1964 RHD Impala Wagon - Australian Delivered

Hi All

I am the lucky owner of a Canadian built, Australian delivered, right hand drive 1964 Impala wagon. As mentioned in the welcome thread, I am the third owner and have been taking care of it for the past 23 years.

For the first 15 it was a reliable workhorse as I worked as a musician putting in big kilometres around the state of New South Wales while for the remaining 7 years it was unloved and abandoned in various front yards and sheds as I moved around.

Restoring it was always on my "list" and despite a false start in 2007 (stripped the interior and paint, and then became a proud dad) I'm glad to say that as of January 26 this year, I commenced a factory correct restoration which I will detail here.



So first some history and forgive me if this has been covered before. I'm sure many of you know that Australia was the destination for a lot of imported GM product over the years, typically in CKD form (Completely Knocked Down) and then assembled by the local Holden Plants.

In 1964, local buyers were faced with a myriad of choices from the local manufacturers. Those looking for Chevrolet would most likely have seen the below newspaper ad offering Belairs (locally assembled) and Impalas (mostly assembled from Oshawa Canada).



Mine left the Oshawa Factory on March 30, 1964 and was delivered to the same city where it has resided all of its life. As per the letter from GM Canada below which I obtained this year it shows that it was one of 3 right hand drive models exported in 1964 and came with a generous list of options.



The original dealer release receipt and owners manuals have managed to stay with the car all of these years.





The second owners used the wagon as a daily driver before it met, in their eyes, a sad end. It was hit in the left rear quarter and door by a red light runner, puncturing the tank and leaving it looking pretty sad and sorry. I'm not sure how long it sat around for but it was eventually advertised as a "1964 Station Sedan needing restoration" in 1990.

I spotted the ad and was in the market for parts (I had a 4 door hardtop project which needed one of everything!). Upon arrival I was firstly surprised that it was a wagon (I didn't know what a Station Sedan was!), and secondly how unmolested it was. It had some rust in the bottom of the tailgate and of course the rear quarter was toast.

$900 later it was mine and was towed to a house nearby. Some new plugs, leads, and fresh fuel and it ran and drove beautifully. Photos below are from the first week during which time my father and I removed and patched the tailgate, drilled off the rear quarter to bang, cut, and shrink some shape back in it, and fixed the tank. After sealing the quarter with some cheap primer, we screwed it back on with metal screws and it stayed that way for.....wait for it.....the whole 15 years!

Sorry, I never took a "before" shot of the rear quarter but you get the idea:



















Loads more detail to come.

 

well...good thing you were looking for parts

so?...did the 4dr end up healing the wagon instead?

 

No - soon as I realised how original and complete the wagon was, the 4 door was quickly cast aside and forgotten about....although I still have it so it's not completely forgotten.

It too is on the "list"!

 

'looking at the window sticker it had metallic shoes id of thought they were much later.

 

Just to add a bit more to the wagon's history, and before I get into the juicy details and photos of the current restoration, here are some pictures from the 15 years when it was my workhorse.

Pretty much straight away I bought the numberplate US-283, completely oblivious to the fact that the car was in fact Canadian!

Lots of miles covered through country Australia (yes, those are beers in our hands and on the hood!)





We considered the wagon to be so cool, it featured in a few of our band promotional photo shoots. (Yes, my children think I looked ridiculous back then!)





I soon after swapped out the steel wheels and whitewalls for 15x7 rally wheels - silver then later sprayed black:



The shots below are about 17 years later and were an important turning point. It had been off the road for 2 years, moss started growing on the roof, I had bought a new house, I was engaged and I had just been given a company car.

Restoring it seemed a bridge too far so I tentatively decided to sell it. I asked my wife to take shots while I washed it for the last time (with a green kitchen scourer!). It was during this last wash that I actually decided to keep it - too many memories, and we planned to start a family so it would of course be a brilliant family cruiser. My wife (then fiancée) could see what the car meant to me so restoring it went on to the "list".






Next post is the "False Start" restoration of 2007.

 

Great story! Awesome wagon! Looking forward to your resto thread.

 

One of three RHD export wagons - great score on your part. My Uncle had a white '64 Impala wagon he bought new and owned it for many years. He finally sold it in 2000. It was a 283 auto car, white with blue interior. Lots of memories with that car!

 

Thanks for the replies.

Sorry...just before I get to the "False Start Restoration of 2007", while racking up those early miles it became very apparent that the engine was on it's last legs. Oil consumption was considerable and we used to carry around a box of spark plugs for those regular times it would drop onto 7 cylinders from a fouled plug.

Here's a typical pic of us in some one-horse town on our way to a gig, changing 1 spark plug (note the dodgy rear quarter, by this time in a "not-quite-right" shade of Gold)



A brief lull in gig bookings enabled us to take it off the road and give it a standard 30 thou rebuild.

The two most critically important parts of the rebuild were this book:



...and this guy - my buddy Nick who looks like a proud father after we pulled it down, sent it out for machining and screwed it back together ourselves - all in 1 week!





The motor still sings today and doesn't use a drop of oil. I think back on when we did this and at the time we had no idea that the motor was original to the car. Thank goodness we didn't get the idea in our heads to stick a 350 in it and sell off the dead motor.

Anyways.....onto the false start restoration of 2007.

To be honest, I didn't think it through as well as I should have and ended up going around in circles a little bit. The obvious things were the interior which was shot, and some bodywork. I decided a respray was in order as well. My wife had worked in the trade as a motor trimmer so was well connected. Her paint guy mixed up some gold by eye from the inside of the gas filler flap and she arrived home with everything I needed - deoxidine metal cleaner, 2k etch primer, Hi fill primer, 4 litres of Gold, 1 litre of white and some Autothane Clear. Even at this stage I was unsure if I was going to paint it or we would hand it over to an expert.

So... out came the interior.

As mentioned my beautiful wife Janelle is an outstanding motor trimmer so she knew exactly what to do. (apparently there's a bit more to it than just ripping it out!)





You can see above the destruction of the floor, the side panels and the headliner from years of loading and unloading guitar amps and speakers. Below you can see how bad the front bench was:



Using the partial remains of the seat covers, Janelle used them as templates to make new panels from scratch, faithfully copying the original pattern:






Nearly there:



Finished front bench with re-used buttons:



...and rear bench to match:



From there it was onto the right front guard.

As you would have noticed in the earlier photos it had a very strange flare to it. My best guess is that it got caught on a post by the first or second owner while reversing, thus pulling it outwards. So off it came and it was binned.





I had a spare guard which was straight but had some damage on the front corner as well as some rust down low. Lacking the patience and passion that I now have, I loaded it up with filler, smoothed it out, and sprayed the gold base colour on, minus clear (I have no idea why I painted it at this stage - perhaps I was just too excited about new shiny gold!



From here two things happened. I bought new whitewall tyres and put the wheel covers back on, and we bought a new digital camera!

Here's what the new panel in the new gold looked like:





More excruciating detail tomorrow...

 

I have read some really cool stories on this forum...

This has got to be THE best story ever...

 

Thanks for the kind words.

The next job was for the wagon was to be wheeled inside the garage where I did a pretty simple patch in the spare wheel well. These 6 seater impalas were configured with the tank in the rear quarter and the spare in behind the right quarter. The rear floor well was a "Luggage compartment", covered by a hinged lid - hence the option listed on the build sheet "A96 - Rear Compartment Lock".

I sealed up the patch and the wheel well with POR15.









I gave the rear luggage compartment some POR15 as well to seal it up.


The floors were in excellent condition apart from a few strange dents from underneath. They were also relatively rust free which is an advantage of living in a city 250km from the coast. I straightened the dents and sealed up sections of the floor with POR15.








Next was the left rear quarter that as I mentioned was never properly attached. I screwed it off and started work on the inner. The line around the wheel arch was never right which made changing wheels a real problem over the years. I basically needed someone to pull on the quarter to enable clearance for the tyre to get on and off.

Therefore it was time to get it right. I started with some basic bending and bashing but it was clear that more drastic measures were needed. So out came the offending piece to be flattened on the ground and welded back in. Fixed!









Then it was time to finally (after 17 years!) spot weld the quarter back on and dispense with the screws. I basically welded back through the factory welds which had been drilled out.





As meticulous as I was with re-welding the factory spot welds, I was lazy with the seams and just scraped filler over them (not smart and has since been done properly....which I will show in a future post).






In keeping with the theme of being lazy and stupid, while I had the filler out I filled some rust holes around the right taillight housing. (this too has since been done properly - pics to come).



While the tank was out I gave it the POR15 tank treatment - hopefully all good for another 50 years! (note the ripples from the slide hammer when we repaired it in week 1):



Finally while the tailgate was off it got a sand and some primer (all of which would be undone when I got more serious about the restoration!).





Paint on...and then off in tomorrow's post!

 

Alright - to illustrate how I was going around in circles a bit, I painted the tailgate jamb and the inside of the tailgate in the metallic gold basecoat and then Autothane clear. I was hugely impressed with how it looked straight off the gun - beautiful gloss and the shiny metallic really popped.

The tailgate then went back on with a fresh coat of acrylic primer and guide coat....only to be stripped again a week later! I though about it over the week and decided that I should take everything back to fresh bare metal and do it right:





I then started the tear down of the trim and glass - labelling everything carefully:





Then came the paint stripper, the DA sander, wire wheels, and scrapers...







And then it was done - all back to shiny bare metal













This is where the 2007 restoration ended.

The photo above was taken on 18 Feb 2007 and my son was born 117 days later. The wagon was wheeled back into the garage and sat in bare metal for 6 years.

More tomorrow.

 

I can't wait for the next installment! This is quite the epic! Great job of keeping the old girl, too.

 

Thanks MikeT - I'm assuming you guys don't mind the "post-a-day" format..? I've got about two weeks of daily posts before I get to where I am now. Let me know if I'm hogging this forum as I can slow them down.

So continuing on with a brief description of those 6 years if I may.....

Some of the dads on here might be able to relate to those fatherly instincts that occur when you have your first child. For me, I had two:

The first was "Nesting" - that period when suddenly the house needs to be urgently renovated.

The second instinct was "Crazy Health Kick" - when you give up your bad habits and get fit.

So... 2 sons, 2 marathons, 2 ironman triathlons, a kitchen, a living room, a deck, some landscaping, a sound proof studio, an ensuite, a full interior re-paint and an amateur cycling career accounted for those 6 years (made even crazier by the fact that I did all of the house re-modelling myself).

Yes.....I know you all love photos so here are those 6 years in 1 brief collage!



At the end of 2012, a strange calm had returned. My two boys became alot more independent, the house was looking great so my attention finally returned to the wagon.

I spent the summer of 2012/13 (Xmas holidays in Australia) exhuming the wagon from under old furniture, toys, building materials, blankets, and bicycles and dusted off the welder, the compressor and all of my bodywork tools.








With 6 years of extra thinking time, and with the advice of a number of my car buddies I decided to do a full factory correct restoration on it. It seemed the right thing to do for a number of reasons - it was "1 of 3", it still had 95 per cent of it's original components including the engine and transmission, it was turning 50 next year, and most of all I wanted to repay it for the faithful service and great memories it had given me.

After 3 weeks, the garage was converted from an untidy miscellaneous storage unit to a proper bodywork/mechanics shop. Over that same period I trawled through my old papers, spent countless hours on the web, and wrote to GM Canada - all in order to know as much as I could about how it left the factory. I regularly visited KiJiJi - the Canadian classifieds site in order to build up a library of images of Canadian built Impalas. I searched images on Flikr of American car shows held in Australia, trying to find original export examples but alas, 99 per cent of what I saw had candy paint, fat wheels, and non-original motor/tranny combinations.

My greatest breakthrough however was making contact with a very knowledgeable chap named Gil from Canada. He is a judge at Chevy Conventions and owns the country's most original 63 Impala Coupe. Essentially what he doesn't know about Canadian Built Impalas, no-one knows! Our weekly email exchanges have been invaluable in making sure I do this right.

So here it is after 6 years (photo taken January this year). Dusty, a little rusty and home to a few spiders:







The only extra bit of work I ended up with after being in storage for so long was the left front guard. Janelle's motor bike toppled over onto it leaving a nasty dent.



Work commences in tomorrow's post.

 

The first thing I tackled was the hood.

In the excitement of spraying gold and clear around I painted under the hood as well. Although it came up really nice, it needed to be semi gloss black as per factory ...so off it came. Scuffed the clear first, some paint stripper, scrapers and wirebrush:















I then tackled the first of the small rust repairs in the front lip of the hood - 2 patches needed on the inside and two on the outside.
Started with the hardest patch I'll probably have to make which follows the intricate pressings on the inside near the latch - took 2 hours to get it close!






I'm running my little Dual Mig 120 welder in gasless mode with 0.8mm shielded wire. I was hesitant at first as I've always used gas but it's working beautifully - nice penetration and very little heat distortion using the trusty "join-the-dots" method.


A couple of patches on outer side of the hood. Pinholes were showing through on the right and a there was a large hole on the left:









Patches done - I used a light in behind the welds to seal up the pinholes.



More repairs to the fenders tomorrow