Testing my patience.

This has been a tough week for me, partly because I get frustrated easily by parts that don't fit. Not a good trait when building a custom pro-touring car.  Perhaps a little odd as well since I do like a challenge.  Tomorrow there is a car show in Forest Park for only original cars, I guess for people that like to take the easy route.  This week I was somewhat wishing I had done that, but I'm sure it will be worth the pain some day.

Starting off this week is something that did work well.  I ordered a custom driveshaft from Brent Crownover at Driveshaft Specialist Incorporated in San Antonio.  We talked through my plans for the Chevelle, and he recommended a 3.5" aluminum driveshaft.  His price was very reasonable, they shipped it out in less than a week, and you can see it fit perfect. Obviously I can't say how it drives yet, but based on my interaction I would definitely recommend them if you need a custom driveshaft. It should be plenty strong and with less weight spin smoothly at highway speed.

 Next is on to the steering.  I've read lots of different reports on what fits and what doesn't, so I wasn't quite sure how this was going to go.  I went with a pretty stock setup, only changing the steering box to a 93-98 Jeep Grand Cherokee.  It's a direct bolt up to the frame, so that part is good.  The steering linkage runs into the exhaust headers and alternator, but more on that later. With difference in the oil pans, motor adapter plates, sway bars, and steering parts, there are many combinations you could end up with.  My kit uses an Addco sway bar that comes very close to the idler arm.

With the box in place, I pulled off the Jeep pitman arm, and tried to fit up my new Chevelle part.  Here was the first problem - CPP sent a manual steering box Pitman arm; I need a power steering box part.  The difference is the hole attached to the box is a different size.  Jill says the tech on the phone was arguing with her until she read the part number back to them.  I guess they didn't believe that they had shipped the wrong part.  Hopefully when we get the correct power steering pitman arm it will fit without issues.

 All of the steering parts are new from CPP.  The tie rod ends are much beefier than original.  Obviously I'm guessing on alignment (probably could measure front and back of wheels and get somewhere close); with the new parts it appears that they will be right at the edge of being able to adjust properly to get the toe in correct.

 The sway bar came as part of the pro-touring kit from CPP and is an Addco part.  It is much larger than the factor bar, and looks to have lots of universal parts.  The bar itself appears to be of high quality.

The holes in the brackets for the sway bar needed drilled out so they would fit the factory holes in the frame.  Also Addco did not send bolts, so I had to make another stop for new bolts.  It felt cheap that they would not include new bolts. I powdercoated the gold cadmium plated brackets to cover the grinding, and they looked ugly. Much better in all black, although I may need to go back and touch up all of the bolts with black later.

 With the steering in place, next step was the headers.  I purchased a set of Dougs Headers (from Petronix) specifically made for this swap, so I'm thinking no problem fitting them.  Well, the drivers side appears to tuck nicely and should allow the steering linkage to fit properly with the LS1.  That part is good.  The quality of the headers is also excellent.  Problem is now on the passenger side, where the header hits the bellhousing and the frame.  I see Holley now makes a cast header that fits nicely to the block.  If I had a chance to do it over, I think I would have purchased the Holley header because it looks like it would save some of these headaches. I cannot recommend Doug's Headers if you are doing this swap. Hopefully if any car guys are reading this you can give me some tips or let me know how much of a problem these will be.

To get the drivers side header to fit, I used a large socket and a 3lb hammer to dimple the tubes.  In the picture you can see what needed to be done.  The right side needed pretty much the same treatment.  Thankfully the ceramic coating is very tough and took the 'adjustment' well without cracking.

The next three pictures show the final fit.  There is probably 1-2 mm at the narrowest point.  I'm a little worried as the motor flexes under acceleration that it will bump, but hope that under normal driving there isn't enough vibration to cause a problem. There is tons of room on the left side that the header could have been made tighter to the block. There is no excuse for a design this bad that I can see.  I also don't like that the O2 sensor bung faces outwards.  There is plenty of room on the inside by the transmission, and it would have made a much cleaner look.  Yes, it is under the car, but still I want everything nice and tidy.  Sure, I'll admit I'm a perfectionist.  They show under car cameras at Barrett Jackson (not that the Chevelle would ever be there), so people do care about the underneath.

Okay, on to the right side.  The header hits the bellhousing by the starter.  There is lots of extra meat here, so a few minutes with a grinder and...

 ...this is what I came up with. Sharp eyes will notice the piece I removed at the bottom of the picture.  Looking at a few forums this seems to be a common modification, so plenty of space here.  Tip for anyone trying this - install the starter now.  Don't so it after putting the header on like the direction say.  It will go on, but it's not fun.

 And again the final result after lots of test fitting and pounding.  You can see on the bellhousing side there is now plenty of room.  The starter solenoid is a little close for my comfort, so hopefully it is designed to take the heat.  If I have any hot start issues later, I'll know why.

 The starter wiring needs to go towards the front of the car, underneath the header.  It looks obvious now where it should go, but trust me as it's going together sometimes obvious isn't quite what you think.

The dipstick goes back in the middle of the header. So, here comes the final problem - only six of the eight plug wires fit with the header.  The wires have an aluminum shield to keep them safe from the heat, and on the second plug back from the front on both sides, it hits.  If it were flexible, all would be good, but last I checked there isn't a lot of flexibility in aluminum tubing.  Any suggestions?  Not sure how I'm going to solve this problem, but I figure that is for another day.  New plugs first, since it will never be easier to change them.

 And the final product.  Driver side too close to frame, passenger side is close on both sides, two plug wires don't fit.  It doesn't look like there is any chance they will hit the floor as many report with other headers, so that should be good.  They should make these a little lower to the ground so they would easily go under the transmission crossmember.  I guess whomever makes the exhaust will get to deal with this. Notice plenty of space for O2 sensors on the inside, but bungs to the outside. Man the frame rails on an A-body are narrow! Hopefully next week finish up the steering and on to trying to make the floor fit.

Got the frame back from paint

The frame came back a couple weeks ago - I was out of town so Jill and the shop guys had to push it into the garage in the pouring rain.  Hopefully the only time it sees rain.  I finally made it out today to check out the work Jack and his crew at Specialized Collision have done. I won't say more about the cost other than it was expensive, but everything builds off the top of a solid frame.  The body work is cosmetic for the most part, the frame and suspension have to function well.  I had the frame boxed were it was only c-channel from the factory.  The first few pictures are of the boxing in the rear section (around the trunk/gas tank).  You can't tell that it wasn't originally this way; the welding makes the factory welds look horrible.  In fact, they are pretty much invisible.

 The next few shots are of the rear axle installed with the new disc brakes, suspension, and completely rebuilt original 12-bolt rear axle with 3.07 gears.  The kit was from Classic Performance Products.  Parts generally fit okay, except the pre-bent brake lines that were no where near correct.  The emergency brake cables are also a little long, so I will need to figure out that at a later date.

 The aluminum shocks and differential cover are really just bling, but they look good against all of the black.  The kit adds a rear sway bar, that is not available on a '65 Chevelle.  This should help, along with all of the new suspension, with the handling since muscle cars weren't known for turning corners.

 You can see the boxing in the center sections in the next few pictures.  Again perfect welds you would not know there were there.  The shop added the end plates to the transmission crossmember and set the pinion angle on the transmission.  They reused the original crossmember by my request, to help keep the original look as much as possible.

 Notice the factory welding apparent at the seam to the left of the picture, and compare that to the seam at the right.  Looks like one solid boxed piece now.  I've read that the open frame is like a wet noodle, helps with the ride by flexing over bumps, but is terrible for handling.

 And a few shots of the front suspension.  I still need to install the sway bar and the steering arms, but that will have to wait for paint and more free time.  The ride height was set by the shop pretty low.  I'm sure it will look good, but I plan to raise it to close to the highest setting to make sure we have plenty of ground clearance.  Last thing we need to to scrape the frame or bottom out on the oil pan.

And just so you remember what we started with, here is a picture during disassembly before:

 and after...  what a difference.  Better than original!

Finishing off the trunk

With the Daytona 500 in rain delay today, I had a chance to get back out to the garage and finish up the trunk pan in the Chevelle.  It feels good to have this part done and checked off the list.  Today's blog is more pictures of the process so you can see how we decided to do the floor.  After talking to several different people, I decided to piecemeal the floor back together.  If I did this again, I probably would have replaced the whole floor, rather than just up to front edge of the trunk. I do think we did the right thing by leaving the original inner fender wells, even though they had to be pieced together where there was some rust where it connected to the trunk pan.

In this picture, you can see the repair and the passengers side where I replaced the edge of the inner fender well.

 The bottom corners of the inner fender wells were rotted where they attached to the trunk pan, so they needed replaced. I formed this from 16 gauge sheet steel and patterned it off what was left of the original.  The first picture is what I started with, showing in the next two what was replaced.

Here you can see the repair of the passenger side wheel well from the inside.

The drop downs (where the trunk attaches to the quarter panel) were in perfect shape, but suffered a little damage when we cut out the old floor.  A little patchwork and they are as good as new, without worries about whether a new part was in the right place.

On both sides, the brace under the front of the trunk to the frame was rusted at the ends that attach to the inner fender.  It is this mess that left me wanting to replace the pan including this brace.  The brace was fine, so I welded a patch over the opening.  It should be plenty strong, since it is now welded solid rather than spot welds.

 I cut the trunk floor up to just where it bends down into the pan.  The full pan includes the part where my welding helmet is sitting.  I used the lip to weld the new pan to.

With a full pan, you can't slide it into place with the quarters on the car, so we had to get a little creative.  The edges of the pan were folded up, so we could lift the pan into place.  With the pan fit, we hammered the edges back down, and spot welded them to the drop downs.  It was all I could do to not fully seam weld the trunk in place, but I resisted and did it with spot welds.  I think it will be strong enough.

The rear edge of the trunk floor welds to the drop downs, and supports the rear of the car.  We had to do some hammering of the inner fender wells to get the trunk to slide forward, and both side were spot welded using the holes I punched in the flange.  We made the distance from the pan to the rear edge of the drop down the same on both sides, although from the top, it looks like the drivers side should sit farther forward about 1/4" to 1/8".

After the rear and sides were fit well, I went to work on the front edge of the trunk. We started welding it from underneath, since the two parts wanted to flex apart if you tried to hammer on them.  A few spot welds from underneath allowed us to hammer the edge together, and it was welded seamlessly across.

Here you can see the welding process from underneath -

And, the final product. The braces, although very hard to work around, kept everything perfectly aligned so the trunk gaps are exactly where they need to be.  The inside edge of the trunk floor was welded by laying inside the car and reaching through the back seat.  Not a very ergonomically friendly position to weld in.  The welds are all ground flat, and a little coat of putty over the top and it should look like original.  Next step is to get the frame back and finish the floor above the transmission.

Finally, officially ours!

Four months into the restoration, the Chevelle is officially titled in our names! What a pain.  We had the original title from the 60's when Jill's parents moved from Louisiana back to Iowa.  Impressive that they could still find the original title after all these years.  All of the information was put in by a typewriter.  When was the last time you have seen that? You would think we would just take a signed title and gift receipt to the DMV, and we would be done, but alas, it was not that simple.

Apparently Iowa reissued a title in the 80s that was in the national registry (maybe when they went to a computerized system?), and our DMV would only recognize that title number. Great, except the only real title that exists is the one from the 60's.  Four plus trips to the DMV in each state, calls between the DMV's, and a police check of the VIN on the body, and finally, we were able to pay $11 to get a title!  Aren't you glad that your taxpayer money is funding this?  This wasn't even a case where the car was abandoned or the title past due, everything was up to date and properly signed. I guess they probably don't have a lot of cases where a vehicle stays in the family for 47 years.

Starting on the trunk floor

I caught a cold this week which hasn't helped me make much progress.  I did manage to get the welds under the floorpan ground flat, so that is as far as we can go until the frame is back to measure for the shifter opening.  We braced and started cutting out the trunk floor.  It was full of pinholes, so we decided it would be best to replace everything, so it all has to come out.  The hope is to finish cutting out the old metal this weekend, so we can start test fitting the floor next week. 

 While poking around the edges of the floorpan, I found more rust in the inner fender well.  It looked okay, but was rusted paper thin.  Note to restorers to test all areas to make sure they are solid, even if it looks okay by eye.  It's a small enough area we will cut out the rust here and just weld in a small patch.  Both sides are bad here, with the worst along the edge on the passengers side.  To orient yourself, the rear of the car (front of the trunk) is to the left, the right side of the picture is under the rear seat.