69 Impala SS convertible

[JustJohn]

Pulled up my carpets this weekend and found this:

I knew I needed floor pans as I could see the half-posteriored previous repair from under the car.



Have a lot of work to do to get this thing ready for the Power Tour in 2018.

Passenger side is already cut out and pans are on the way. Also learned about ESAB Easy Grind MIG wire so we'll see what that's about on this project.

[andrewb70]

Are you building a time machine too? :-)

Andrew

[JustJohn]

Are you building a time machine too? :-)

Andrew

I do have a pretty solid high energy physicist working for me...

[JustJohn]

This is hard. Passenger side is mostly complete with some lessons learned about welding. The biggest one is patience, followed by making sure you cut back enough metal, followed by don't let the edge of the flap disk nick your knuckles.
I pulled out an old sheet metal repair to put real pans back in and documented the factory manual shift tunnel. It is the original body color and has factory seam sealer. Not sure how or why it got mangled somewhere along the way. I wasn't originally going to deal with it this go-round but decided to drill the spot welds and repair the tunnel shift hump mount as well. This is fast spiraling into "well at this point no big deal to also pull the engine to take care of oil leaks." Feel like I will be living in the garage until June getting this thing sorted for the road trip.
On the upside, the only burn I have is not from welding, but the corn bread pan the other night.

[Chevygirl29]

Question... What size rotors are on this and bolt pattern? I have a 70 that has all the original parts, and that means they don't make this 2 piece rotor and hub any more. The bolt pattern I have is 5" x 4.5" ..the rotor is 11.75". I have searched Ford, Chevy, Dodge...and am stuck. The center is 3.670" . We were told it's a two year model..yay..Just the luck. Any help is appreciated.

[JustJohn]

rear C3 Corvette rotors will fit the front (68 - 83).

I've also see commercially available rotors for the OE application.

[Chevygirl29]

We were told this particular set up was only run for 2 yrs..(just our luck) . I will check and see what I can find on that. Thank you for a point of reference. The dang car is original. It's a project my kid fell in love with...but I have a bout had it. It's blocking my Scout from being built..doesn't make me a happy kid at all..lol

[JustJohn]

https://www.summitracing.com/search/...t/model/impala

[Chevygirl29]

The bolt patterns are wrong on these. The ones I have are like Ford. They are 5 on 4.5.. These are all 5 on 4.75. The first and third are too small. If the bolt pattern was right the second is just about the right size. Mine are 11.75".. these are 11.77...so..just about right.

[Don Zimmer]

This a sweet piece. I'm doing a 1970 Impala Custom Coupe Restomod. Auto to 5 Speed conversion. Tremec TKO 600. One thing I'll miss is cupholders!

[JustJohn]

This is how it always goes. I've been back and forth on the console for this car since I've had it. The factory manual set up is virtually unobtainium so I was reluctant to take out the original pieces. On the other hand, I seem to have no issues taking out other original pieces.

So out it goes.


Have some bracket fabricating and parking brake relocation to do but it otherwise looks like it belongs there.

[JustJohn]

This is probably painfully boring but it's a good way to track my own progress. Happy with how the floors are turning out and my welding continues to improve. Also learned the transmission comes in in a couple of hours if it hasn't been together for 25 years... I had been dreading the job more than I needed to. Also discovered carbide burrs for weld finishing around tight curves and generally just chewing away material really quickly. Feel like I'm ahead of schedule for the Power Tour but we'll see how it goes.

[JustJohn]

Finally getting some pieces in so I can make progress on the interior. I decided to find a fifth gen Camaro and just cut the hand brake mount out of the transmission tunnel. Glad I did because it saved fabricating a mounting bracket and already has a through hole with a grommet lined up as a complete assembly. I have to check drive shaft clearance but it should be no different from the Camaro. Learned a valuable lesson about cordless grinders. Buy more big batteries. I used all three of the ones I took and barely got what I needed cut out. I would have cut more but the middle of a scrap yard, no batteries, and no outlet nearby limited what I could do so I got this:

Trimmed it up at home and it will be about perfect for what I'm doing.
Also got the seats in, minor snafu on the brackets from Corbeau but they are taking care of it and sending replacements. At least I could lay out the console and seats. Also surprised at how well the seat pattern picks up on the ribbed portion of the door panels. So much so that I think I'll be happy with stock door panel replacements provided someone can cover the wood grain. Going to add another inch further back to the shifter offset and everything should line up.

Ripping apart the new Camaro was educational. The battery cable runs along the transmission tunnel with no additional protection for the cable other than where it makes a right angle turn from the back seat. Will probably borrow that routing since it requires less fabrication and more protection for the cable.

[JustJohn]

Finally got everything where it needs to be for the interior. The Camaro parking brake has a fairly serious design flaw which I discovered for myself and after some online research. The primary cable stop is a piece of plastic. I had just about gotten the aluminum guide tube on mine bent to point in the right direction when the plastic broke on one of the test fits. Since I had a spare brake handle, I took it apart without regard to needing it back in order to see if it could be improved. Fortunately the answer is yes and I'll have the last part in another day or so.

That rendered my Camaro tunnel section obsolete so I just made a bracket.

Because I got to cut up the donor car, I retained the factory console mounting points. The two screw holes at the front most tip probably would have gone unnoticed.

Then another check with all the pieces in place. Happy with how it's coming together.

[JustJohn]

Took a day off to catch up, I feel a little behind to have the car road trip ready by the end of May. Of all the things i'm putting back together this round of projects, the parking brake has given me the most headaches and been the most time consuming. The will be parking brake 3.0 due to the new console. I wanted a functioning hand actuated brake based on the Camaro assembly so I initially cut the tunnel section out of a donor car and was just going to graft it in. The Camaro cable guide is a section of bent aluminum tubing with a plastic base to act as a stop against the applied load. I said plastic so you know where this is going. I was able to bend the aluminum tube in the direction I needed it to go with my brake tube bender and though I had everything buttoned up when the plastic base broke on the last test fit. After a little digging around on the internet, I found this was not an uncommon failure in the factory application. Since I had a spare parking brake handle, I was able to take one apart without worrying about having to find an additional and it was pretty much the same design as GM has been using for the last 60 years.

I ordered a custom cable assembly as was able to do this:

This is the cover plate cut away and the new cable in place. The new anchor was larger than the GM part so I had to open the hole up some with a carbide burr. Tacked another retaining cover in place and I had a functioning universal park brake handle with a threaded rod at the other end.

From there I was able to trim down my previous Lokar parts and get back to a working parking brake. I did have to cut my initial cable anchor apart and change the departure angle. My first attempt had me exiting through a floor support.

I should be able to clean all this out a lay down some epoxy over the weekend. Will finally be able to leave some interior pieces in place.

[JustJohn]

I use these as my desktop background at work to stay motivated.

[JustJohn]

I got a new carpet set from these guys for Christmas and also bought the recommended EVA sound deadener.

Carpet overall looks like good stuff. The damping material is an entirely different matter: It was die cut and did fit the car. On the minus side, it was tar-based roofing material. If I had left this stuff in, the car would have smelled like a paving crew truck every time the weather turned warm. Probably would have overwhelmed some people. My solution was to use it as templates to cut mass loaded vinyl pieces and use those instead. Probably saved me a couple hours.

I would advise staying away from ACC EVA carpet backing unless you want it for templates. It's cheap material and about 15 years behind what the car audio set is currently using.

[JustJohn]

Constantly feel like I'm behind on getting this thing together for the Power Tour. Pushed out a few things to another season to focus on the essentials, like seats. Close to bolting them in and leaving them for at least 8 months...
One thing I don't see here that I see on audio forums is mass loaded vinyl underlayment. It's not as pretty as using too much Dynamat but actually matters more for NVH reduction. Here's what I ended up with after using the ACC tar paper as stencils. I bridged a few pieces to cover gaps and used an adhesive closed cell foam as a backing/decouple layer. For a convertible, this car will be quieter than it ever was.

[JustJohn]

Plodding along with the interior. I had intentionally set the Camaro console up higher so that it would actually function as an arm rest knowing there would be some issues with the close out at the bottom. I spent some time with my leftover ABS this weekend and got this far:

If I had a 9 foot long section of ABS I might be able to get this done out of one piece. Instead, I'll bond the 3 pieces together and cover them in grained vinyl to hide the seams. Not bad, I think, for something I'm going to put seats in front of. Otherwise, getting in the car and looking down at the gap would have bothered me forever.

[68Formula]

One thing I don't see here that I see on audio forums is mass loaded vinyl underlayment. It's not as pretty as using too much Dynamat but actually matters more for NVH reduction. Here's what I ended up with after using the ACC tar paper as stencils. I bridged a few pieces to cover gaps and used an adhesive closed cell foam as a backing/decouple layer. For a convertible, this car will be quieter than it ever was.

Thanks for mentioning this. I'm looking to cut down noise as much as possible in my vert. Always figured there must be something in addition to Dynamat that could help.

So are you saying you used the adhesive closed cell foam on top of the MLV, before putting down the carpet?