Here I am again, after another long delay between blog updates. Just haven’t had much time lately to work on the car. Finally though, I made it out there this past week! I was able to get the filler work pretty much done on the drivers side. The quarter panel was already done, but both doors and the front fender (side of it) were not. It looks like a lot of filler to the person who doesn’t know how bodywork is done these days. But the fact is… the filler is on pretty thin. No thicker than 1/8″ and for the majority of it, not even that. Its used to fill the waves in the sheet metal, not the dents! Dents you take out with the stud-gun/puller or body hammer and dolly. Anyway, its pretty level now. I’ll check it over again before I do the final sanding to prep for high-build primer.

So check it out… I had much of the filler work DONE when I noticed a TINY, and I mean TINY dark dot on the lower rear corner of the front door. Uh-oh! Rust? I poked at it with a sharp chizle and it punch right through, as shown in the pic. Just goes to show… you can THINK you have it all removed and replaced with fresh steel, but you can miss one tiny bit! If I had covered this up with paint, it would have certainly turned into a tiny blister under the pain in a short time. I tried to zap the thing with the welder, because the area around it seemed solid, but the metal was just too thin and kept blowing out when I tried to weld on it, so I ended up doing like Mike Holmes would do. Just tear it out and make it right! You can see what was behind it! Yuck! The lesson? From now on, whether the metal seems solid here or not, cut it out and re-do it, you cant see it but its going to be rusting away behind this area of EVERY door on EVERY ’59-’60 Chevrolet!

After welding in the new patch, I finished the filler work. Sheesh! Still have to do some more filler work on the hood in a few areas. Very mild waves in it, what a pain that will be! Then, the trunk lid needs a lot of work… ouch.

One last rust dot found, just in the nick of time!

Rust hole in door, opened up!

Filler work done on drivers side.

So about a month ago, the chance to buy a ’60 Impala convertible project came up. I’ve wanted one for a long time, but always assumed that I’d have to buy from out of state, as I have NEVER seen one come up locally. I assumed I’d fly to where the car was to inspect, then have to pay to get it transported back here. So here was my chance to buy it locally and avoid all that! Not only that, the factory color of the car was Suntan Copper… my favorite! However, I couldn’t afford it. I would have had to sell my ’60 Buick convertible in order to raise the funds. So I decided to just let it go. A few weeks pass, and I assumed it would be gone, but I got news that it was still available, but was going to be loaded on a trailer in a few days and transported to a swap meet in Monroe, WA where NO DOUBT it would sell. In fact, a few guys from the Seattle area were planning to see it at the swap meet. SO, I just went into debt some more! (damnit). The car is now mine, for better or worse! NO, I WILL NOT start on this project until the Flat-Top is finished. I promise!

So it’s been a long, long time (again) since my last post to this restoration blog. My plan this past spring was to get the car in paint before winter. Well, this is clearly not going to happen. I got a little bit of work done in April and May regarding getting the hood and fenders lined up nicely. There is some body filler on the hood now, and it’s about ready for some high-build primer. This is where things stalled. Lots of stuff going on over the Summer, but now I look forward to getting back to work on the car. Shown below is a photo of the car as it sits right now, neglected with junk stacked on top of it along with a lot of dust! Shameful, I know.

Just scored a Guide-Matic (previous to 1960, known as the Autronic Eye) automatic headlight dimmer for the Impala. Found it on eBay and paid $275 after shipping. These were more commonly installed on Cadillacs. You very rarely see them on a Chevrolet. It was available as a dealer installed option. The unit appears to be complete, but it probably doesn’t work.. and I guess it doesn’t even matter. Even when they were brand new they apparently didn’t work worth beans, so there is little point to it. It’s cool to have anyway! Installing just the Phototube “eye”… the part mounted to the dash without having the rest wouldn’t be kosher… that would make me a poser. To earn the bragging rights associated with a rare accessory like this, ya gotta have the whole thing, even the parts you don’t see. It obviously needs restoration and a new rubber gasket, but it should be pretty neat to have on the car. Should be a conversation piece, as many people don’t know what these are.

Find a Guide-Matic or Autronic Eye for your car on eBay!

1960 Guide-Matic

According to an article posted in various places on the web by John Oldenburg, a veteran at restoring Guide-Matic and Autronic Eye’s, these units were very specific to each vehicle and year that they were installed, even though many of them may look very similar. The units can be identified by their model number tag. This units model number is 160. The first digit, 1, means Chevrolet. The second two digits are the year, 60 for 1960. The other numbers are a sequential serial number.

Finished prepping the fender today. Got the back side painted with semi-gloss black and welded a plug into the antenna hole since I won’t need it with the deluxe rear antennas on the car. Everything lines up great! There is a bit of a high spot along the crown of the fender that I need to figure out, but other than that its looking real good.

Just bought a few more NOS parts! Fender ornaments and hood letters. Both of these items are reproduced. But, as always I prefer to buy NOS if possible. I had already purchased a set of the reproduction fender ornaments but was disappointed to see that the chrome was very poorly done. I had also purchased a set of “NOS” hood letters before, but those turned out to be corrosion pitted and clearely USED parts that someone was trying to pass off as NOS! Come on people, really!?? So here’s a comparison of the NOS fender ornaments and the reproductions.

Can’t tell the difference in the picture? The one on the right is the repro… you can tell by the clarity and smoothness of the chrome in the original. In person it’s fairly obvious. The castings themselves on the repro’s aren’t all that bad. You could clean up the edges of the castings (sharpen them up a bit) and re-chrome for a great look, but why bother? NOS isn’t THAT difficult to find… they do turn up. Here’s a close-up shot that shows how the repro’s fall down in chrome quality and detail sharpness.

The reproduction is on top. What you can’t see is the edges of the fin where the molds were parted. This area is belt-sanded to a nice crisp line on the originals, but is vague and even crooked on the repro’s.

Here’s a shot of the NOS hood letters. How they compare to the reproductions I don’t know since I’ve never had any of the repro’s in my hand. These letters are the same parts used in 1961.

Ya know how sometimes your tools just go missing, and you have no idea what could have happened to them? I lost my favorite ratchet quite a while ago, a Proto that I had found at a swap meet for cheap. Nice ratchet!

So when I went to remove the right front fender (the Biscayne fender that I’m not going to use anymore), I got down on the ground to remove the lower bolt that goes in through the back-side of the rocker panel. I had my ratchet and extension in hand to do the job. Then to my surprise, there already stuck in the hole is my long-lost Proto ratchet with extension and socket stuck to the very bolt I was about to remove! Since it had been about a solid YEAR (see posting titled Back on Track! for details) since I had worked on the car, that was apparently the last time I’d seen this tool. I guess the lesson is, work on your project car more often than once a year!

The right front fender that I have done bodywork on, and planned on using just isn’t the best part to use. It was so wadded up (see the post titled Right Front Fender …. Savable?). With some advice from a friend, and lots of experimentation and effort, the fender was actually looking real good. Saved I thought! But, I ran into difficulties with the top crown of the fender when trying to get the hood to sit flush with it. I had already tweeked the top surface of the fender and had more body filler in it than I’d care to admit, so when I found a good fender (actually a front clip minus hood) in the swap meet area at the Spokane Goodguys 2010 car show, I figured I’d better just take a loss on all that labor that I put into that Biscayne fender. The advantages being far less body filler, more confidence that the overall contours of the fender are accurate, better fit, and it already has the impala trim holes since it came from an Impala, not a Biscayne or Bel Air.

The fender is not perfect however… it was attached to the front clip as an assembly and had been moved around that way, which stressed the area of the fender where it mounts to the core support… bent would be more accurate actually. Anyway, the damaged area is rather stout, being doubled-up sheets of steel so hammering it back out was difficult and It will require some filler along the top edge, but not too bad. Other than that, this fender is real cherry!

I stripped the paint off, hammer/dollied out a few dings and minor scrapes, then flipped the fender over to scrape off all the old undercoating and crud. The bottom side was then treated with Picklex 20 to convert the surface rust. Next I’ll paint the bottom side with Zero Rust matte black and prime the front side with PPG DPLF Epoxy primer.

The hood I’ll be using came from the silver Biscayne, it’s a reasonably decent hood, no rust issues at all but it does have a bent area at the lower drivers side front leading edge, and a low spot on the passenger side body line. If I had a better hood available to me, I’d use that instead but this one will be an easy fix, so no big deal.

The damage to the front looks to have been caused by a driver having run into a piece of pipe that was solidly affixed to something. The aluminum trim shows the imprint of about a 1 inch diameter piece of tubing, which smooshed the trim and pushed the hood back in that area about 1/8″. This caused the vertical area of metal behind the trim to become stretched at the bottom edge. So no matter how much pushing you do, it won’t fix the problem. The solution was easy though. Just make a cut with the cutoff wheel and squeeze the area together, then weld it back up.

The result… right back where it belongs! Tiny skim of filler and it’ll be good to go.

The other damage was on the top of the hood along the passenger side rib body-line. Luckily, the center of the dent was not hidden under any of the underside bracing structure, so I was able to slam a 2×4 under it with a smooth beveled edge on it that cradles inside that rib shape, then close the hood on it, putting my weight into it a little bit at a time… checking and re-checking to make sure I don’t go too far. Didn’t take too many tries and its pretty much gone. I’ll skim the area with filler and it will disappear completely.

The opportunity came up to purchase most of the parts necessary to upgrade the Impala to power windows. Chevytalk member Steven Pasztor had recently parted out a ’59 flat-top 4 door and gave me a good deal on the parts. The only problem… the passenger front door was missing, so I need a regulator and door-jamb conduit for that door. Luckily, other GM models from 59-60 had the exact same parts. Lots of Cadillacs came with power windows, so I’m hoping that locating the needed bits wont be too difficult. Worse case scenario, I can buy reproduction parts (ouch!).  I bought some extra switches via eBay and have enough here to put together one good looking and functional set. I won’t bother purchasing the reproduction switches that you see all over eBay. They look great, but reviews have been poor. The large 4-gang switch apparently has a very high failure rate. The smaller switches seem to be OK. I’ll stick with originals, they seem to be fairly easy to get, so why not stick with original USA made parts? Ixnay on the inaChay! The wiring connectors will be re-used, but I’ll do new wiring since this stuff has been cut up.