69 Impala SS convertible

[JustJohn]

It occurred to me that this really ends up being a blog more than anything else...

After much procrastination and my job promotion eating away at my time I finally found some motivation to get this thing on the road for the summer. The frame can wait another year.



So that great deal on a big block happened and you realize that's only a part of it: The headers, radiator, fabricated exhaust, up-rated clutch, new motor mounts, and new flywheel. Then there were the tools.

I decided to keep the Mercury racing valve covers because the engine is still sitting in a boat.

[JustJohn]

Starting to get into my pile of new parts. First order is stripping and repainting all the steel sitting under the sheet metal. I picked up an NOS radiator support because there had been some "modifications" to my original one. Hard to believe it sat at a dealership for 47 years.

[JustJohn]

Making progress again on this thing. I feel like I'm ordering Summit parts in my sleep as boxes keep showing up every day.
This weekend was the headers, clutch linkage, and steering box.
Steering box was a chore because the drag link was frozen to the idler and pitman arms. Since I had new parts to go around it was easier to just cut through the pitman arm and unbolt everything else.
The new clutch linkage went right in with no issues - I bought the Speedway kit and they seem to have thought it out well. With a new clutch I have a high pedal and lots of adjustment left when it's needed. You can't really get a clear shot of the entire setup - this is about as much detail that can be seen from one angle.

Headers went it easily (it seemed) with a minor brake line issue. I though it was too close and flipped the brake line bracket as a short term solution. I may go back a fabricate a new line since it's so easy to get to right now. The pipes are ceramic coated but a hot spot on the front brake line strikes me as a bad thing.

So about that easy header install: I read the directions that included "remove the left side motor mount and jack up the engine 2 inches and remove the clutch linkage." The steering box was out and it looked like nothing but room to get the header in place. So I did. Then I went back to install the steering box and gee, it doesn't fit though the headers. So I took off the clutch linkage, disconnected the motor mount and jacked up the engine 2 inches.
Spent the next day tightening things back down and getting back to where I was. I have a minor fit issue with the headers and the rag joint. Initially I thought I might have to swap to a u-joint but maybe a Borgeson rag joint will not have the clearance issue since the safety interlocks don't extend beyond the rag joint disk radius.

New drag link is on the way so that's the next project.

[JustJohn]

Plodding along with progress.

Headers are in and I was able to test fit the collector adapter - I had a little concern about interference with the flanges and the cross member on the passenger side. It's a little closer than I'd like to the top flange bolt so I'm going to have that one spot relief cut down to about 1/8" which should be safe around any engine movement.


Still waiting on parts at this point. My exhaust was lost by UPS so Summit just sent me another one - nice customer service there.
Steering column is still out with Jim at gmtilt.com. Hopefully he will be able to make the changes needed to clear a Borgeson vibration damping u-joint.
Center link is also still out in the wilderness. It was back ordered and will hopefully make an appearance early next week. Right now I don't have much to do except piddle and stare at the current state:

I'd like to move on to some minor sheet metal patching on the inner fender and spraying the last big batch of epoxy but I want to start this thing and put it on the ground first.

[JustJohn]

Feel like I'm getting closer on this. At least I'm running out of new parts laying around.

I wanted to finish off the inner fender metal but found I needed I welding spoon. This was news because I'd never heard of such a thing. After watching a few videos on technique and what it does, I was a little mad I didn't find this thing sooner. I had seen them several times at Harbor Freight visits and here and there until I actually wanted my own. Harbor Freight was out of stock, the big box stores don't seem to carry them, and the downtown hardware store I just happened to be near closed at 6 (it was 6:15). Out of frustration I just ordered one from Amazon, which did not show up until Saturday in spite of indicating that it had been delivered on Thursday. That left me having to focus on a giant pile of stainless pipes from Magnaflow.

Sunday was spent on the exhaust. I didn't exactly fabricate it, but I had never welded stainless before and it was a little more than I expected. What I expected was welding the collectors off the headers and everything else would just be bent to fit. The last time I put together an x-pipe dual exhaust was probably 15 years ago on an XJS I had converted to a Tremec transmission. It was a Keasler kit and fit up with no fabrication at all (In spite of his business practices he had a fondness for the XJS and made some well engineered stuff for them). This Magnaflow set was excess tubing but needed some cutting and welding in places. After some practice pieces, I think I ended up making six pipe welds and the two rear hanger brackets. Left the tips for another day, I was done. Very happy with the day's labor and I have something to show for it.


Now that I have my welding spoon, I think this is the week to get the front end back on.

[JustJohn]

Been ready to paint the inner fenders for a few days but we've had nothing but rain here so I spent Sunday on LED headlight mounts. Philosophical opinions aside, to my eye 4500 to 5000k headlights provide the best visibility so I decided to chuck the stock sealed beams in favor of a set of LED headlights. It was a little more work than I initially though but I'm happy with the results. Especially considering this is my first entirely fabricated car part.
The LED housing are their own buckets and will not fit the stock assembly. I ended up buying a ring roller and came up with this:

I rolled 1/8" x 1/2" flat stock to just clear the new headlight, welded the ring together, used a stock headlight bucket to clamp 16ga sheet metal tabs onto the existing mount ears, and tacked everything together. The LED bucket also had 4 posts at the back of the casting which I had previously ground off and re-sprayed with black epoxy. Assembly was just like the stock units. The new lights protrude about an extra 7mm but this actually brings the trim rings up flush with the edge of the grill. Bare metal version looks like this.

I'll trim up the mounting tabs so everything has the same radius and paint the rings with everything else.

[JustJohn]

Really only interesting to me but it keeps my timeline up to date. The weather finally broke and I was able to get my parts in epoxy.
Biggest pieces I've ever tried to paint and I'm relieved to get it this far. There's some pitting on the driver's side under the battery box so I'm going to practice with filler just for the sake of seeing how it works.

[DualQuadDave]

All the work is great! I love seeing big boats upgraded to turn and burn. FYI, you are the only other person i have seen besides me use those LED headlights. I did them on a 65 Riviera for customer, he loves them. I ended up heavily trimming the stock headlight buckets to keep the adjustment. They work fantastic. check out Global West for B body parts, I know they have some good front end stuff for your car. Good luck!

[JustJohn]

I decided to try out body filler on the inner fender I patched to get a feel for how filler behaves and learn on something that does not have a high cosmetic impact. Basically fill in the corrosion pitting and get back to a smooth surface.
I have learned some things:
If you drip some extra filler, don't leave it on. It's a big deal.
Crap that stuff sets fast.
Rasping and 80 grit paper do save time.

Overall, I think I learned a few things about how this stuff works. One spot I'm not super proud about is near the mounting hole where the material had to have a fold from the stamping die. It's the spot I got frustrated with before my welding technique got better and is basically an eighth inch thick blob of metal. I ground it mostly to shape and let the filler do the rest of the work.
Planning on respraying the epoxy this weekend and I finally get to assemble the front end.

I'll miss being able to "step in" to the engine without having to reach across the fenders.

[JustJohn]

All the work is great! I love seeing big boats upgraded to turn and burn. FYI, you are the only other person i have seen besides me use those LED headlights. I did them on a 65 Riviera for customer, he loves them. I ended up heavily trimming the stock headlight buckets to keep the adjustment. They work fantastic. check out Global West for B body parts, I know they have some good front end stuff for your car. Good luck!

Thanks. There are actually a lot of Global West parts already there. I just got in boxes with parts for the rear suspension plus a set of Viking coil overs.

[JustJohn]

Proceeding at a painfully slow pace. Too much to do this summer and too many projects. Had to fight with my local repair shop to get my wrangler in for hail damage repair. Local shops were swamped and they ended up trucking it to Charlotte for the 3 day turn around?? Still no idea why replacing a hail damage hood is different from replacing a crumpled one.
Finally got the front sheet metal bolted back down, put in the new battery tray, and dropped in the radiator.
I bought a Griffin radiator partly because they are just down the road from me. It fit well and was ready to go out of the box but I had some straightening to do on one of the mounting flanges. It was clearly not shipping damage, which means at least one person let it get out of the factory like that. Not so good.
Next thing is the steering column and then maybe I can try and start this thing.

[JustJohn]

I don't know how you guys with kids AND a job make any progress at all.

Finally found a weekend to run down the timing issue and fire up the 454. Hearing it catch a run again was huge. The big block sounds very different than I remember from the truck. It had separate exhaust branches and a pair of cherry bombs though. Now it's a set of Hooker full headers and a MagnaFlow exhaust with an x-pipe. Ran the new light harness and installed the Viking front coil overs. This is the first time it's seen sunlight in over a year. Still has the small block springs in this picture.
Not thrilled with the header clearance but it will have to work until I can have something fabricated.

I still hate the wheels/tires but have chosen to spend money on more important(to me) car parts.

Will likely have ride height and alignment by next Saturday and then some careful shake down drives.

Hope to get to the rear control arms and shocks this week as well.

[Wraith]

Love the build and your progress!
Your build makes me miss my 69' which I bought my junior year of high school, wish I hadn't of sold it, lots of memories.

[JustJohn]

Finally got the alignment done. It was a minor disaster. The aluminum oil pan I just had to have didn't clear the steering linkage enough to get the full turning radius. Not good on an 18 foot car. The alignment guy set the toe so I wouldn't scrub the tires off and I was back home. Ordered a stock oil pan and while I was at it finished putting in the ridetech rear components.
Now I have a driver and can go through the shake down stuff.
If anyone has a pair of NOS inner lower fender splash guards let me know. I found one side on ebay for $200. Decided maybe I can learn to form ABS sheets myself. Made a couple of these:
Yeah, I thought it looked a little rough too. I bolted it in and did some more contouring with the heat gun. Since the inner fenders are sprayed with Raptor liner, you really have a hard time even picking out the transition:

Next stop, playing with the coil over adjusters and air conditioning.

[JustJohn]

You first gen Camaro/Mustang guys really have an easy time with parts. You can basically build a new 69 Camaro these days.
Some of my parts are either NOS or unobtanium. I need (wanted) new close out panels for the bottoms of the headlight surrounds. Nothing to be found anywhere so I learned some new fabrication methods and got what I needed. Very happy with the results.

[JustJohn]

Last night was installing the electric fans. Very long story but I spend most of my time actively avoiding all things electrical. This is in spite of working as an automotive engineer my entire career. Something finally clicked, maybe it was getting mad at and finally re-wiring my golf cart. At any rate, the stuff no longer seems to bother me. Had to trim the really expensive shroud assembly I ordered because I got my part numbers mixed. Also had to fabricate brackets on the metal shear and break at work. Knowing all that now, I'll just make another shroud at some point.
Wiring is tucked in but temporary. I plan to relocate the battery and run a junction block on the driver's side to cut down on the amount of wire involved. Drove to work this morning and it seems to be behaving like it should.

Speaking of the drive, I always forget how much I like the experience of actually driving this car. It is being put together as a grand tourer, it really couldn't be anything else, and that is exactly what I wanted. Moves without hesitation on the highway and corners flat through long, extended curves. Surprises people, I think, when they expect to see a car that wallows and it just moves where it needs to be.
I see the car every day and don't realize how uncommon they are on the road. People wave and flag me down at the gas station with questions.
Now I need to finish the AC.

[JustJohn]

I am starting to get that "oh my god this is never-ending" feeling. I explained this next phase to the spouse as "installing the AC" which seems simple on a factory air car. It really meant rip out everything under the dash for a Vintage Air unit and since I'm there go ahead with the Dakota Digital gauges, get rid of the simulated wood grain on the dash, and generally do a lot of ABS plastic repair on parts that are NLA.
I had to cut and modify the center dash support to clear the new AC but it looks like I get to keep my full glove box. Interesting that the factory missed a spot weld from the center support to the body - likely the center speaker rattled and was never solved.
I just got the AC hoses crimped today and the gauges have shipped so there is light at the end of the tunnel. Progress:

Also "accidentally" bought a set of C6 Corvette wheels on ebay. I bid low thinking the reserve would never be down there and ended up winning. Plan to fit those this winter along with a new Moser 12 bolt.

[JayinMI]

@Justjohn, A trick for shaping body filler...don't wait until it's FULLY hardened. I do custom car audio fabrication, and if you get your basic shape while it's in it's "green" stage (I've been told it's called this because we used blue hardener with Rage Gold body filler) and is still softish, it can save you a LOT of time. Also, using foam sanding blocks knocked a lot of time off of sanding as well. I usually use 40 grit, then 80 grit while it's soft, then do my finish sanding on finer grits after it has hardened.

Great job.

[JustJohn]

Another case of "no aftermarket parts available."

I've been working on the dash surround for quite a while. It was cracked all the way through at the top and these things are not to be had in decent shape so I learned a new skill and started fixing ABS. The gauge set came in and I opted to use the built in indicators rather than trying to resurrect the originals. Here's the end result:

Not 100% on the AC knobs yet. I have another set from Vintage Air to try.

[JustJohn]

Big push this week is to finish the AC and get back on the road. Pulled vacuum on the new system and it's holding. That "only" leaves wiring everything including the new gauge cluster. I figure if I skip sleeping I can just get it done. Had to test fit the gauge panel withe the new AC ducts...

I keep these as my work computer wallpaper and phone lock screen as motivation.

It doesn't really show but my solution for the old AC vents was to take off all the chrome. I can't get replacements. The center vents may still be a problem but it looks like El Camino vents have the same mounting and size. Going to order a set and try.