Just for the heck of it, I went with a friend to Tekoa, WA which is not too far from here. We ran across this great looking red 1960 Impala Sport Coupe inside the old Doresey Chevrolet dealership building… wow cool! 348, mostly original car. It looks like it had been painted at one time, but other than that it is very original.  Also, up on the hill is a slew of old cars rotting away. Among them, two 1960 Impala Sport Sedans! On the hill were several other cars, many of them very worthy of restoration including a few convertibles… please don’t ask me who has this stuff, the old man has been bothered for DECADES about this car collection, and all the locals have already been picking it over since he finally started selling stuff. All the ’59 and ’60 Chevy’s are already sold.

Rather than deal with trying to clean and strip the inner fenderwells, core support, hood latch support, front bumper filler panel, and the cowl vent panel the hard way, I just took them into the media blasters and had them done.  Cost me $120 bux for all.. money well spent! Here they are in my paint booth that I use for doing my bicycle restoration work. I shot them with PPG DPLF epoxy primer.

Well, like I need another project…. but my brother Marty decided to sell his ’65 Impala Convertible, so I bought it. Runs and drives but its pretty rough. A friend of mine stopped by with his Jaguar XK-120 convertible, putting the Impala to shame.

Well, that crappy passenger side rear door just isn’t going to work. I decided to remove the relatively good skin from the Biscayne parts car, and install it to the inner framework of the original door. The structure is just different enough from a 4-door “post” door, that modifying the other door would not be feasible. I cut the skin off just inside the overlapped edge, leaving the edge so I could retain the original look and not have to mess with grinding my welds perfectly straight. I split the panel right below the beltline trim, since the top portion of the door skin is a little different between the hard-top and the “post” sedan.  Welding all the seams for this panel was no picnic, and took quite a bit of time… but in the end, the door no longer had its twist, and it fit the car very well with nice gaps.  Of course, now I have to locate and make all the trim holes by hand since the Biscyane door does not have the same trim that the Impala does.