Yesterday 10/17/98
we began the restoration of my dad's chevelle. There were
many amazing things that I discovered about it one of the
most amazing things though was the fact that the bolts were
ALL hand tight and some weren't even there. When we took the
engine out we discovered a even more suprising thing it wasn't
a 70 Chevelle engine up until then we hadn't been able to
find the casting numbers because they had been ground off or
something because they weren't there. When we got it out we
found some numbers on it that revealed that thank goodness it
was a 454 because it looked kind of small when we pulled it
out. When we looked up the numbers for it, it was a 72
chevelle engine. Now comes the interesting part. One of the
exaust manifolds was for a 454 this one had a small crack so
it has to be replaced the other one was from a 396. When we
finally got done looking up the numbers it appears that the
car was orignally an LS6 and was used for racing or something
else that would be very stressful on it that would cause the
engine blow or be damaged beyond repair, because the
tachometer red lines at 6500 where on an LS5 they red line at
5500. When we pulled the heads of it said pass which stands
for passenger this is on the LS5 the LS6 says HI PER meaning
high performance.
The other day
we discovered what kind of transmission we have. It is a M-21
from a 68 Chevelle. We also began peeling the paint off of
the body. we used a stripper called "Aircraft Remover"
with razor blades this is the way to go, if you can't afford
soda blasting. It takes saying you work an hour and a half a
day on it roughly two weeks to get it all of. A can of this
is about $20(US) and the razor blades are cheap one can will
do at least one car even if it has a lot of Bondo, which it
causes to bubble up. I would know because our car was covered
in it and didn't need any of it. The seats also came back
from being recovered and look great especially since we
discovered our car came with bucket seats not the bench that
was in it when we bought it.
Since I last
updated this we have began work on the paint of the car. We
have already put a coat of primer on the whole thing. We also
had to replace the driver's side door because it had a lot of
damage done to it that had been covered up with bondo. We
have also decided after finding out about the damage that had
been done to my car's frame that we would go ahead and pull
the frame out from under his and make sure his doesn't have a
crack.
Well the frame
had a little more than a crack it had what looked like a
front end collision so we had to fix that problem with a new
frame. We also found the build sheet from it in about a
million pieces and only about half of it there. GM had a
genious idea of sticking them on top of the gas tank on some
cars so it was in pretty bad shape.
Well its been
a LONG time since I last updated this page I've been trying
to for the past week but because of the Yahoo!GeoCities merger its been kind of difficult to
do updates so here goes.
Since I last
updated we went out to California and picked up our LS6
engine which the guy who rebuilt it for us said that it
actually put out stock 510HP even though GM rated it
at 450HP because of the cube law. The same guy also got us an
M22 "Rockcrusher" transmission. We stopped by many
of the car parts places out there and picked up parts for it.
The trip wasn't to bad till we got to Albuquerque on the way
there and on the way back we ran into a blizzard both times
and ended up running in 4-wheel drive for 200 hundred miles.
It was much worse on the way back because the trucks had
gotten jack-knifed on the highway and so they were blocking
the highway so we flipped on the 4-wheel drive went into the
ditch (with a double axle trailer in a suburban) went around
them and didn't see another car till we got out of the snow.
The reason was that they had shut the highway down and we
were the last car to get through.
When we got
back and got the carb on the engine and everything else on it
ready we fired it up and it was running horrible. We had
someone who knew everything about engines come in and he
heard it thirty seconds and said it was leaking air and the
intake wasn't tight and that solved it. The next problem was
when the dip stick visited the other side of the room! Thats
what 11.25 to 1 compression does if it isn't vented. The next
weekend we bolted the transmission on and it was balanced
pretty good and we were putting on the motor mounts and it
starts to tip so I grab onto it like I'n going to hold that
thousand pound engine up and my heart stopped for a few
seconds there but luckly it just tipped up and didn't flip or
this web page would have stopped here. I have a whole bunch
of pictures of it I will post in the next few days so that
you can see what it looks like.
This is after
we got the engine and tranny in it before we put them back
under the car. Heres what the body looked like.
That day the
amzing part was that even though it was a different frame it
lined up perfect on the bolts. The bad thing is that we had
to have the frame straightened as you can see the left sides
lower than the right in the pictures. Heres what it looked
like once we got the body and radiator support on.
This is a
picture of one of the fenders on the car.
Here is the
hood which after painting it 4 times on the maroon and the
stripes twice we finally got it right. The problem with it
was it developed fish eyes. We never were able to find the
problem so we just used an anti-fish eye chemical.
Here is the
fender after it has been repainted. Later on we ended up
repainting the right one again because we waxed through the
paint.
The next
project we started was rewiring the interior which is no easy
task, because it was wired completely wrong. The clock was
wired to the radio and the radio was wirered to the clock. So
the radio stayed on and the clock stopped with the car
interesting huh. I finally got that fixed after a month and
about fifty fuses. We also had to send the tach off to be
repaired we sent it to "The Tach Man" where it is currently being
repaired and should be back in about a month. The only
complaint I have is that it takes such a long time to have it
fixed.
Today 6/28/99
we put the hood on and finished wet sanding the fender and
quarter after we waxed through and should finish buffing it
tomorrow. The next time I update it should be finished and I'll
have the finished pictures.
Well the Tach
has finally come in and we haven't replaced it yet. Were
waiting for Christmas break when we can completely repaint
the dashboard where it will look new. We have been driving it
around though and it sure does run. Over Christmas we may
also pull the motor because when it blew the oil filter off
it seems to have blew the gasket out in the back of the oil
pan so it leaks oil. After we get that done it will probably
be done. Still haven't got any pictures developed but I hope
to soon.
The
Chevelle Ring 
