So Jeff has this 1965 Chevy Impala
SS that he's been working on since he was 9. This is what it looked
like when it first arrived at
his parents place in Maine.
|
 |
Here he is at age 9 working on the
rust. It's funny. I have similar memories of working on motors
and motor
parts for my father when I was this
age. A little kerosene never hurt anyone that young.
|
 |
In the fall of 1998 he had it
delivered from Maine to our garage, though it sat in a garage in a
town up the
road for a couple of weeks.
Here we are moving it out of the temporary garage.
|
 |
Soon after getting the
car to our garage, he stripped it down to the frame including
removing the body from
the frame. With the body up on jacks and
blocks, he could work on the frame
and underside of the
body.
|
 |
Here you see the
entire frame is dismantled with the rear axle sitting in the
background. This was done to
have the frame sandblasted and
painted. We hauled it (in the back of Jeff's truck) to an industrial
painter
to do the job.
|
 |
Here we are picking up the
frame from the sandblaster/painter. The hardest part of this job for
us was
getting the fiberglass cap off
of Jeffs truck.
|
 |
Now jump ahead to Sept. 2000. Finally we get around
to putting the frame back together. The springs in
the rear were
fairly easy to get back on.
|
 |
The
springs in the front were an entirely different story. We built a
home-made spring compressor tool to
get them back in the
A-arms.
|
 |
Somewhere in the 2001/2002
timeframe Jeff got a 350 V8 to go in the car. Here's Jeff using the
chain hoist
to lower the motor into the
frame.
|
 |
With the motor lowered
in and bolted, we threw on the carb for
show.
|
 |
Jump ahead nearly 4 years
and you have March 13, 2004. The car was finally ready to
be mounted back
to the frame. Though not necessary to the days
work, we (Bill, myself and Jeff's cousin Aaron) decided to
remove
the
windshield and trim.
|
 |
More
windshield
and trim work.
|
 |
Here we've lowered
the
rear down to the frame.
|
 |
Having some fun before
we lower the entire body to the frame. Check out that nice trunk.
All new steel and
paint.
|
 |
With the body completey
down on the frame, we all decided to go for a
ride.
|
 |
With the body lowered
we all went about a various tasks for the day. The blurriness that
is Aaron was
working on
the inside firewall insulation. Bill
and I were bolting down the 12 (of
14) body mounts.
|
 |
Another shot of Aaron.
|
 |
Aaron's nightmare.
|
 |
With all good
restoration projects comes a little fabrication. Here I started
making an emergency brake
cable bracket. I should get jeff to
get a picture of the finished product. It's pretty cool making parts
from
scratch.
|
 |
Some brake bleeding has
occurred in this picture (you can see the fluid on the driver side
brake drum),
though Jeff is either taking a nap at the moment or
moved onto the emergency
brake setup.
|
 |
We grabbed one of the
fenders and leaned it against the car to help make it look
a little more like a car.
|
 |
The most important
accomplishment of the day was that we got anything done at all with
all the
beer we consumed..
|
 |
|
|
|
