ShoeString 62'

Froward movement

2009-02-27T13:12:00.004-07:00

Well it has been awhile and the temperature is warming up where I can work in the garage again. So last night I started working on the Impala again. I am close to finishing the dissemble and then its steamed cleaning, and media blasting, and primer then the work of restoration will begin. My goal is to have the car primed by the end of April.

Here is the info on the transmission it is a Brog Warner T10 4 speed build at the beginning of 1961. it has the cast iron front housing and the Aluminum tail. It has a 10 spline input and a 16 spline out out. It needs a rebuild since it jumps out of second gear often. So I may be rebuilding it or replace it with a 5 speed t5 out of a mid 90 camaro

62 Impala work

2008-12-23T13:30:00.001-07:00

Well I have gotten some work done over the last few weeks. Not the progress that I would like to see, but any progress is good. Since the shop space that I have is tight, I have to find ways to make sure that I have room to do my projects.

So once I got my 409 on the engine stand I wanted to be able to be able to store it over the frame when not working on the car. To accomplish this I needed to remove the power steering, steering box, control arms. All of these items were going to be removed and replaced at some point, so I have removed them and am able to store the 409 and maintain my shop space.

I continue to remove the trim and am almost done with that. After that I will finish removing the exhaust, transmission, drive line, glass, and rear bumper. with that done I will be ready to remove the car from the frame and start the restoration and customization process. I am hoping to have the frame off at the end of January.

New Power

2008-12-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

In the consideration and planning stages of this car, it was decided to leave the engine as it was with some mild upgrades to it. The car came with a Chevy 350 with a four speed. I found some simple builds to make a nice performing 355. That was the plan. In the back of my head I thought it would be great to put a Chevy 409 in this car, not a common engine, and a great engine for this car.

The old 350

So I began to watch eBay and various other sites for a engine block, but most were out of my price range at the time. So I waited and continued to evaluate the car its issues and what I was going to do to the car. I spent a lot of time at a web site dedicated to these engines http://www.348-409.com/ which was a great source for information and engine build suggestions. This is where I found my engine, a member in South Dakota was selling a 409 short block from a truck, a perfect engine for my car.

Fine 409

So long story short I switched gears from evaluation to disassembly of the front end of the car and pulling the 350 out of the car. I was able to sell the 350 and offset some of the cost of engine. So on the stand now is the New power plant for the car a Chevy 409, she's so fine.
The 350 out of the car and my little helper

Out with the old

2008-12-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in another post it was the interior that started me on this project of restoration. I was not planning a full scale restoration but just some simple things, like redoing the interior back to original, fixing the dent and doing some minor rust repair. But the best laid plans do not always go as planed.

Thus was the case with the interior. The plan here was to remove the seats that were in there and replace with orginal bucket seats up front and bench seat in the rear, and to clean up the interior, new carpet, remount the tachometer, and gauges, up grade the stearo I spent months looking for orginal seats that were in good condition, I had a lady lined up to do the apoulstery for the seats. A simple enough plan, but as those that restore cars know that is not always the case.

The floor pan damage

Up on the removal of the carpet and seat I found that to get the seats to fit there were some "Modifications" to the floor. The floor brace was cut down to almost nothing and some house siding tin filling in the holes with a few sheet metal screws holding the entire thing together. I also discovered that there was rust along the side rails. Since I do not own a welder I found a guy locally that restores old trucks, Jay's Classic in Kuna, that did the welding for me and replaced the floor pan and cut out the rust along the side rails. This however lead me to start to do a real evulation of the car, and with that the realization that I had a lot more work to do on this car and thus the Shoestring 62' project was born.

The Repaired floor