Sending the kid off to college...

Yesterday was a big step forward for the restoration - the crew from the body shop came by and picked up the Chevelle to get started on the final body work.  I've been looking forward to this day, because it means that all of the metal work for me is finished and I will be getting an assembled and painted car when it comes back.  Just to preview, they will be replacing the passenger side rocker (damaged), part of the drivers side rocker (a little rust), stripping the body down to bare metal, fixing/creating the missing filler piece between the taillight panel and trunk, and fixing rust in the quarters.  I'm hoping they save the original quarters, but it will depend on what they look like once they get through the paint.  Of course it will still need plumbing, wiring, interior, weatherstripping, moldings, etc, when it comes home, but it will look more like a car again. It also means big bills coming since someone else will be doing the work.  

I was not expecting was the other emotions that came with sending the Chevelle off; this must be what it's like to send a child off to school.  When will it come back?  Will they do a good job without me around?  How will others feel about the work I did (car guys are the biggest critics in the world!)?  For the past year the Chevelle has been a constant fixture in the garage, and something I could usually go out and work on when I needed to do something with my hands.  I guess it's time to clean up the garage while there is space.  Perhaps finish powdercoating and sandblasting, and sell off the stove and blast cabinet? What do car guys do while their project is off at the body shop?  Enjoy time with the family?

If you have been following my blog, then you know that with some help, I replaced the front half of the floor pan, the trunk pan, and fabricated a tunnel to fit over the T56 transmission.  The frame was painted, a used LS1 fit along with accessories, and all new suspension and brakes installed.  Everything is stripped off so it is pretty much bare for the body shop to start.

Over the next few weeks and months we'll be stopping by the body shop taking pictures of the progress to keep everyone updated.  I have no idea what the timeline will be; I'm hoping for 4-6 months but have no idea if that is too long or too short.

BTW, I've had a lot of people ask about the wheels.  They are loaners from the body shop, made from 1/2" plate steel and weigh about ~100 lbs each.  The wheels do look strange, but have worked quite well.  The large openings and skinny size allow great access to the suspension and were very easy to work around.  Pretty useful, even if they do look more than a little odd!

Reupholstered rear seats

This week's blog is going to be more pictures than writing, and you get to see a little preview of where I'm headed with the final project.  When we picked up the Chevelle, the interior was pretty destroyed from years of moisture and being closed up.  Everything was covered in white mold or mildew.  We were really hoping to save the seats, since they were in such good condition.  We went over the seats with bleach solution and Febreeze, and tried setting them in the sun, bagged with coffee grounds and drier sheets.  Nothing worked to get rid of the musty smell.  We decided a few months back the interior wasn't salvageable, but were hoping to wait until the car was painted to get anything recovered.  Last week we decided we had enough of the smell in our basement and decided to go ahead and get the rear seats recovered.  I had purchased front seats from a 2008 Ford Taurus because I liked the boxy style, plus they were heated and full power.  Seats from a sedan do not have the lever to flip the back forward to get into the rear seat, but this is a small price to pay for modern seats.  The original '65 seats don't even have a lock to hold the back in place, so they can flip forward at every stop.  I'd rather have fixed backs and headrests.

Rather than recover the backs with factory covers that would be a different style, I decided to try to get custom covers made to match the Taurus seats.  The fronts also have nice silver stitching as an extra detail.  We found a local shop, Mark's Upholstery, and gave them a call. He immediately pointed out the seats are black, but a dark charcoal.  I hadn't noticed this since we didn't have them next to a true black.  I really like the dark charcoal, and I think it will look really sharp with the stock black door cards and carpet.  They were able to find a charcoal that is a perfect match, including the perforated center sections.

Here is what the seat looked like when we started - all covered in mildew:

I was surprised to hear back after just a week that the seats were done and ready to pick up.  I think the mildew smell had them motived, or maybe Mark's is just that good.  They did say they smelled the mildew every time they walked by the rear seat in the shop.  The replaced all of the burlap and cotton padding, so the smell is completely gone.  This was the last bit of soft material left, so everything inside will be new or refurbished.  No worries about mildew any longer. Here is the final product back from upholstery, next to the front seat for comparison.  The center vinyl is perforated just like the fronts, with silver stitching around the edges.  The sizes of the panels matches perfectly, like both seats were meant to go together. 

I took a few pictures of the rear seat sitting in the car.  It's amazing how much it transforms the car just having interior sitting in it, you really get the feel of what it will look like.  It's a different style that looks more modern to me without being out of place.  I've seen lots of examples of new seats people fit in from GTO's that I'm sure are very comfortable, but the wrap around buckets just look out of place.  I'm sure it's partly because it's my car, but I think this looks updated without looking out of place with the boxy style of the '65.  I took a few pictures without the headrest so you can get a little comparison how it would look like compared to the factory look.  They may be Ford fronts, but Chevy would have built it like this if they had more technology back in the day.

Digging through old slides

I hurt my back Friday trying to bottle my Jubilale clone, so no working on the Chevelle this week.  Since I'm finally on good drugs for the pain, what better to do than to try to write a blog.  The doctor says it's a bit like truth serum, so I will take no responsibility for the content or coherency of the writing below.  I'll blame Jill since I will ask her to edit this later.

I love looking through old pictures and thinking about how lives intertwine.  I have a lot of old pictures from my family when my sisters were kids back in the late sixties.  My parents had just purchased some farmland outside of Marion and made the statement '100 trees cost the same as five, so why wouldn't we buy 100?'. Or something like that. Anyways, Jill's Mom has been sick the last month (Best wishes and get better soon Min!), so she has been traveling back home to help out.  She brought back some slides and pictures from the late sixties of the Chevelle and one of her Dad's other projects, a Dodge Dart Swinger.  I'm hoping that she can find more pictures later, but here is a preview of what we found.  I find if very cool to see pictures of the Chevelle back when it was nearly new (but wrecked).  Think about the skill it took for Hoss to repair these cars with hand tools and a torch.

This is the only picture I have found so far of the roof repair in progress.  It looks like the new door is on and he is fitting the roof (from a 1965 GTO) in these pictures.

Hoss completely finished the car in 1965, and then someone hit the front fender in 1966, so he had to repair and repaint again.  That must have been maddening after all the work the previous year.  I must say with the manual brakes and manual steering back in those days, it is incredible that any cars survived to today.

 As evidence they drove the Chevelle everywhere - here are a couple pictures along the road and at the Gulf Coast in Louisiana.  This is how it looked after the rebuild.  They dropped the 327 badges off the fender, removed the hood spear, and ran the factory whitewalls with no hubcaps.  It was a sleeper unless you knew what the Malibu SS on the fender meant.  No 283 here, and I think they drove it like a 327 should be driven.  The center bar on the grill was painted black and the center emblem removed.  It was cracked in the first accident, so they never installed it.  I still have this emblem and grill hung in my basement above the bar (Bar and Grille... yes, it's okay to moan).  It's a neat look, although I'm going to leave the center bar stainless as the factory had done originally.

I love this picture of Hoss on his bunk in Viet Nam.  If you look carefully at the pictures you see Min and pictures of the Chevelle above his bunk, including some of those above.  Maybe even the same prints we found that he brought back!  How cool is that?  Hoss served in Viet Nam fighting and repairing vehicles after combat.  That must have been an unending job.

 In the picture below the Chevelle looks like it was just repainted. The date on the picture is 1972, well after the first restoration and before the 1974 lifter problem that led to it's current state.  The garage went in the year before, so the date on the picture must be correct.  I think all of the trim parts I have probably were intended to go back on the car after this repaint.  I don't know the story about why it was being redone in 1972, but it sure does look good.

 In the slides we also came across lots of pictures of the Dodge Dart Swinger that Hoss rebuilt.  It looks like an easy roll with damage to the doors, fenders, quarters, and roof. Ha, easy roll is a misnomer!  I have to admit I don't think I have seen this year of a Dart ('67 or '68?); it is a really good looking car.  I've never really thought that about the Dart, but I would own one like this.  It has the 340, and was a strong runner.  The first two pictures are the before, and two more pictures of the completed car.  I wonder what happened to the Swinger?  Someday it might be fun to see if we can track it down to figure out what happened to it.  Jill doesn't have a lot of memories of the Swinger, so it must have been sold in the early seventies.

And finally a great picture of Jill and her Dad.  She was such a Daddy's girl - after she was born you don't find many pictures of her or Hoss alone.  She was always out helping in the garage; here holding the hose when pressure washing one of the Vega's.  The Chevelle sits lonely in the background.  Hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane as much as I did.  Back to drugs and trying to heal my back so I can get back to my turn at rebuilding the Chevelle.