Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

Check out what was in my driveway when I got home this weekend.

IMG_8200 by aprilg savings, on Flickr

IMG_8222 by aprilg savings, on Flickr

 

SWEET!

 

Was that planned/you knew it was coming or a surprise?

 

Congrate's I can stop looking now!!!!!

 

Bruce hooked you up then. Good deal

 

WHAT??!!

AWESOME!!

 

It was planned. I was unfortunately out of town. Swanny put me in touch with a guy and hooked me up with a front clip. A YEAR AND A HALF LATER, and I'm finally getting down to fixing The Clam!

 

This is only the station wagon portion of my blog entry. If anyone would like to read the other related projects here is the link: https://aprilmays37.blogspot.com/

A while back Swanny put me in touch with a demolition derby guy who had just acquired a '71 Safari. If there is a silver lining to owning a hard to find, rare, '71 Pontiac, it's that of all the GM B-bodies of that year the Pontiac is the only one that has a core support that mounts under the frame rather than over it. Demolition derby guys don't like this and as a result discard the front clips from Pontiacs when they use them. That's good for me and I was able to get this front clip. The guy was making a trip near the area so we arranged for him to drop it off while he was down this way. When I got home I had the front end of a '71 Pontiac sitting in the driveway. I called Adam, who painted my cousin's '56 Chevrolet, and he said that he doesn't do complete restoration jobs anymore but that he would paint the needed pieces to the wagon since they will be removed and not need extensive body work.



I have looked for a parts car or front clip for about a year and a half, so I was greatly relieved to have found one. As with The Clam, the driver's side fender did not have rust, but the passenger side was rusted through. I'll have to cut this out and replace it like I did last time.



The hood has an area that has previously had a dent in it and the bondo is cracking off. There are several more dents and a couple creases which will need to be hammered out and fixed. You can see Luella inspecting the front clip with her current tool of choice, sticks from the driveway.



The first order of business was moving the clip over in front of the garage door. This required more than one person due to the heavy and cumbersome nature of the thing. After that I had to open the hood latch. I tried finding the cable, which was cut, and pulling it with pliers, but it just pulled out of the sheath. I determined that by pushing here with a screw driver I was able to get the hood to open.



After that it was time to get to work



This fender has a few dents and a couple creases in it. Before I go to all the trouble of transferring the measurements and drilling the holes for the woodgrain trim and patching the rust I want to take the fender to Adam and let him look at it to determine that it is definitely something he will be able to fix. I tried to take the inner fender well out first, but this was obviously a northern car. All of the bolts were rusted and all of the clips broke, causing the bolts to spin freely. I had to use vise grips to hold the clips while I broke the bolts loose. Unfortunately, this didn't work on the areas where I could not get vise grips. As a result, I had to take off various parts of the front end to be able to access the areas I needed to remove the fender. When rusted parts that are supposed to come loose do not come loose, it causes you to do a lot of extra work.



For example, the bolt at the bottom of this picture held the front quarter extension on by screwing into the quarter extension and then had a threaded stud that extended through the fender and was held on with a nut. The nut was rusted to the stud so when you turned the nut all it did was turn the stud.



When things get rusty sometimes you have to get creative.



And when that's not enough, sometimes you get out the torch and set the paint on fire by heating up the rusted nut.



Eventually, after enough PB paster, torching and playing leggo-vise-grips, it all came loose. This all took a few hours longer than I intended and I didn't have time to run the fender up to Adam today like I wanted. My nephew borrowed my sawhorses and didn't return them so I had to make due with some buckets and a piece of wood.



The inner fender still remains and I'll have to figure out a way to access the reaming broken clips tomorrow.



The front header panel and grill came off without considerable problems. Each bolt was rusty and held tension to the very end, which doesn't allow you to use your fingers to unscrew anything.



The center support for the grille is broken. I'll have to figure out how to fix this later. Perhaps I can have it plastic welded or I may have to figure out how to do that myself.

 

Well, It was a long time coming, but your patience paid off. Now you are back on track. I'm happy to see some progress on this repair and look forward to seeing more in the near future. Good luck!

 

Nice to see this thread coming back up, it is good that you already had some practice with welding and fixing before

 

I just used some plastic weld/adhesive. JB weld has it and permatex also does. It works on all kinds of stuff including glass! I had to weld my drivers window back it the holder that attaches to the regulator. The JB has a higher tensile strength and sets fully in 1 hr, so thats what I used and it worked great so far! And it smells like JB the permatex my friend used and he said it is badd azz nasty fumes.
Welcome to my world of fixing northern vehicles

Your lucky that the derby guys are mostly scared of the poncho front clips. We always used them they work FINE if you know how to set them up.

 

SHSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, don't tell the derby guys they can use Pontiac front ends!!!! He was just kidding, they're no good. Useless! Terrible things! Take them all off, and give them to me.



Today I made a little progress with The Clam. I removed the stubborn inner fender well from the new fender. There are clips between the fender well and the fender that rusted and broke so they spin freely on the end of the bolt when you turn the head. They are located down inside the cavern pictured here. I remember the circle imprinted on the inner fender is the factory prescribed hole that is to be drilled if the blower motor needs to be replaced. I replaced mine a while back but found I was able to do it without drilling the required hole in the fender. GM offered a factory plate to screw back into place. Apparently, this car never had a new blower motor.


If you look closely, you can see the vise grips I was finally able to get clamped on one of the clips.


The next step was to apply copious amounts of penetrant on the backs of all the emblems so they don't snap off when removed. Surprisingly, they all came off without much of a fight and with no broken studs.


The little things take up a lot of time, such as removing all the trim pieces without breaking them and making sure the old rubber doesn't break or tear when removed. This rubber was surprisingly supple given the condition of the rest of the metal.


Using the brace on the rear as a guide, I mapped out the cut lines to determine how much metal to remove. Last time, there were two holes for trim pieces that I cut around so they would maintain their location. This time I don't have to worry about that because the holes present are not correct, but unfortunately that means I'm going to have to locate and drill new holes for my trim pieces.


Here is the brace on the backside of the fender. This is pretty much exactly the same situation I dealt with before.


Half way there. I only have a 5 gallon compressor, so I have to cut a little bit, wait for the compressor to fill with air, and then cut a little more. I bought this tool to do this same job the last time.


Here it is after getting the old metal out. As was the case last time, the brace is solid but has surface rust. This brace is undoubtedly what causes these fenders to rust in this area. You can see the accumulation of rust and debris trapped inside the fender. I used small picks and compressed air the clean this area.


Here, the old metal is removed. The plan is to remove the old metal, weld all the unneeded emblem holes closed, measure and drill new holes for emblems and woodgrain trim and then have everything sand blasted. Then I'll come back and primer and paint the brace, then coat it with Honeycoat, as I did last time. Then I'll reweld in the new panel, grind it down, and then coat the back with Honeycoat again. That will keep it nice and sealed and prevent rusting in the future. I'll keep the old piece I cut out to use as a template for the new piece.




There were a few other small things I fixed on the new fender as well, such as the bottom sheet metal lip pictured here. This part of the fender is rolled under the car and is hidden with trim, but I still want it to be right. I used some vise grips, a hammer and some dollies to roll the lip back as it should be.

 

Today I went full bore against the remainder of the front clip. Getting the hood detached from the hood hinge was a bit scary because it was sprung and I was afraid it would spring open with painful results. Fortunately, it stayed closed and I used a long pry bar to release the tension once it was free from the hood.


Removing the trim without kinking or otherwise damaging it can be difficult, especially in the case of this cowl trim. It has no screws or nuts and presses into place. Because of the bend in the middle it is easy to put a kink in the piece which would require a lot of work to straighten back out. I started out by going 1/4" at a time until I got further along. Once I got near the middle I started the other side and then removed the center. I have found pieces tend to like to return to where they have been, so I intend to polish this piece and reinstall it because it was in good shape. The red mark on the hood is a crease but Adam said they will be able to fix it.


I had to drill out some of the more stubborn screws and of course the rivets for the hood latch cable.


As was the case on my car the rubber mounts for the condenser were broken. I wasn't completely happy with my last solution so I'll have to find a more suitable replacement.


I took lots and lots and lots of pictures of me pointing at things and then pointing to all the bolts that hold it in. This is because when I begin to reinstall the many pieces back on the core support it won't be evident where everything goes without a good reference.



The battery tray won't be usable, but fortunately I think mine survived the impact.


The holy shadow shows a few of the many holes, most of which all have clips for screws and bolts to thread into. It was very tempting to leave all the braces bolted on and just have the piece sand blasted and powder coated, particularly given the heat with no shade, but I know that wouldn't stand and for the rest of the time I owned the car it would drive me nuts knowing I had it apart this far and didn't take the small extra effort to do it right.



And further disassembly in the shade next to a fan whenever possible.



Eventually I got the remaining clips removed from the core support


One area that took considerable time that I never considered was removing the rubber mud guards from the inner fender. They were stapled through the metal.


It was a multi step process. After carefully pulling the rubber free, I used a screwdriver to pry each staple up then pliers to pull out the remainder. These would have promoted premature rust and removing them will make for a much more durable and longer lasting piece. I'll pre-drill small holes before the powder coating so that I can reinstall the mudguards with bolts and washers.


Finally, I had a fully stripped core support. There were a few places on the metal lips that had some bent metal, so I straightened those out with vise grips and hammers.


If my memory serves me correct I'm pretty sure that I can reuse my driver side fender, so I'll keep this one as a spare in case something happens to this or Dad's car in the future. You can also see some of the rust and dirt that didn't end up in my eyes or down my glove.

 

Looking good. You might want to look into Ultralube though, it's a more expensive penetrating oil (I've bought it for $5.xx per can) and I haven't compared it side by side with P.B. Blaster to see if it works as well as it says on the can but it doesn't catch on fire or evaporate under heat as easily as P.B. Blaster at least.

 

Also, though you consider the work you're currently doing to be "small things," the documentation you're doing will help in showing a stronger/higher value for the wagon when you put insurance back on, plus bolster your damage claim after another accident, God forbid one happens again. So make sure you zap these photos onto a CD, DVD or thumb drive then stow them where you stow your important papers.