My 1964 Impala Restoration - Page 7

February 5th 2011 - I spent the day removing a fair amount of the interior. Predictably the under dash area took a long time.

The floor pans are in great shape with the exception of an area above the mufflers that has the paint cooked and slightly rusted as a result. There is also a small rust hole in the passenger side pan. No doubt due to past leaks with the heater core keeping the floor damp. There is lots of rust in the picture, but only the area around the screwdriver is deep rust.

February 6th 2011 - More interior removal. I have the heater core box removed, which required removing the fan and ducting from the engine side of the firewall. Finally getting things down to the firewall layer. The bright orangish areas are not rust, but a glue used to hole insulation in place. You can still see a few scraps of the insulation hanging in there, but most has fallen out long ago.

You can see the adhesive here again, and the duller more rust colored areas are actual surface rust on the parts that support the steering wheel and brake pedal. You can see the uneven fading of the paint on the dash and steering column areas. It is a bit more green colored than these photos show.

Now it is a question of how much of the wiring to strip out.

Headliner removed. Things look pretty good up there.

Steering wheel and instrument cluster removed. Now it is ready to go to the body shop.

February 8th 2011 - Finally, the Impala is now at All Quality Collision and Restoration, it's new home for the next few months where Richard and his crew will be working their magic.

One casualty of the disassembly process was the center A/C Vent. The plastic is so brittle from age that parts were popping off as I tried to gently remove it. It does not appear to be reproduced.

It turns out that National Impala Association makes a reproduction! Unline most reproductions, this one fits perfect.

February 10th 2011 - Rear bumper is off.

Some ancient stow-aways that have been hidden under the bumper.

February 10th 2011 - The front and back windshields came out today. I was expecting some nasty rust around the lower part of the rear window. This is a common problem on these older cars, since water tends to collect there. The dirt and caulking need to be cleaned off to make a full assessment, but it looks like the rust is minimal.

The front glass area looks to be in even better condition.

February 11th 2011 - Things move fast when you have pros working on the car. Side glass, doors, front bumper and grill came off today.

February 12th 2011 - Fenders and trunk lid are off now.

Back at home, I am working on the power bench seat which has not worked for 20 years. Power seats are an unusual option back then and even more unusual for a farily basic 4 door Impala. So far it looks like a some petrified grease in the transmission was keeping things from engaging.

The solenoid pushes a metal sleeve onto the metal disk with the 'teeth' on it to engage with the plastic gear. The metal disks had the petrified grease that was preventing them from moving properly.

February 14th 2011 - I did a little license plate archeology. In preparation for getting the license plates restored, I removed the layers of stickers under the month sticker. I was surprised to find the original 1964 registration sticker at the bottom. A little online research informed me that back then there was no “month sticker”. Rather you just put your annual registration sticker on alternating sides of the plate. Even years started on the left, odd years started on the right. So that explains why it was on the left. Apparently the “month sticker” came out in the early 70’s and from there on, the annual sticker went on the right side. I removed the 1964 sticker for preservation.

Under the old OCT month sticker is a 1973 annual sticker.

I went to visit the Impala at All Quality, and the doors and trunk lid are already at Burlington Engineering for a wet process stripping which will get all the rust and old paint out. The body will follow for blasting with fine glass particles rather than sand.

February 23rd 2011 - The doors, front fenders and trunk lid are back from being stripped at Burlington Engineering. The guys at All Quality were really going to town getting them prepped and painted with some self etching primer. With all the metal freshly bare, it needs protection from rust.

There are signs of past damage repair on both fron fenders. Here you can see holes made to pull out a dent.

February 24th 2011 - Dropped of a new hood from Classic Industries. The old hood had too much rust under the lip in the front to be practical to save.

The trim holes were not lined up very well, but hopefully close enough to work. As I recall the bolts to the trim clips are small, so there is room to move things about.

The guys at All Quality are making good progress on things. The trunk already has some filler on it. The fenders are getting extra holes welded up. Sometime in the past, somebody attached some of the side trim with pop rivets. Also there is a row of holes near the front of each fender from some slide hammer work, pulling out dents from a past accident. This time they are getting filled in properly with welds, rather than Bondo.

February 25th 2011 - The car is back from media blasting. Things look pretty good. One of the benefits of being a California car.

The paint on the roof was left for manual removal. The risk of warping the lightly supported roof was too high.

The area around the front and rear windows came out quite nice. Most folks get a lot of rust here.

The floor came out nice too.

The rust spot on the passenger side front floor board (from leaking heater cores of years gone by) turned out to have more holes after blasting. Not unexpected as the rust was deep around the one hole I found.

The trunk looks better than I thought it would. There is a bit to fix where the body support on the passenger side that connects to the trunk area, is rusted enough to need some patching/welding.

Probably the worst area is the passenger side tail light area where things rusted through a bit.

The body is being prepped for a coat of self etching primer.

Work continues on the fenders and doors.

Self etching primer on the body.

The hard work doing the body work continues at All Quality Collision and Restoration. Not very glamorous, but the fill and sand routine is crucial to getting smooth surface to paint on. And they are still just getting started.

The bumpers are getting stripped down in preparation the trim restorer who will restore all the trim and re-chrome the bumpers