It's back! Got the Chevelle wheeled into the garage last night....I'm pretty happy with the work he did, and he even patched a few areas on the rear quarters and doors.

I'm having second thoughts about putting in all the various parts needed to get this thing running, when it seems to make sense to have the body media blasted first, but that would mandate that I follow up with paint and body work very soon after.

So, Autoboard, what say you? Pony up the money for paint first, or focus on getting this thing drive-able??

Nice!

YESYESYES

As far as the body it'd probably be better to knock it out now and be damn careful putting it back together.

^^ Agreed.

Love this project.

Updates:

Well as usual, life gets in the way of this project, so progress has been slow and not very often.

Here is what I have:

My seats that came with the car were in pretty bad shape, with significant frame rust. If you didn't know, these bucket seats from the 60s are very expensive, with poor condition sets selling for around $500. I found a set of GM B-body(Impala, Grand Prix) buckets in really good shape for $200, which I though was a steal. I will have to fab up some brackets to make them fit, but I think they will work for now.






The other thing I've been working on is filling up trim holes that were originally used to mount the trim. I've decided to go for a cleaner look on the body, and I wanted to minimize the use of body filler on these trim holes.




Trim holes.



Trim holes welded up



I've received some quotes for paint and body, so I'm hoping to send it out in the next few months. Right now my goal is tackle as much as I can that will contribute to the overall quality of that job, such as filling trim holes, cutting and patching rust areas, etc.

[This message has been edited by agwrangler2001 (edited 9/30/2013 10:31a).]

Looking good.

Agwrangler, what city are you in?

Houston area...

UPDATES!

Well the Chevelle is officially off to paint. I dropped it off last weekend, with an estimate completion of about a month. I spent some time with my paint guy and I'm happy with our plan.

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So, while the car is away, with the motor we will play....more than I expected though.
It seems like every time I turn around, this guy that did my metal work has found ways to screw. me. Long story.

Short version is, I was cleaning up the motor getting it ready to go into the car when I noticed standing water in one of the intake ports of the head. Lovely. So I tried to turn the motor over by hand. Yup, locked up. Awesome....this guy must have left the car out in the elements uncovered, as it has been garaged 100% since I've gotten it back.

So, plan B kicked off by tearing motor down to short block.
I rented a 3 stone hone and cleaned up the rusty cylinders, and they look pretty good. Hopefully I kept all of the debris out of the bottom end area.

Most likely I will update the cam (233/239 TSP 112LSA?) which requires new valve springs. The head bolts on LS engines are torque to yield, so those will have to be replaced also.

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Anyway, things are in high gear now, so I hope to be updating more frequently.

[This message has been edited by agwrangler2001 (edited 3/16/2014 10:42a).]

quote:

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Short version is, I was cleaning up the motor getting it ready to go into the car when I noticed standing water in one of the intake ports of the head. Lovely. So I tried to turn the motor over by hand. Yup, locked up. Awesome....this guy must have left the car out in the elements uncovered, as it has been garaged 100% since I've gotten it back.

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Hopefully you've already delivered a swift kick to the nuts to this guy for leaving your car out in the elements.

Hope to see/hear it tearin' ass soon

Who's going to be doing all the tuning?

By the time I get to that point, probably the lowest bidder!

Always open to suggestions.

I'll be heading to Clear Lake Speed for a retune whenever I get the chance/money.

Update. Mostly of the motor variety. I decided to take the heads to a machine shop to have them looked over. In a similar notion, I decided to go ahead and put a better performance cam in. My thought was, "it won't ever be easier than right now." So, the engine shop surfaced the heads, cleaned up the valve and valve seats, and put new seals in. I also bought better valve springs with the cam, so they installed those as well. Last the performed a seal test, so I'm good to go.

Oh, cam:
TSP/Comp Performance Torquer v.2
Duration @ .050: 232/234, .595/.598, 112 LSA


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Car is still in paint, see pics for a few in-process updates. (Stripping old paint off)

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Back at my garage, I've been cleaning up misc. engine parts, bolts, brackets, etc. Just trying to put in the time and effort on the little details hoping it will pay.

For example, I smoothed the intake manifold and shaved off some mounting brackets that I won't need. I plan on taking this up to the paint shop and having it painted the body color.

Before(not mine):


After:
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[This message has been edited by agwrangler2001 (edited 3/28/2014 1:44p).]

[This message has been edited by agwrangler2001 (edited 3/28/2014 1:45p).]

So, things are progressing, slow and sort of steady. Been taking care of a few details here and there for the engine.

Painting accessories and whatnot:



Before and after coil pack....not sure where these will end up...on factory valve cover brackets, or relocated somewhere....?


Pretty excited about this:



Paint and body updates you say? Still in progress. These pics are about a week old, so a lot more body work has been done, no color on the car yet though.







I mentioned no color on the car, but I didn't say no color at all.
How about a little sneak peak!




We couldn't find the original color in a 2-stage paint from PPG, so my paint guy mixed up some of the original acrylic, and we matched an equivalent base/clear system from that. I think it is pretty close. Even if it's not, I think it will look sweet.



[This message has been edited by agwrangler2001 (edited 4/17/2014 6:52p).]

Hey, I had a 63 Dodge Dart painted that color.

Very nice! I look forward to following the progress. My bright blue metallic 63 Chevy truck has a similar color. Yours looks to have a hint of green in it. I'm jealous of that comp cam.

Offered without comment:

Nice classic color

Oh, that's purdy.

Very nice!

Loooooove that color

Good googly moogly

Looking good!

Love the color!