my 67 impala, another round.
 

Hello everyone! I haven't really bothered to do anything but lurk here for the past few years. I've been pretty occupied by facebook and instagram as far as keeping up with my automotive obsession on social media, but with the recent pandemic nonsense and lack of any major car shows and events in my area, I've felt a need to reachout to be involved in a car community again.

Some of you may remember my 67 Impala project, "the pendejo". It was a relatively mild redo of the car with airbags and sway bars and otherwise stock suspension, c6 brakes and a carbureted big block and six speed. I'll be the first to admit that if I could time travel I'd go back in time and kick my younger self in the a**. I wasted a lot of money on wrong parts and never really had a solid plan or goals for my car. When I realized I didn't know half the stuff I thought I knew I learned a lot at a very fast pace.

Anyway, this rebuild starts with my family and I towing the car to Ocean City, Md to the spring Cruisin OC show. Upon arrival in OCMD, I had come to the realization that the car had blown an airbag and the it would never make it off the trailer for the rest of my getaway. Before leavingon the trip I adjusted the rear upper arms to change pinion angle and didnt realize that the rear end brackets were rubbing on the air bag. I still enjoyed the weekend, but a plan was brewing to build a reliable, drive anywhere car that could retain the killer stance but eliminate the airbags and compressors. I always will remember how Greg Weld preached "you gotta drive em" and about making things reliable and functional first and it has stuck with me since before his passing, ( I was just starting to talk with him online not long before he passed.)

SO WHAT DID I DO?
I ordered an art morrison c6 sport custom order chassis. the car would lose its og frame and floors and become a unibody. heres a preview picture and the frame, c6 based suspension with a lower mounted rack, and triangulated four link, and went with a 9 inch as well.

Ill update this as I have time, the car is nearly complete and totally different looking now, but this post is already long enough to bore you all.

Its hard for me to rember three years ago. But I'll do my best to fill you in on everything this required to pull off. I cut every inch out of the floor from firewall back. 90 percent of the firewall left too. After lining everything up, I got the body back down on its new home and stitched the rocker panels to the massive 4x4 art morrison rails. From there I built mounts for the engine. Hindsight being 20/20, I shouldve move the engine back about 3-4 inches, it wouldve let me drop the engine down for much needed hood clearance, as I intended to go back to a flat hood again with the big block. But hey, I didnt want to have to have a new driveshaft made again......smdh. It made an enormous struggle for me to get a good efi intake on and keep the hood flat. ill touch on that as I go on. The exhaust is completely stainless, with kooks race mufflers and an x pipe, and its all tig welded. to keep the tailpipes up high I put a 5" hoop in the frame rails so the exhaust could pass through instead of going under and back up again.

The info & ideas typed in the posts are much more informative vs FB or IG. Pics are great to look @ but w/o the info they're just images.

Looks like a nice project. Learned how to drive in one of these (67 SS396 car).

Nice work, Mitch! Love what you're doing. I'm typing this as I watch Supernatural with the wife :D

Always a fan of these big Chevy’s.

I really liked your quoting Greg Weld in your post too.

UGHHHH SUPERNATURAL!!!! Ive never watched it, but what that show has done to the 67 market is unbelievable. people are paying more for junk 4 doors then then will for a solid 2 door car because they want to build "babies". the prices on trim and stuff for these cars have skyrocketed, alot of which isnt reproduced.

The next step was floors and firewall. bought a manual woodward fab bead roller and immediately realized I should've sprang for the motorized one. I'm still using it, and I've gotten really comfortable with it. This was a pretty straight forward, but I still made more scrap then I would've liked. I tried to keep all the lines flowing with each other and many of them flow through into the next piece.

Been watching on IG. Turned out bitchin.

After I wrapped up the floors, the car went back on the ground. I spent a few weeks building an overdesigned, much too busy set of inner fenders for the car, and then sent them to the scrap pile. I was talking to my upholstery guy (Bux Customs) and he mentioned how often less is more, and said often a lot of his seats have three lines in a pattern and it made me think. well the next set of inner fenders followed his advice and I decided they were good enough to move on. from there the car went onto the rotisserie for me to work on the bottom side. I originally intended to smooth and finish ever inch of the bottom side perfect and base/clear it. well this 17.5 foot long beast is a lot to make perfect! I still spent a lot of time on slicking out the bottom but I elected to bedline and then base/clear the bottom with satin clear. The paint is BMW tanzanite blue, a color that took me a long time to pick, but after seeing an M3 painted in that color it stuck with me. I finished the rear suspension parts in Ford sterling gray and flat clear, and for some dumb reason I chose to polish the stainless exhaust in entirety.

Nice fab work. Everything is looking so good.