile. It uses an outside fiber glass fabricator, however, to make the two-piece package, which is bolted to a special frame made at Krystal.
New side doors are made by cutting down and welding together two standard Cadillac Fleetwood doors and covering them with sheet metal. The curved glass for 52-inch-wide doors is specially made for Krystal, as are the chrome and rubber casket rollers in the floor.
Almost everything else is made by Krystal, including the upholstery (deep-purple velour is the standard) and the walnut-burl flooring in the carrying compartment.
Although most of Krystal’s coaches have hardwood floors with a high-gloss finish, scratch-resistant marbled plastic is being requested more often, said Ed Grech, Krystal Koach’s owner.
The entire top of the vehicle and the rear door are covered with either waterproof brushed canvas or leather-grained vinyl. Custom-made stainless steel trim is used to finish all edges and seams. The company also installs an electrically operated roll-up glass partition to separate the driver from the container compartment.
The final step is the application of paint at one of Krystal’s three paint booths.
Completing a hearse typically takes about 10 days.
Black and white remain the preferred colors for hearses, though other hues, including gold, burgundy, silver and forest green, are used occasionally. Grech said his company has also shipped one hearse in baby blue.
