Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

Haha, thanks. I WISH I could quit working on this car. It should have been finished by now!


Brandon

 

Brandon: You are doing GREAT work on that wagon! It is going to be a really gorgeous family car when you are done with it, that's for sure. One thing's for sure, when you do have it done and on the road, your wife may well decide that it is her permanent daily driver. Have you ever thought about adding an overdrive to it to improve the highway fuel economy as a family car? I cannot wait to see the end result. I've been following this build of yours all the way through and have to say, I wish I had the ability to do the same. Keep up the great work.

 

Thanks Mike. I have daydreamed about putting an overdrive in the wagon, but that would be something I would consider doing later on if we do in fact decide to keep it. I have a 1979 4 door Caprice with about 70,xxx original miles that my wife was driving but the more we have this car around the more we both think we might like to end up selling the Caprice after I get her '37 going rather than The Clam. Since I'm building her a '37 Chevrolet 4 door as a daily driver we had planned to keep a second car for her to drive in case she didn't want to get the 37 out, like if we needed to haul something or when we have kids and we want to go somewhere with another couple that had kids. If we keep The Clam, we could actually haul all the people we could ever want around.

Brandon

 

Fender Clams

I worked the entire day on the front two fenders and visually, don't have a lot to show for it, but as anyone that has done bodywork can explain, that's how it goes. I had to smooth out the area where I put in the patch panel and then I had a very small area to do on the other fender where there was some minor pitting. I took a picture of the patch panel fender after I applied the first coat of bondo but the sun was so bright it was practically invisible in the picture. Here's the picture I took of the other fender which had much less work to be done and took a fraction of the time.

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After a day spent sanding and a second coat of filler on the patch panel fender, I finally finished. Before I got sick a couple weeks ago I had almost finished sanding down one entire fender with 180 to prep it for primer but I went back over both fenders with 180 completely just to be safe, which took quite a bit of time. It was also hard because the wind was blowing very, very hard today and even when I would sit heavy metal scissors and a full roll of tape on top of the sand paper it would blow away.

Here's the back of the patch panel.

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And here's the finished product. It's not going to turn out show-car condition. There were a couple of very small high spots that would have required a hammer and dolly to take care of, but this will be fine for a good looking driver.

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Here's my make-shift body shop out in my parents' yard. Since the car is in my dad's barn I've been working on most everything over there. Notice the small compressor in front of the boat I use for sand blasting small spots that sand paper can't get to.

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Even when doing a little body work like this you can expect to use quite a bit of sand paper. I also found out that sand paper has become quite expensive.

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I've been keeping the fenders under my dad's house, however it stays pretty cold under there and there is some concrete which causes condensation of the fenders which will cause flash rust on the bare metal. I'm going to be taking the fenders to the paint shop tomorrow so they can be primered, that way they won't sit in bare metal waiting for the rest of the car which would cause them to rust. Bare metal will rust immediately if left outside and if not in a climate controlled environment will even rust indoors in a short amount of time. Because of this the fenders are spending the night in the foyer to my house where they'll stay nice and warm and rust-free.

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Here's the finished product on the bodywork for both fenders.

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Brandon
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thats what we all say

 

Dag Blasted

It was my hopes that I could get the entire roof done today. It was close, but didn't quite happen. As usual, I forgot the camera at my house and didn't get it until I stopped back by at lunch to pick up some other items. By this time I had already used the DA sander to go over the roof. There were a few spots that needed special attention. Nothing serious, but a few spots that needed to be sanded down to bare metal and then sand blasted just to make absolutely sure nothing could try to come back through the paint.

There was the area that I have posted a picture of before over the windshield that had quite a bit of surface rust and I wanted to sandblast as much of that as I could before I remove the windshield to help keep as much sand as possible from possible getting inside the car. To my surprise the surface rust didn't really extend down into the channel of the windshield seal. Apparently all the silicone that the previous owners had put into the channel had just kept the water from draining and caused it to begin to rust above the windshield. I had fully expected the rust to have begun in the channel and worked its way north, but that, fortunately, didn't seem to be the case. I had even prepared to need to do extensive metal work in this area to get it back to just the way it needed to be. Hopefully, that won't be necessary at all now.

I put duct tape around the areas of the car that I didn't want the sand to effect, such as the windshield and the chrome around the windows that I haven't been able to get off.

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This is how far I got before the compressor threw the breaker up at my dad's house. Apparently the compressor is too much load for the barn. After a few trips back up to the house and trying to turn everything else off at the barn I realized, to great frustration, that this plan wasn't going to work.

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At the small gate entrance to the field there is an outlet that my dad used to use to plug in his motorhome. I have used this outlet with the compressor and know it will work so I ended up using the four wheeler to pull the car back up to that outlet. I went and got my mother and had her steer the car as I pulled it back up the hill. Fortunately the four wheeler is pretty powerful and four wheel drive. At one point all four wheels began to spin, but it still managed to get the car where it needed to be.

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So mother wouldn't have to walk through all the cow manure and because she doesn't get around as well as she used to due to back surgeries I brought her down into the field on the four wheeler. I'm not sure when the last time she was on a four wheeler but I know it has been years upon years. She also came down and steered the car as I towed it back down to the barn. When she was getting ready to get back on the four wheeler to go back to the house she fell over the root of a weed. After I realized she was OK we had a pretty good laugh about it. She rolled out into the grass and just missed a nice cow pile. Despite her threats, I took her picture to mark the momentous occasion.

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It doesn't show up great in the pictures but here is the end result. All the spots on the roof sanded and blasted down to metal and the area around the windshield and tops of the doors sanded down. A skim coat of filler will smooth out any pitting nicely. I'll need to go back over the entire roof by hand with 180 grit because I wasn't able to get to that far today.

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Attention to the fine details like this is gonna make one fine Clam in the end you and April will enjoy driving for years! Glad Mom wasn't hurt rolling around in the pasture!

Remember: Patience Grasshopper!

 

Brandon, you are doing fantastic work there! I really cannot wait to see the end results! That big, old, Pontiac is going to be a real show-stopper! Keep up the great work.

 

Turning The Clam into a Two Door

I set about today to take the doors off of The Clam. I have both the factory shop manual and fisher body manual for this car but they aren't always helpful in every instance. The two problems are that they either direct a person to use specialized tools that only a dealer would have or they simply don't cover certain specific things. It took about half a day to get the first door off and once I had learned how the second door came off in about twenty minutes.

I started with the passenger door because the power door lock motor has been loose and knocking around in the driver side door so I wanted to start with a door that was put together as it should be to give me a better idea of how the broken door was supposed to be put together. The passenger side rear view mirror is not a remote mirror so it has no wires or cables going to it. It also, from what I can tell so far, does not have bolts holding it to the door, but instead has rivets. Once I get the door on the saw horses and inspect it I may find that these are some type of studs with nuts on the back, but for now it seems that this is as far as I can remove the mirror bracket without drilling, so this is as far as I'm going to go.

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The door panel has an upper and lower section. Taking the top part off took a long time because it was hung for some reason. I expected that it would be necessary to push down and then back and pull up to remove the top of the panel, but this one was hung. Since this was the first panel I was trying to remove it proved to be pretty confusing. I eventually just ran a wrench up into the panel and removed the entire bracket holding it together and that is when I realized it was simply hung rather than me just not knowing how to remove it. Once I figured out how to remove the upper and lower panels without breaking any of the old, brittle clips I came to the plastic weather protection. This came off after I removed the inside door handle.

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Most of the time I just don't have the memory to keep track of so many parts so I have to label everything.

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I had a bit of trouble trying to unhook the wiring to the power door lock motor. You can see the wire entering the door on the far left of this picture. The motor is mounted to the back of the door where my wrench is on one of the bolts. It was impossible to get my arms into the door to disconnect the wire. I couldn't get any help from the manual because it simply breezed over the subject by explaining to disconnect all the wires to all the accessories inside the door. I finally found it necessary to remove the motor, held in by two bolts where my wrench is in this picture, pull the motor over to one of the access holes and then remove the wire.

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Another issue I had trouble with was this rubber tube that the electrical wires ran through. It was held in the door by a press fit but also two plastic studs that pressed into the door. From the back they felt like screws but the heads were smooth. They had to be pulled out and getting pliers on then took a bit of time.

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The manual recommended removing the door from the hinge rather than the hinge from the body. I took a chisel and marked three locations on the top hinge and the bottom hinge to help in realigning the door when, or as it feels at this point, if, it comes time to put the car all back together. I would have preferred to remove the door pins but I didn't have the tools necessary to do this. It would have been easier to do when it comes time to put the doors back on and line them up.

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Dad bought this chisel set for me at an estate sale. This set came rolled up in a large coffee can full of other chisels and punches.. I honestly don't know what I did before I got these because I use them all of the time.

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After this it was time for the door to come off. Because there was only myself around to lift the door I closed it and used the latch to support the back of the door while I removed the bolts from the hinges. There were two bolts I had to remove while the door was open and the rest could be removed with the door closed. This was made a bit harder by the fact that I'm in a barn stall and the door could not be opened all the way on either side. I took a bit of time here because when I went to remove the bolt that I didn't have access to with the door closed, 3 times I accidentally removed the wrong bolt. It didn't hurt anything, but it took longer to remove them with a wrench from the inside rather than a ratchet from the outside when the door was closed.

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Moving on to the driver side, the rear view mirror was harder to remove because it is a remote mirror which is moved by cables running through the door into a control stick on the inside of the door. The bracket for this mirror was held on with two small bolts and was easily removed once the wire was fed through.

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It's easy to breeze through steps like this without pictures but I have found that taking a little time to document where wires and switches were run proves invaluable when it comes time to put them all back together.

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I have tons and tons of pictures that I save onto my computer that look like this. This is my own way of telling myself later that the cable for the rear view mirror was held in place by a clip and that the clip was held in place by the screw that I am pointing to.

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The rear view mirror didn't work correctly and this was the problem. You can see here that one of the cables was frayed and broken. Hopefully I'll find a way to weld or brazen it back together, because I'm sure a replacement would be pretty expensive.

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I had to remove quite a bit of the interior trim so that I can tape off the door frame areas to be painted.

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Fortunately this was sturdy metal, something not found on any of today's cars...​

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These pieces, however, were old and brittle plastic. I did manage, carefully, to remove them without any cracking.​

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The driver's door came off much quicker than the passenger side thanks to the steep learning curve​

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I set the drivers door up on the saw horses, which wasn't an easy job to do by yourself with these cheap, flimsy, plastic examples. They will hold weight but they aren't very sturdy unless what they are holding is perfectly still and directly on top of them.​

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From this point I began to remove the door handle and key lock. This is what they look like inside the door. The red plate on the bottom must be removed to take apart the key lock and the rod running up to the top must be removed to take off the door handle.​

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It took a good hour, possibly longer, for me to figure out how to remove the door handle. The directions in the manual simple said, "Remove two bolts. Remove door handle." Because it was all set deep within the door it was difficult to see and on top of that the clip that I needed to remove was faced away from me. What I finally figured out was that the clip on the back of this handle must be slid up, away from the handle in order for the rod to be removed. There is a tab which snaps into the bottom hole pictured here so to do this you have to push something into the bottom hole which releases the tab and then pry upwards on the clip. I didn't find this out until I bent my clip and removed it and then was able to examine it once it was removed. At least the next ones won't be as hard.

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Rainy Days

I am still working on finishing up my second door. Rain and interruptions in general have slowed progress all week. It seems each time I finally have the freedom to really get to work the weather does not cooperate. It's the time of year for cold weather and constant rain, so I guess that is to be expected, but when you have to work outside it can be a slow process. Also, I have had to contend with trying to get The Caprice and The Blazer through the government scam known as emission testing. I have a guy that was supposed to look at The Caprice last weekend but he said he can't get to it until midweek. I'm going to have another guy look at The Blazer. No matter what I do it still barely fails. I've been through 4 times now and they continue to get my money as I roll the dice to see if I'll pass yet again.

I haven't been able to get many pictures because I have had to quickly rush everything back into the barn as quick rains pop up. Today, for example, a quick rain came up while I was getting lunch and caused flash rusting on the top of the door I was working on so I had to go back and sandblast it again to remove it. Even though the flash rusting comes off very easy it's still a pain to have to deal with. I finished sand blasting the front and back of the driver door and finished up smoothing out a couple of very small dents in it. Today I finished sand blasting the passenger door and noticed a very, very small but somewhat long dent in it today. It wasn't very deep at all, but was very long and the concave portion extended about 1.5 to 2 inches tall. It was practically unnoticeable by feel unless you really concentrated on it. It was so small I really had to take careful consideration to see if it truly was a dent or not. After determining there was a small indention I decided to go ahead and fix it. Unfortunately I ran out of daylight and the bondo was taking too long to dry in the colder weather so I'm going to let it sit over night and get to it first thing in the morning. After I finish it up I hope to load up the doors and take them up to the body shop to be primered.

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Here's the driver side door, finished for now. When I get to the body shop I'll probably go over it once more by hand with 180 grit just to finish out any small scuffs that might have been picked up during transport.

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holy man....i wish i could just START workin on mine
keep on truckin

 

Primer Fear

The last several days have been very busy. I had to wait for the time change to happen so it would be light outside when I would get up to start working. I had managed to take both front fenders, both front doors and some smaller pieces like the front parking light housings and the headlight bucket piece up to the body shop. They called and said that they were going to primer soon. I went up and finished out the sanding on both front fenders and both front doors. From about Thursday of last week I worked every daylight hour on both back doors trying to get them done so they could be primered with the rest of the parts. Even with this constant work I was only able to get one door finished, and even it had to be finished at the body shop. Rain interrupted work as well as wet sand. I had run out of sand and when I bought more it was wet, which wouldn't work in my blaster at all. It would literally spray for about 1/4 of a second and clog up so I had to take the DA sander and finish up what was left on the door. The remaining door I didn't finish is still at my parents' house and I'm still working on it. Getting it right has been one terrible process. This area of the body is very complex with a roll similar to that of a whiskey barrel, but also flattens out as it changes torward the back of the car.

To help cut costs, Larry, the owner of the body shop, allowed me to come and do all the prep work on the parts to be primered. I had brought the parts up to the shop ahead of time to keep them from flash rusting in the barn but I was surprised to find they rusted worse in his shop than they did in our barn. This meant I had to sand down all the surface rust, then tape off all the parts for primer and then clean them with grease and wax remover. I had intended to get to my parents' barn around sunrise and finish the sand blasting I couldn't finish earlier because of the wet sand but as luck would have it a massive rain storm moved in that night. That morning it was coming an absolute flood. I slept in an hour, hoping it would pass by, but it didn't. I put my mud boots on and locked the hubs in on The Blazer and pulled down in the field to load up the door. Even though I backed right up to the door it still got wet. The cows also thought that since a truck was coming in the field they were getting fed so they swarmed my truck and I literally had to knocked them out of the way with the front bumper. I though they were going to cave the sides in (worse than my mother already had by backing over it) but they didn't. Finally I had everything loaded up and was on the way up when the heater core blew. It leaked antifreeze in the floorboard and blew it out from under the truck, which caused it to overheat. I was near my destination, which is about 20 miles away, so I limped the truck to the shop by letting it cool down enough to start and then floor it and coast up and down the hills with the engine off until I got there. Once there I worked most of the day on preparing the parts to be primered and then I had to borrow some tools and bypass the heater core, so now I have no heater. I had to set the parking brake because I pulled the truck right up to the door to unload it to hopefully avoid the rain. I set the parking brake so it wouldn't roll forward on the steep hill and when I went to leave it stuck and wouldn't fully disengage. It is still partially stuck and I'm going to have to take the rear wheels off to dislodge it. I eventually finished the day up and went home.

Here are the parts right after being sprayed.

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Fortunately for me I ran into my friend Nick on the way up to the shop to pick the parts up. He was heading the same way and stopped to help me load them in the truck because these doors are very, very heavy and very awkward for one person to lift.

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I borrowed dad's truck and trailer to bring all the parts home. It would have taken many trips to get them all home in The Blazer.

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Larry called me the day they finished spraying the parts and said he needed the room in the paint booth so that meant I had to go pick them up just hours after they had been sprayed. I have literally no where to put them for safe storage because the barn is full and my sister's family is living in my parents' basement because their house burned down so it is absolutely full to the brim with stuff, not to mention it's not a safe place for body panels with their two kids and dog. Fortunately for me, April doesn't mind that I turn the dining room into a temporary parts storage. The worst thing about it, other than the clutter driving me insane, is that because these parts hadn't cured yet they made the house smell awful. We hung a sheet over the door and opened a window and a day later it's not bad. There's also a door in the guest bedroom.

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Another problem that has been taking up so much of my much needed time is the fact that The Blazer and The Caprice won't pass emissions this year. The Caprice's carb decided to go nuts and the choke rod had come loose internally in the carb which caused the car to almost not run at all. I took it to a local mechanic here and he rebuilt the carb at his house. When I went to pick The Caprice up he had parked it next to another car he was working on, a low mileage 1972 Caprice that the owner's mother had owned. The owner is getting it in good working condition and is going to sell it.

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As usual, I forgot to bring the camera with me a few days so I don't have any detailed pictures of the process but I finally removed the tailgate and have begun sand blasting it. It also took the better part of a day to remove all the many interior trim pieces necessary to prepare to remove the side windows.

First I had to remove this tail panel which covers the storage area for the tailgate when it is in the open position. It doesn't look like it but this piece of of metal is much thicker and much heavier than you would anticipate.

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Once again the manual wasn't very clear on exactly how to remove the tailgate because it referred to parts that I don't know by their technical name, such as the "tailgate torque arm." Fortunately I was able to find very detailed and helpful pictures on this forum by member Wixom61 (no relation, hehe). His pictures of the window and the tailgate assemblies really helped me figure this out with ease. To get the window up I had to remove the motor and separate gear reduction assembly, remove the cable and use vise grips to turn it until the window was cranked up. It seemed to go up pretty smooth but took what seemed like 30 minutes of cranking before it was fully open.

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If you look at the bottom of the track the tailgate rides on you can see why it wouldn't go down all the way. This was even after I had taken a screwdriver and cleaned some of the trash out of the way. This area appears pretty nasty right now but there are no places rusted through and after I sand blast this area it'll look as good as new.

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This is one of two places on the bottom that the tailgate mounts to the rod shown in the previous picture. I learned from others that because the tailgate is lifted from only the side shown here this can be an area that can cause problems. If moisture is trapped here, as it has started on my car, it can eventually cause rust to weaken the metal and cause fatigue and cracks. Fortunately for me there were no cracks and no rust through so I won't have to make any patch panels or fix anything here.

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I ran out of sand and wasn't able to finish the outside but I finished blasting the backside of the tailgate. You can compare this picture to the previous one and see all the rust is gone. Because the glass does not slide into the tailgate as it does on many models, this tailgate is very light once removed.

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seriously?....do i have to get married just to have some free time to work on my crap??

bro...i may have to work on a car....based on peer pressure...

 

lookin GOOD man
lot of work you know sanding that small area of roof! LOL i just did that myself not long ago!

 

Yeah, the only problem I have sanding the roof is small aircraft keep trying to land on it while I'm sanding. I'm afraid this car is going to take a tanker full of primer and paint.

Brandon