Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

I guess after the sonogram well find out if it's going to be a Corvette or a Chevette.

 

So.......Brandon.....which sex is the Corvette....and which is the Chevette??

(And the fighting commences.......)

 

That's a good question. I always think of Corvettes as feminine, but my dad has a '61 Corvette that we have always referred to as male since I was a little kid.

 

Do you and April want one sex over the other for your first baby?

 

We both would prefer to have a boy first to have an older brother to watch out for any potential later children... that, and even with all the seats folded down there isn't enough room in The Clam to haul all the bodies of dead boyfriends away.

We both have a preference but in the end we're leaving it up to God to decide. I'm the last boy in my line of the family so eventually I really want to have a boy to carry on the family name.

Brandon

 

That's a great answer to a loaded question!

 

im a lil late here but CONGRATS to you and the wife

...now hurry and fifnish the wagon while you still have time and money

 

The weather has not been very cooperative. I finished sanding and preparing the body of the car and all I had left to do was to sand the hood and I could take the car to be primered, but the day I was going to work on the hood it decided to start to rain... for five days straight. After the 40 days and nights of flooding I was finally able to start on the hood, but the temperature dropped back down into the 20s at night and the days were sometimes only up to the 40s. I was, in a strange way, actually looking forward to working on the hood. I knew it meant I was almost done with this leg of the job. I would be able to sit it on saw horses so I could finally work on something in a decent position that didn't hurt my back. I was wrong. The paint on the hood was extremely difficult. My best guess as to why, as my dad had said could possibly be a reason, is that perhaps the heat from the engine had baked the paint on over the years. My sand blaster was completely ineffective. It took two entire blaster-jugs full of sand to do an area about 12x12 inches. I knew that would take days and cost a fortune in sand. You could hold the blaster on the paint and for the first second it didn't do anything, and then it would finally remove one small spot. I ended up having to sand the entire hood by hand or with the DA grinder. When I came to a spot that had a pit and needed blasting I would take a piece of green tape and put on the hood to mark the spot I needed to come back to. This took two full days.

It seems everyone around me has been sick. It has been going around this area in a bad way. Some entire counties have even closed schools due to the flu and strep throat. I started to feel sick and I was very scared that I might be coming down with one of the two. I started cramming as much vitamin C as I could. Yesterday I headed over to dad's house as early as I could stand, feeling pretty miserable, and finished the hood and then dad helped me load the car up and I took it up to the body shop. They had a somewhat narrow time frame to fit me in and the rain had already caused a delay so I didn't have time to take a sick day. Despite feeling pretty run down I got it done.

Today I woke up feeling better than I have the last two days. I headed up to the body shop first thing. I took the vacuum to clean up a lot of the left over sand and plenty of other supplies to get the car ready for primer. The sand blaster had damaged some of the tape and paper I had sealed the open spaces with so those areas had to be repaired. I can handle cleaning a little bit of sand out of the carpet but I certainly don't want primer colored spots on the seats.

There is a hill leading up to the door to the paint booth. I backed up to the door as far as I could before the back of the trailer would bottom out on the gravely hill side. This left about a foot between the concrete floor entrance of the paint booth and where the door to the trailer opened to. We had to push the car uphill to get it into the paint booth. There were four of us pushing and it was literally all we could do to get it into the shop; The car is that heavy, even without the engine, glass, doors or front clip. We would have to push the car a few feet and then chock the tire and take a breath.

​

​

After having spent a total of almost a week on the rear driver side door I admitted defeat and let Gary work his magic with it. If you don't account for body-filler dry time, it only took him about an hour. I was glad and also disgusted at the same time. That's why he's the professional. This shop has built plenty of show cars, one of which sold to Jay Leno at one of the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car auctions.

​

While he was at it he fixed one more very small spot that I hadn't gotten to. I snagged this picture of him in action.

​

Here's a picture of the hood. All I have left is to take some sand paper and smooth the individual holes in the vented portion of the hood. I didn't have enough sand to finish each vent hole individually so I'm going to have to finish that up by hand. This is a very, very large hood.

​

Here she is all taped up and ready to go. Almost...

​

​

​

There was one other spot I ended up addressing and that caused me to not finish up today so I'm going to head back up very early tomorrow and finish up, then I can wipe the car down with wax and grease remover and it should be ready to spray. After that I'll come pick the car up and I will prep the rest of the parts since there isn't room to do the body and the other parts all at the same time.

The HEI distributor came in today. I was pointed to the company I bought it from while searching the internet. Here is basically why I bought this distributor: Name brand companies like Summit and Jegs have started selling items made in China by slapping their name on them and still selling them at mark-up prices. Though these Chinese companies have high quality control they still are made cheaper than their domestic counterparts. The company I used, Skip White Performance, uses the same quality products made in China, however they charge a fraction of the price. I got this unit for $53 shipped. The cost of the other products, which are of the same quality, is between $150 and $200. I was scared by the low cost and did a lot of research on this product and the company. I even viewed a dissection of one of these distributors and the machining and assembly is as good of quality as you can expect from a name brand.

I previously ordered a kit that I had believed would allow me to use my original distributor shaft and just install new components to change it over to HEI. I later learned that I was incorrect and what I ordered was only an update kit for older distributors that had originally come with the old style, factory HEI. This kit alone cost 2/3 more than what I paid for this whole distributor and I still would have had to source my own HEI distributor shaft. I'm going to be sending the kit back.

​

 

Great report as always Brandon, when do they shoot the paint?

 

They aren't actually painting it, they're just laying the primer for me. They're laying down three coats of primer (a LOT) and then I'm going to have to block sand everything. Then I'm taking it to get it painted.

Brandon

 

This wagon is going to be a jewel, can't wait to see it completed and Brandon, April and baby enjoying it.

 

The rest of the parts are now back from being primered. I went and picked them up with dad's smaller enclosed trailer. The hood was almost too wide for that trailer, though I wouldn't have thought that initially. It had about an inch to spare on both sides. At the body shop Gary recommended using Sunmite sandpaper for dry sanding. It turns out Sandmite paper costs less than half of the 3M brand paper and doesn't clog up with dust as bad. I've ordered some but it won't be here until Thursday. That leaves me time to get to a lot of the things I haven't had time to work on so far, like painting the various engine parts that I blasted at Larry's a couple months ago. Fortunately I have kept them stored and dry so rusting isn't an issue.

First I installed this heater hose outlet that I had to order from the internet. This part is a Pontiac specific piece and cost $25 dollars. I think that is pretty ridiculous, but if I look at it from another perspective, mine was completely rusted so I'm glad, at least, that it is still available. The piece is a press fit so I was worried I might damage it while attempting to install it. I used a large socket, rag and a hammer and though it didn't go in easy, it eventually seated and went right into place with no problem.

​

Daniel's dad gave me this still-new-in-the-package oil cap. I'm thankful he did because I think it really dresses up the valve cover and makes it look a lot better.

​

And here's a picture of the engine after I took the masking paper off the exhaust manifolds.

​

I started out by taking each part and cleaning it with brake parts cleaner to prepare it for primer and paint. Brake parts cleaner is some of the best stuff to use for cleaning and prepping parts for paint but it evaporates very quickly and must be wiped off or it will leave and invisible residue that will cause the primer and paint to not stick.

​

After cleaning each piece thoroughly I primered one side of them all, let them dry, flipped them and primered the other side. Even though it is December I have been fortunate to have a very mild winter this year. It was almost in the 60s today and with the parts sitting in the sun combined with the constant breeze, along with very little humidity, the parts dried quickly. After primering both sides I came back with high gloss black paint. I actually forgot that the pulleys were supposed to be blue like the engine but after I had one of them painted black I decided I didn't mind them being that color so I decided to leave it. It may not be original but in this particular instance that doesn't bother me. If it does in the future, they are pretty easy to remove, so I'll just take them off and repaint them.

​

Except on the lone piece that received "Dull Aluminum" paint.

​

In between drying time I cleaned the garage and also did a few more things on the engine. I painted the letters and numbers on the timing bracket to make it easier to see. I forgot to take a picture before I started so for the before picture you'll have to pretend the "4" isn't white.

​

Here's the after. As many people do, I always do this on all engines now. It really improves visibility when trying to use a timing light.

​

​

I always use finger nail polish that I get at the Dollar Store for marking the timing indicators. It sells for $1.00 and I've had good luck with the Xtreme Wear brand being pretty durable.

​

After the sun began to go down and the day started to get cooler I brought all the parts inside. I like to pick them up off the box one at a time so the paint doesn't stick to the box. If it does, when you separate the paint from the box it will either remove the paint or leave a piece of torn cardboard to the part, which won't come off.

​

I had taken the motors that operate the rear tailgate and rear window to a local electric shop here in town. Dad went with me because he had known the owner for many years and when dad used to work at a dealership here in town back in the 70's he would let the owner sell some of their wholesale cars. I think typically they work on only large scale, industrial motors but he fixed both of these and it was actually cheaper than buying a used one and having it shipped. He even repainted the cases. These motors had pretty bad water damage from the windows leaking on them over the years. I was also glad to have them work on them because I like to support local, family owned businesses whenever possible.

​

 

Looking good there Brandon!

 

make sure you put the copper ground strap back on that window motor! otherwise you'l be goin ahhhhhhhhhhhh damn window won't work lol


oh and wish ya would of said something about that heater hose plug i got a stainless one for about that after some searching!

 

Awesome work! Looks really good!