1964 RHD Impala Wagon - Australian Delivered

Onto the right fender:



As I mentioned earlier the original fender was disposed of and this one was put on in its place. In 2007 I ignored the rust and damage and just loaded it up with filler.

The damage was a small hit in the front corner. Someone had obviously tried to repair it by probably brazing on a puller tab and using slide hammer. They were pretty heavy handed as the metal had torn in a few spots.

With the fender off I was able to get it much closer with the hammer and dolly, and carefully filled the tears with the mig welder (once again checking my work in a darkened garage with a light in behind to make sure it's all sealed)

Before:



During:



After:




Next was a proper rust repair in the bottom corner. Both the outer fender and the inner brace were in poor shape and the bottom bolt hole surround was also thin from rust:



First up I chopped out the inner brace:



..and then the outer skin:



A new inner brace:



A new outer skin patch (all the insides were coated with POR15)



..and a new bolt hole flange:



Repairs done..!



Left fender tomorrow.

 

Did you leave it in bare metal all that "growing up time"?

 

Yes I did - Not smart and pretty much everyone who saw it over the years under the piles of junk nearly had a heart attack and pleaded with me to get it in primer.

Again the advantage of not being near the sea and it being inside all that time was that surface rust was minimal. You will see in a few posts time how a rapid strip disk and some phosporic acid shines up the panels like new.

 

great writeup OZ64 !!!!
...look forward to the rest

 

Thanks Rev and Wagonmaster - plenty more detail to come. On to the left fender:

This is original to the car and was in pristine condition until my wife's motorcycle fell forward off its stand and left this:



The fix was to lay it flat on to the ground and using a bolster, pop it back out on the body line:



I then lifted up the lows from the back side using a slapper and a heel dolly:



As expected, dents mean stretched metal so I ended up with a high spot.



Rather than resort to heat shrinking with an oxy torch, I tried out a stainless steel shrinking disk, spinning at 1800rpm on my buffer. Heat up the high spot with friction from the disk...



..and cool immediately with compressed air:



Kept shrinking and caressing and checking with the body file.



I got there in the end but I'm too slow to make a living out of it!

From there I thought the panel was good-to-go however a closer look at the bottom corner showed some rust pinholes. After a bit of poking around I decided to open it up. I'm glad I did:





Fortunately the inside brace and bolt hole were fine so just a outside patch needed:









Fenders done!

Inner fenders tomorrow.

 

VERY NICE WORK and GREAT THREAD!

thanks

 

Great read and thanks for sharing, look forward to following your restoration journey.

 

Thanks for the comments guys.

Ok...the inner fenders. Two things wrong with these.

I brush painted them with POR15 in 2007 - big mistake as it is high gloss which looks nothing like factory correct....not to mention that it doesn't stick to non-rusty surfaces.

The second issue was the number of holes that had been drilled in them over the years by the second owner. For airhorns or relays perhaps..? There were 13 holes in the left inner alone!

I know that these Impalas had an antifreeze bottle mounted on the left inner but of all of the images I found online - none of the bracket holes matched. I therefore decided to fill all the holes until I do more research - much easier to drill them later. What I did learn however was that the antifreeze was green in Canada, and blue in the US!



So out with the mig to fill all holes, leaving one on each side (excluding the top fender bolt holes of course) - on the right the hole is for the clip for the positive battery cable and on the left, a single hole for the alternator wire clip.



I hit them with the DA sander to get rid of the flaking POR15 then sealed them with a black 2K etch primer. I then skimmed the small dents and ripples with some filler...





Another quick touch up with etch primer and a light block sand to check they were all straight...



Then some 2k semi gloss black - just like factory! ( I used a Valspar Industrial Black)



All finished!



Onto the grille



I was lucky over the years of travelling through the night that I never had a serious wildlife incident. I did nail a large kangaroo one night but the headlight bucket took most of the damage - there was the odd bird and rabbit so only relatively minor repairs needed to the straighten the grille.

In this case the bolster came in handy again:



I gave it a shine up with a scourer and some truckwash...



...and then set about the excruciating job of masking up the ends for paint. A roll of 3mm tape and lots of patience!



1 coat of etch and 1 coat of semi-gloss black and it came up like a new one!



More front end bits tomorrow.

 

Next job was to shine up the panels for etch primer. I started with a rapid strip disk on the angle grinder making sure that I didn't generate too much heat. I wouldn't use this method on newer car panels but there's plenty of metal in these old boats!





Here's some before and after showing the build up of 6 years of surface rust. It was particularly cute seeing the outline of some very small hands rusted into the surface from when my boys were toddlers.



There was a little bit of straightening and hole filling on the bumper filler panel before it was shined up and ready.



Next was the phosphoric acid (or Deoxidine) just to be 100% sure the surface rust was gone. Dilute 50/50 with water, wax on with medium steel wool, wax off with wet rag and then dry rag - small sections at a time.



The etch primer I used is a 2k black (as used on the inners in yesterday's post). I love black etch primer - it screams at you when you are blocking grey hi-fill primer, letting you know that you're near metal. If you do hit metal the shiny silver also stands out against the black surrounds:



Out into the Solar Spray Booth!



Done!



From there it was onto the radiator support panel. I left it in place to save the added hassle of lining up the fenders etc. The two issues were the brush painted POR15 back from2007, and one of the spot welds had failed near the mounting bracket.

So a quick repair on the spot weld...



... and some tie coat primer.







Next was the fan shroud - straighten up the dents and it too had more holes than it should have so more welding:





Here's the headlight bucket that was bent from hitting a kangaroo. Block of wood + big hammer = fixed.



From there it was cleaning up all of the miscellaneous bits before hitting them with tie coat primer.







Primed and ready for semi-gloss black:

 

daaaang....she's getting the full meal deal

good on ya

 

It looks that way but the motor is staying in and the body is staying on the frame....so the quarter pounder deal perhaps...?

 

Looking good! Nice work. My first car that ran was a '64 Chevy Impala 2 door hardtop.
I also had a '62 Impala SS 2 dr hardtop with no engine or trans that a body guy gave when I was 13. I hung out at the body shop so much that I think he gave it to me just to get me out of the place and stop bothering him.
BTW, the glass bottle that clipped into a bracket on the inner fender wasn't anti-freeze, it was windshield washer fluid.
I was under the hoods of thousands of cars checking oil and whatever when I worked at gas stations in my youth and those bottles were always full?
I don't think many people ever actually used it to fill their washer reservoirs or even knew that it was there.
It was always blue in my neck of the woods.

 

Thanks BlueVista - yes, the "solvent" in the glass bottle is indeed for the windscreen but it has anti-freeze properties as well apparently to stop it freezing in the lines and from cracking the plastic reservoir.

It continues...

With etch on the panels, I set about skimming them with filler. My preferred method is to lightly block sand the etch to show the lows and then skim/sand those spots until smooth. These were small patches of filler so used a medium sanding board. I graduated to the long dura blocks for the bigger, more recent repairs.



The bumper filler panel had a few waves in it so it got a skim of filler as well:



Then it was onto the grey Hi-Fill Primer - I 'm using PPG's Autothane Hi-Fill 2K Primer.



Then it was back to prepping the engine bay parts that need to be semi-gloss black (not shiny brushed-on black!)



The garage filled up pretty quickly with parts waiting for semi-gloss black:



More parts ready including some seam sealer on the hood frame. (Grey parts are tie-coat over existing POR15, black is etch over bare metal)



Out into the solar spray booth:



The first splash of colour was on the hood hinges. Some emails to Canada and some close examination of photos confirmed that the correct factory colours were grey with semi-gloss black springs



I painted the radiator support in semi-gloss black and wheeled it out into the sun for the first time in 6 years. The engine and firewall got jet blasted and then I went about removing all of the non factory parts.



Factory 283 Chevs didn't come with 350 Holleys!



Removed a few other parts which I'll detail in a few posts:



Lots of cosmetic work on the engine in the next post tomorrow

 

Oz, GREAT JOB!!! You are a very good bodyman, and I'm so glad you have gotten back to work on your wonderful Chevy. I love that you have such a long history with your wagon, and have documented it with so many great photos.

As I was reading over your posts, and got to where you were coating everything with POR-15, I said to myself "Uh oh! He's going to regret that!" And sure enough, you did. I used to be a fan of POR, but now, not so much. When I first was working on my Buick, I coated various areas with it, being very careful to sand for adhesion before applying. But every single place I used it, I have regretted, and have had to remove it because it doesn't have good adhesion and ends up flaking off. :banghead3: I will never use it again. Good epoxy primers and such are what I'm sticking with! Pun intended!

I look forward to seeing more on this project!

David