Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

I talked to Gary and we are scheduled to put the engine back together this Saturday. I took the tote full of parts I had up to where I used to work and sandblasted them today. Tomorrow I'll prep the parts, primer and paint them, then move on to disassembling the car.

I called Maaco today and they said they can do a single stage paint for a reasonable price provided I do a lot of the work myself. I essentially intend to handle this as though I were going to paint the car myself but then right before I would get the paint gun out I'll just take it to them. My wife's other car quit running, it isn't getting fire, so it will make things much easier if I can get this done quickly. I'm going to rent a storage facility for a month to have a place to take the car apart while parts of it are in bare metal. I'm going to borrow an electric D/A sander to get to the parts of the car that have some small surface rust and then prepare them in case they have any small pitting.

Brandon

 

good on ya man!!!

 

Build Sheet

Today I took the everything in front of the end of the hood off. To make room to store the parts I went inside to lay all the seats down. The driver side middle seat has never wanted to lay completely flat. I found out today that there is a little clip that the flap on the back of the seat sits in when it is folded down that holds the seat down tight, but before I found that out I thought something might be under the seat. I did find an old toy under there, and when I ran my hand under there I felt something like paper crumble as soon as I touched it. I immediately pulled back because I knew as original as this car was that it could be a build sheet. Sure enough, it was. It was extremely brittle and had already rotted apart in a few places. I had hoped to find it in the car somewhere as I started to go through it.

I have it under a large flat, straight piece with some weight on it now and I plan to have it laminated. I'm not sure but it seems that the car may have been ordered as a company car, which would explain why it was optioned up and then sold used when it was 6 months old to the lady who owned it almost until I bought it.



And here's some pictures of the pieces, and the Clam, now a bit less aerodynamic, if that's possible.








Brandon

 

Thanks for sharing your work Brandon. Like seeing all the pictures. I see your clam was assembled in Doraville, GA. I've been by that plant a few times over the years. Sadly, like many, the plant is now closed.

GM operated 2 assembly plants in the Atlanta area back in the heyday. Doraville, opened in 1947 and closed during the restructuring in 2008, and Lakewood, opened in 1927 and closed in 1990. I saw 1965 Chevy Impalas being built at Lakewood when I was a kid. What a crude looking assembly line it looked like even to a kid and by 60's standards! They built B body Caprices there at the end. rating maintained for resto category. Good job bud!

 

What's this piece

Thanks, Mike. As I suppose is usual, this project has snowballed. When I get done I'm going to have a pretty nice car, and a lot more invested than I'd wanted.

I noticed a piece on the car that I couldn't figure out what it was. It bothered me so much I went back out tonight and took a picture in my PJs because I forgot to take a picture today.

It's the piece sitting flat on top of the bracket sticking straight out. In the picture it looks like a button with a screw on each side. I can't figure out what this thing would be. I was curious when I was removing things because it has a wire going to the bottom that usually is for things like temp senders. I wondered if it was a temperature gauge of some kind, but don't know of that being an option offered in these years.



Here's another view from the bottom/side, showing the wire going into it.





I'm really curious about this.


Thanks,
Brandon

 

Sorry the 2nd picture is crooked. Sometimes when I upload to photobucket it keeps the picture the original way it was taken, no matter if I have rotated it both on my PC and uploaded it, or upload it and change it with the photobucket editor. It must be a bug because it does it sometimes and other times doesn't and changing the picture never solves the problem.


brandon

 

I got all the window moldings off today. What a huge pain. The main problem was that apparently the windshield had a leak in it at one time and they decided to fit it by taking all the gunk and silicone they could afford to buy in a weekend and put it all under the windshield moldings, and a few spots in the rear for good measure. This made getting the clips off impossible. It seems they pushed the moldings on when it was all wet and let it harden that way. I cracked the windshield, but I'm not sure if it was in a way that will spread. I got all the other pieces off except for the two vertical pieces on each side of the rear sliding window because they have a screw in the bottom and I can't get to them until I have the tailgate down, which is difficult with no battery so I'm saving that until I get inside and take the motor out.

The only trim I still have on is the trim around the roll down windows on each side. I'm not sure how it comes off, but it seems to just pop off, which of course isn't that easy. I also got the rear bumper and taillight housings off. There were two studs for the woodgrain trim moldings in the rear that had been bent 90 degrees. I got one straightened out and the other broke. Fortunately there's easy access to the backside of them and I can easily tack weld them back on.

Other good news is that the large, non-creased dent in the driver rear all but completely popped out. One small area that might need some attention. That only leaves one other spot for dent repair, and then of course above the windshield. Above the windshield isn't actually as bad as I thought. It's mostly surface rust that built up because the water had no where to go with all that putty up there. I was expecting to find big rusted holes I would have to repair.

I borrowed a DA sander and got some pads today so if it's not raining tomorrow the plan is to weld up the molding studs and sand everything that will need to be sanded down to metal. That way when I move it to the storage building that has no power I can finish everything else up by hand, like the body filler and block sanding, getting it ready to paint.

It was racing the dark to get the moldings off, so I don't have many pictures.



I found this inside the car. I can imagine some kid playing with it in the 70s.


After letting the build sheet to press flat under some weight for a day and a half I took it out tonight and tried to tape it back together from the backside. There is a laminate machine where my wife works so I'm going to have it laminated there. Here's a better picture of it. There are a couple of options here that I don't know what they mean, but most are self explanatory. My dad, who owned a GM dealerships for 33 years, said from his experience it looked possible from the build sheet this could have been a Pontiac company rep. car.


Brandon

 

Oh, also, one thing I was SUPER GLAD to find out was that this car has manual air, not the automatic air. Though I knew it had manual air switches in it now, I was glad to see that it came originally that way. I did NOT want to figure out how to make all that stuff work.


Brandon

 

My theory on that "button" is that it is an ambient temperature sensor used by the HVAC system to determine when to run the AC compressor for defrost mode.

 

Like that build sheet. You have a well optioned car there. :2_thumbs_up_-_anima

 

Wonder how the engine building went today? Bet Brandon returns with a lot of

 

Wouldnt you know it ... gotta leave for Nashville Monday night and make a delivery first thing Tuesday morning.
Your house is about 15 miles from my route. LOL

 

Hahaha, yep, that's how it goes. I didn't get any pictures from this weekend because I wasn't sure how it was going to go down and in such a cramped space as what we have I didn't want to take up any more of his time by stopping what we were doing and cleaning my hands to take pictures, but we didn't get finished so after getting the lay of the land I had planned to take some pictures this next time.

We got the cam bearings in, but one of them turned. He said he'd only had 2 of them ever to do that before. He went and bought an extra long drill bit and managed to hit the hole perfectly and drilled a new hole for the oil passage. We got the crank installed and the rings on the pistons. The machine shop had already pressed the pistons on the rods.

I had planned to begin sanding on the car last Friday, but it rained. Saturday was nice but it has rained since and is supposed to rain for at least the next two days, maybe more. I was going to rent a storage facility that had no electric so I had to get the sanding done outside before I took it there, but through good fortune a spot opened up that's long enough in my dad's barn so I may drag the car over there so I can go ahead and sand it and get it ready to take to paint. I can't remember if I mentioned this before but I'm going to prep the body and then have Maaco paint it. I had hoped to be able to paint it myself but time won't allow that to happen now.

Also, I just got a response from the wanted section on this forum and may have found a set of woodgrain moldings, finally.

Brandon

 

I do too. I will have to look for the one in my '72. His '71 Grand Safari sure is a high optioned car.

Yeah, considering all of the options your car has, its a wonder it didnt have the auto-climate control option. Looks like that was about all it lacked.

That is what I am afraid is going to happen when whoever removes the windshield in my '72. It leaks as well and it needs to be removed and whatever rust is under there repaired. I am sure that there is a good chance that the windshield will get broken. I hope not, as its the original and in excellent condition, but we will see. Surely there are methods now that greatly reduces breakage when removing.

 

A spot opened up in my dad's barn so yesterday he helped me tow it over to his house. We had to move quite a bit of stuff over to an open area in another barn but eventually got all of it moved except for the one small car that was in the way. It rained us out and I only got halfway done and had to leave The Clam sitting in the field in front of the barn. Today I got The Clam tucked into the barn and managed to do a little sanding on it. I got a couple spots down to bare metal.

Tonight I went over to Gary's and we got the pistons in the block. It didn't go smoothly as the ring compressor didn't want to compress the rings for a while until he bend it a bit and got it working properly. Unfortunately, the cam wouldn't go in for some reason. It seemed as though it was too big. Gary's going to get a mic from work and see what's going on. I really hope this can be fixed easily. If so, we plan to meet Friday night and finish up the engine.

Here are some pictures from tonight. They are big into drag racing and have several dragsters. The car next to the engine is a '68 Charger they've had for a long time that's in the process of being brought back to life.











Brandon