Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

Here's some more pictures. I got the car in the barn finally. I marked every bolt, numbered them and made a diagram with notes to remember what they held, how they went in and how many shims they had. For the driver side, since both fenders use the same location of bolts, I just used the same diagram and wrote on the driver side ziplock back what variations there were.















Gary did manage to get the cam in. The cam bearings from the kit were undersized, though only by a very small amount, so he had to enlarge them.

Brandon

 

My routine usually went something like this: Go outside, get shoes on, start working on the car and get dirty, realize I forgot the camera, clean up and take shoes off and go in and get the camera. Since I've been having to go over to my parents I've continued to forget the camera, but I'm not able to go back and get it so I missed some pictures I would have liked to have taken.

After getting some more sanding and panels off the car I began cleaning all the parts so I could sand them. It took a very, very long time with soap, water and a sponge to get the backs of all the pieces clean. The back of the headlight buckets was a real pain, but I finally got them cleaned up. Then I began sanding the piece with 180. I put guide coat on and started with 400, but it wasn't getting the scratches out. I made some inquiries and found out it would work best if I water sanded it. I had never water sanded and I now prefer it much more to dry sanding, even though it's a bit messier.

I found out that because I've sanded the body down to the metal in places that I'm going to have to primer the car. I though that Maaco would do this, but apparently they will use a sealer. I may be able to get them to primer the car but then I would have to go pick it back up and block it, so I'm going to have the restoration shop I used to work for to shoot the primer. Then I'm going to block it and have Maaco put Oldsmobile Emerald Green on it. Pontiac has the same color, it starts with a V, but I can't remember the name of it at the moment. It will look like this (this, of course, is an Oldsmobile).


If it doesn't rain, I hope to get the hood and perhaps at least one fender finished tomorrow.

Gary and I finally finished building the engine. I say Gary and I, but he did 95% of it while I watched and tried to learn. He known Pontiac engines very well. When I went to pick it up it was quite a chore to get it on my trailer. Gary wasn't home so his son, Daniel, who is a friend of mine helped me load it up. Their racing trailer was in the way, as well as a non running Ram Charger and the Charger dragster. We had to take the front fiberglass clip off of the Charger, use the 4-wheeler to pull the ram charger out of the way and then use the 4 wheeler to back my trailer into place to load up the engine. I wish I had the camera with me to have pictures of the puzzle we had to solve to get it loaded up, but we finally did.

I painted the engine today because I had to get some protection against rust. It may rain tomorrow so I had to make sure I got it done today.

I had to change how I sat the engine on the tire because we filled the engine with oil to prime the engine. The oil filter was being bent and crushed by the tire so I had to only use it on the front.


Here she is. She is one heavy, heavy beast. After taping up all the holes.


And here she is all primered up.




I started out by painted the exhaust manifolds with cast gray paint.


Then I taped off the manifolds, which took forever.


Because of the concrete lip on the garage getting the engine into the garage is not a one person job. My dad came over right as I was finishing up the final coat of Pontiac Blue, so I forgot to take pictures of the finished product while the engine was outside. I have to put a very large bar for leverage and lift up on one of the front wheels while another person pushes to get it back into the garage.



That's all for now.

I've tried to find some more moldings for the exterior around the woodgrain but haven't yet come up with any. I hope to find some before everything is finished.

Brandon

 

Brandon: if you look in the Auctions etc threads, there is a 74 Grand Safari that is really a parts car. The moldings looked to be complete. Actually looked like it may be a good donor for a bunch of things. maybe worth a look.

 

This is the kind of detail I would want if I ever had anywone work on my car. I always think I'd like to label everything like that, but somehow it never ends up that way.

Looking GREAT!

 

OK everyone, I'm back after a hiatus I had to house-sit for my cousin and keep his dog. I was going back and forth across town but then Tuesday I started getting sick. By Wednesday I had a 102.6 fever so that has pretty much put me out of action. In the meantime, I have been doing some research and realized the only truly permanent fix for small pitted rust is to sandblast it, so I've ordered a small, hand held sand blaster. It came in today. I REALLY hope I'm feeling well enough to start back to work on the car Monday. I want to finish this car before I start a new job so April will have a reliable daily driver.

Back to Tuesday. Here's what happened. One of the tabs that holds the woodgrain mouldings had broken off when I bent it back into shape. These are the small metal tabs that are part of the body work. I forgot to weld this small tab back on before I moved the car and I have to weld it on because welding it after would destroy any body filler I might use in the area. Since there is no 220 outlet at my dad's barn I had it setup to borrow a 110 welder from a friend. I was about to head out to borrow the welding and was holding the tab in a pair of pliers when it shot out of the pliers and bounced against the wall in my garage and then vanished. At the time, my garage was a COMPLETE MESS of multiple projects going on at the same time. Fortunately April helped and we emptied out the entire side of the garage looking for this piece. Dad also came over and helped. It took all day and by the end we had moved the entire bench and searched on our hands and knees almost every inch of that side of the garage, twice.

Here's the tab:


And here's the bag we put it in to make sure it never gets lost again...EVER....


Because this tab broke from the spot on the car, only this tab will fit back exactly as it should to line up correctly. After a preliminary search, we began moving everything outside, one by one.






I like everything to be organized, but unfortunately because of the many projects going at once and having way too many things to cram into one garage, the place had gotten a bit out of hand, so at the very least this was a good excuse to clean up.




The end result. After April, Dad and I un-nailed the desk from the wall and moved it, vacuumed under it and searched everywhere with magnets and intense scrutiny, April ended up finding the small piece out in the driveway amount all the junk out there.

At least now it's a bit more organized.


During all this, I was beginning to get sick and by the end of the day felt very, very bad, so I haven't been able to do anything at all since this day. I think needless to say, this was frustrating beyond any previously created scales to measure frustration.

Brandon

 

Haha! Your garage reminds me of mine, its due to be emptied out and "reloaded"......only problem is, every time I do that too much of the same old stuff I never use still makes it way back in there! :banghead3:

I been sick too the last few days with some virus so haven't been able to fix the electrical woes on the Trooper.....it's in a "no start" condition.... or anything else for that matter.

Is that your pop in the yellow ball cap sitting on the stool? And.......is....that....an.......original.........67 Camaro.....sitting in the driveway!?

Thanks for the updates! Fun following your project!

 

Haha, yeah, I need a bigger garage, but I am thankful to at least have this one. When General Motors closed our family dealership it kind of left us with nothing, including a place to work on cars. We went from having everything you could need to having nothing.

That is Dad sitting on the stool. He got a phone call. Even though he hasn't been in the car business since 2009 he still has customers that refuse to buy cars anywhere but through him so he still gets calls and he uses his contacts to get cars through other dealerships and they let him sell through them. He was honest, didn't rip people off and built friendships with customers so he still sells about 1 car every week or two. I didn't realize how rare that was until I started working some in other dealerships and I see now how ALMOST all of them treat their customers, which is very different than the way he did business.

Anyway, yeah, that's his '67 Camaro. He actually just bought it 2 weeks ago. He had a customer that had owned it for almost 20 years and called Dad and wanted to see if he would buy it. It's a '67 Rallye Sport. The kind of cool thing is it's almost completely original and has factory air, power windows, power steering, tilt wheel, power disc brakes, am/fm stereo with rear speaker and seat belts. It was pretty well loaded. He's using it as a daily driver and I'm real glad he finally has something he'll drive everyday and just enjoy.

 

Well, thank your Dad for having principles for all of us. I'm guessing the dealership's volume was still too low, despite his honest business practices, for GM to want to keep it open?

What engine is in the Camaro?

I can relate to this situation, I quit a senior distribution manager's job in 2007 when the company brought in managers in positions above me for our new larger replacement DC who lied to me, had management styles 180 degrees turned from the open doors we all had in the old DC. I knew I couldn't lead people with that kind of style around. The new DC suffered a horrible opening after that as the GM had either fired or run off all the experienced managers/supervisors. He lingered a year there before the company booted him out....prolly with a large severence package so he could run to the next company and do the same thing.

Anyway, the strong economy tanked right after I left and I haven't been able to get anyone seriously interested in me for any kind of responsible DC manager's job since then. But so far things are actually better for me these days as I now have time for personal life things I had either delayed or not even considered working a 60 hour week job. I drive a school bus and work PT in a retail store. Money isn't everything! :rant:

 

I have learned two important lessons. Pitted rust can only be truly fixed by using a blasting media, in my case, sand, and then filled with body filler. You can also cut out the metal, but that's not what I was planning to do. Many people try to do this fix by using chemicals to treat the rust. I attempted this upon advice I had gotten but have since learned this is not the appropriate way to handle rust issues like this.

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You can see the purple chemical that is supposed to neutralize the rust.

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The headlight bucket/nose, front corner pieces and center grill divider are all fiberglass so I water sanded them with 180 grit paper and then went to 400 grit. It was cold and rainy and my socks got wet, which probably helped get me sick.

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I ordered this small sandblaster. This will allow me to spot-sand only the areas that need attention, which are the areas which have surface rust or small pitting. There aren't many, but what is present must be treated or it will ruin the new paint very quickly by causing it to bubble and pop within a few months of being applied.

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The only location on the entire car that had any rust through was on the bottom of one of the fenders. This is where I ran into trouble. I attempted to weld the small holes closed because if you try to bondo over even small holes it will allow moisture to eventually ruin the bondo and it will crack or bubble the new paint. No matter how low I had the welder set the metal would instantly burn through. This was because it had become very thin thanks to the rust that was hiding behind it. I eventually gave up attempting to weld the holes shut. What would happen is that you would create a small hole and then have to chase it to try to fill it which would then burn more metal away, causing much more weld material than should be necessary.

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Bodywork can be very confusing. There seem to be as many opinions on how to do it as there are people who do it. I prefer to do things the best way and the right way and I've found that many people prefer the "just good enough" way. I was recommended to a local body guy by two people so I went to talk to him and ask him some questions. He explained what I feared, that this panel must be cut out and replaced. Unfortunately I didn't have a cut off wheel so that meant I had to stop progress and head about 15 miles away and go buy one. I am in somewhat of a hurry because it's very nice and sunny this week, which is very helpful because I'm still recovering from being sick, but next week is supposed to be cold and possibly rainy. I want to get as much done as possible.

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It took a while to get the piece cut out because I was using dad's portable air compressor which doesn't hold much air and only allow for a few seconds of cutting time until you must wait and let the pressure build back up.

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The reason I couldn't go behind the panel and repair the rust that way is due to the brace that is on the backside of the fender in this area. It is what had caused the rust in the first place. You can see it here now that the area is cut away and the rust is exposed.

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After I sandblasted the rusty brace back to bare metal I prepped it with cleaner and then primered it.

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The body man I talked to was very nice and even took time out of his day to come over and look at my fender and show me some techniques that would help. He even gave me an old trunk they were going to throw away to use as scrap sheet metal. It would have been better if I could have left the fender bolted to the car, he said, for support, however because my car is stuck in dad's barn and he doesn't have a 220 outlet I can't bring my welder over to do any welding. It must all be done at my house.

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I shudder at the thought of there being Japanese car sheet metal on The Clam, but it will be our secret. I was just very thankful to have the metal to work with. I used the metal I cut out of the fender as a template.

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I cut the piece just slightly larger than the old to compensate for the width of the cutting wheel.

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If you've ever wondered what the underside of the sheet metal of a trunk looks like, this is it. It had spots of rubber melted on the back to keep the metal from vibrating against the bracing on the backside of the trunk and making noise. They easily scraped off with a metal scraper.

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You can see how rusty the back side of the original panel was. Strangely, the other fender isn't rusted at all.

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The old and the new

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This is the first time I've made a patch panel and to be honest I'm pretty impressed with how well the fitment turned out. The hardest part is yet to come, however. That would be the welding, and that is what I intend to tackle tomorrow.

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The camaro has a 327 4 barrel. We can't prove that it's a matching number, but the car is original enough that if I had to guess I would say that it is. Then again, who knows what's happened over 40 years. It only has 80,xxx original miles, however.

The dealership's volume wasn't actually that low. He alone, not counting his other salesmen, sold more cars than some of the bigger dealerships in the area, but GM didn't want small, country dealers anymore. They want large, super wal-mart type dealers.

 

Your secret is safe with us. I think it is actually cool and kind of ironic. Usually we talk about all of the great old American cars being scrapped and turned into Japanese cars. In this case it is the other way around. I like it.

Good work on the clam. I have really been enjoying following your progress. keep up the good work.

 

Haha, thanks, nobody has to know. I'm going to pretend that the metal that came from the Nissan originally came from an old Bonneville, so it's all coming full circle.

Brandon

 

Achievement Patch





Since I cut a big hole in the fender yesterday I figured today would be a good time to fill it back up with some non-rusty metal. I had already cut a patch panel out of the old trunk lid and cut it to fit so today I just had to grind some edges to get some good, clean metal to weld on and weld it in.

I cut a couple of pieces of scrap so that I could test different settings on the welder. This way I could hopefully be set up correctly when I started on the actual patch. Unfortunately, it still took some fine tuning, but it all turned out OK.

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Because sheet metal is thin you cannot simply weld a solid line, or bead. If you do this it will cause the metal to absorb too much heat and then when it cools the metal will shrink, causing it to warp and crumble like a paper cup. The avoid this you have to make small, individual tack welds, alternating sides with each weld, to prevent heat buildup. You must continue to do this until all the tack welds form a solid line of weld all around the panel. Even with this method, you still must take your time and go slow and give time for the metal to cool. Because there is a slight curve to the fender I started one one side and aligned the panel at each new tack weld.

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I was more than halfway done at this point and it was very tempting to want to just lay down a bead and finish up, but that would ruin all the work I'd done so far. There were a few places that blew straight through so I had to go back and fill them with the voltage on the welder turned down.

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This is what it looked like when I finished the first go around. When it's time to grind the welds down, you still have to do a little at a time and go slowly. The grinding can also build up too much heat and cause the metal to warp. I would use my hand and feel the metal and when it would get slightly too warm to the touch I would let it cool. Once, the metal was much too hot and instantly burned the palm of my hand. It hurt pretty bad, but not as bad as the two other burns I've had recently, the worst being when I lost balance when working on my motorcycle and before I could even think I reached to keep myself from falling over by grabbing the exhaust. Two of my fingers are still slightly numb.

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I will say one thing about the new car paint, it was very thick and very durable compared to the old car paint I've been used to dealing with. It was such a pain to remove that I just took the fender back over to dad's, where my mini-sand blaster was, and I sand blasted it off. Even the blaster was having a time with it, due to the small capacity of sand it can hold and the small compressor I was using, so I used 80 grit paper and the DA sander I borrowed from Gary, the guy who built the 455 engine, and sanded it down, then finally went back over it with the sand blaster. The sand blaster turns everything the same color and reveals any pinholes that are left. I found a few and welded them up.

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Then I used the angle grinder to grind them back down. The grinder makes the metal shine and the sand blaster makes the metal dull, so where I ground each weld down it left a shiny spot. This is how you can tell your welds are perfectly flat. When you move the grinder over them and it leaves a perfectly flat trace you know you have smoothed it out correctly. Notice that the shape of the patch panel has left the original holes for the clips that will hold the chrome molding on. If I had eliminated those holes it would have been a lot of extra work finding exactly where to drill the new ones.

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Considering that this was my first patch panel and it's something I've always been too intimidated to try, until now when it became necessary, I think it came out very well. I took it down to the previously mentioned body shop and the guy there said he thought it was a really nice job, so that alleviated my fears and hopefully it won't all fall out the first time we drive down the road.

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Great work Brandon!

 

will you please quit working on that car????

Im actually getting a complex....im actually thinking about working on one of mine....so just stop it...geez......

nice stuff Brandon....your gonna be a pro in no time