Rebirth, Regroup, and Recap - July 2015

Well guys, it's been a awhile, and I think I'm long overdue for an update!

Wow, it's been 3 years, and a lot has happened, I mean a lot. We've been through a lot, and I have learned and grown so much over these last couple of years. Turns out if you wait 3 years your Picasa account (Google's picture web hosting site) quadruples in size! Time to get uploading and typing I know, I hear ya. Thank you to all of you who have been so patient!

I, Ethan, am currently 20 years old and have been driving the Chevelle off and on for 3 years and have owned it now for 4. I daily drove it to high school my senior year and since then park it for the winters and pull it out for the summers. We have done some updates along the way mostly relating to the drive-ability, but I really just like to just drive it as much as I can as is! The summer of 2014, last summer, I hit 126k on the clock and that was a mile marker haha. 10 thousand more than it had on it when we brought it home. Very cool to say, I could have never even imagined that way back in 2011 when I was a punk 16 year old kid getting the keys to my first car, a project car that would require so much hard work and dedication. It's been a labor of love though, good old Clarice found me, I didn't find her.

Stay posted, the story will continue as it happened and eventually we'll get to the present. Thanks guys, see you soon.

Ethan

Day 86 - 6/6/12

Got the moldings to fit pretty good by beating the metal down. Then I re-welded them up and will grind it flush along with the other sheet metal.

Here's a better shot of the passenger side, all welded and ground. You can see where the titanium putty will go I was talking about a couple updates ago, in those funny little holes.

 Lower passenger side all ground down. We made a little patch that will sit right there floating over it all. I'll have to weld it in.

Back to the driver side, got the lower corner ground flush. It looks like somebody did a braze repair many years ago! I believe we're going to float over it and/or work around it.

Day 85 - 6/4/12

So the wheels Dad brought down were looking a little scratched from previous use of trim rings. I prefer the look without them and don't want to spend the big bucks to buy new ones, so it's a win win situation. I also don't want to have to worry about them either. So I hand sanded to my hearts' content.

The rears Dad bought from the Chevy store so the paint was really thin and pretty easy to prep.

The fronts on the other hand and been repainted and started to rust where the rings scratched the paint off. So I spent some time and sanded the lips smooth so hopefully the scratches won't show through. (The left is after and right is before)

Day 84 - 6/3/12

Since we're going to the effort of replacing all this metal, might as well make the window moldings fit good! So I broke out the moldings out and we saw where the new metal had to be formed to make the molding fit the best.

Doing a visual fit, the upper corners had to come down a little becuase they sat to high, you can see in this picture here.

It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but we made a incision along the corner. Then we'll beat it down and re-weld it up!

Day 83 - 6/2/12

I got a big urge and finished all the welding/grinding along the upper rear window! It was fun leaning over everything being left handed trying not to grind too deep into the metal. But now that part is done, thankfully.

All flush, and to think all this goodness will get covered up. You can see my attempt to avoid melting the quarter windows with the towel from showers of sparks from welders and grinders.

Day 82 - 6/1/12

All most finished up the welding on the rear window today. The upper corner on the passenger side was very thin an kept blowing out. So I'm not going to try to fill the little rust holes along the roof line, we'll put a little titanium putty there.

You can see the seam where there the 3 cars' metal come together. Lots of spot welds at a higher heat to really get a good bond. I couldn't well to much on one area at a time other wise it would warp it!

Still had to weld up the lower corners! We still have to figure out a piece in the actual window channel. (Above the welds in this picture)

I've been looking forward to this. Dad brought down some of his Rally wheels from the "old days" being right around 27 years since he last used them.

15x7 up front from like a Monte Carlo or Chevelle and 15x8 out back from a Corvette. The fronts have been painted a couple times but the rears have the original GM paint on them. I'll sand them down and repaint them the GM flat silver for that "timeless" look.

I really can't get enough of a reversed deep dish wheel! Still working on tires...

Day 81 - 5/27/12

Today is another day of brakes, the last one! We managed to finish it up, all the many components went together pretty smooth. I'll have some peace of mind knowing now I have new brakes under me when I'm cruising around.

New parts from this weekend include:
Master Cylinder
Flex lines to front calipers and rear end
Pads up front
Rear shoes
Rear wheel cylinders
Brake fluid
Re-packed front wheel bearings
Shocks all around
Front sway bar end-links

 Cleaned off the spindles, and repacked the bearings. Rebuilt the original calipers using new flex lines and installed new pads over the original rotors. I'm good to go for awhile!

My new master cylinder from Rock Auto.com, all shinny and new.

New master cylinder already bench bled, ready to be hooked up to the lines!

If you remember, I cleaned up all the springs and such awhile ago. Installed the freshly re-lined shoes and new wheel cylinder along with the clean springs.

Got it all to fit in there and then slipped the original drums on. The original rubber plugs for adjusting the shoes on the drums are still intact, I thought that was kind of cool. You can see the new rear shocks in place here too. 

  Then after we got it all put back together, we bled the brakes. I had never done that before, kind off fun stuff. You can see the new sway bar end-links here too.

Day 80 - 5/26/12

Today is spring day! The rear of the car sags to one side, so with the shocks out they basically fall out. So we flip flopped them side to side. Then dad showed me an old trick to get the fronts out!

A little help of a pry bar and they're out.

 

Jacked up the arm, and loosened the lower nut, but not all the way. Then we used a hammer attachment on a air chisel to break the taper fit from the spindle. The spring's tension helped break it apart.

Loosen the nut all the way and the spring will push the arm down!

I borrowed a coil spring compressor from the local parts store to make it possible to take the springs out!

Cut about 2/3 of a coil off the bottom. We'll see if that's enough, probably not!

Day 79 - 5/25/12

Friday night, lets keep tearing it apart! Jacked up the rear, getting ready for rear brakes too. Since we're taking everything apart up front, this is a great time to take the springs out to cut them a little. Sits way to high.

Removing the sway bar end links to replace them and make room to take the springs out.

Ready for new parts!

 

Removed all the shocks because they're shot. I'll have to buy some of those too! Peter's working on his Civic in the background.

Day 78 - 5/22/12

Well, I got a little tired of the intense grinding, so we moved in another direction. The entire brake system and the front bearings need to be repacked, so we started on that. Today's Tuesday, so hopefully we'll be done this weekend.

Step one, jacker up!

The calipers where a little sticky, but they are the brakes so that made sense why.

Hopefully we can reuse the rotors and calipers, they seem to be in decent condition.

Got the bearings out, and they look great! The spindles look beautiful as well.

Both sides are in great condition for 40 years old!

I scooped out the majority of the grease out of the rotors, and then used our handy solvent tank to let every thing soak.

Last thing we did today was drain the master cylinder and remove it.