my 67 impala, another round. - Lateral-g Forums

cantcatchmitch · #1 10-09-2020, 10:41 AM

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.

cantcatchmitch · #2 10-09-2020, 11:30 AM

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.

ScotI · #3 10-09-2020, 11:55 AM

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).

**WSSix** · #4 10-09-2020, 05:36 PM

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

**fleetus macmullitz** · #5 10-10-2020, 09:19 AM

Always a fan of these big Chevy’s.

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

cantcatchmitch · #6 10-12-2020, 03:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WSSix

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

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.

cantcatchmitch · #7 10-12-2020, 03:50 AM

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.

Juggernaut · #8 10-16-2020, 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cantcatchmitch

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.

Gotta say I'm extremely grateful that Lat-G is as active as it is.

Another car-related forum of which I've been a member for at least 20 years suffered a major data loss (hosting company screwed up badly) right around the time Facebook was taking off, and that was basically the kiss of death for the forum. Even though it's still online, it's a shell of its former self. Since you mentioned it, thought I'd thank you specifically for posting your progress here. It's so much better than Facebook.

Can't wait to see more of this one!

cantcatchmitch · #9 10-20-2020, 04:20 AM

Once the car was a roller again, progress slowed down. The plan was to start body work, but as I began that I also bought a new house with a garage that became a massive project ( and still is to this day.) the house had a 24x24 garage with a bad roof on it. We talked to a few contractors and after finding one we like expanded the garage to 24x48, leaving the original walls to create a "clean" and a "dirty" side. it took a few months but the car finally got moved over from my parents to the new garage and I could resume body work.

The body of the car was very good, except for some rust in the rockers that I patched. I had painted the car before but being young and not experienced in anything but collision work on minivans and daily drivers, the panel fitment and gaps were lacking. So nearly all the focus was spent of making the car straight and fitting as a whole. I didnt strip the car back to bare metal because I knew what was under the previous paint job I did was still solid. Around that time I started to follow Tyler and Adam Krause, who are known for doing work for shops like Mirandabuilt, David Lane, Andy Leach and more. Tyler posts a lot of information, and I read it over and over and applied it to this car. In its previous life I had bonded a 4" cowl scoop to the hood, but it just wasnt the look I was going for this time around. I found an incredibly rare 67 ss427 hood in Long Island, one of only around 2100 built. I also spent a ton of time making the windshield and backglass moldings fit, even had to weld and file them to fix the shape of them. After the body work was completed the I put the car in epoxy followed by five heavy coats of polyester primer.

cantcatchmitch · #10 10-20-2020, 04:46 AM

More body work pictures.

For some reason, I decided to completely slick out the front frame section. My fingers will never forgive me for that! Also I put a lot of work into the door jams, an area thats often not given much attention. I had a few breakthroughs of the first round of polyester (tan), so it was recoated in polyester again in gray this time. The black coating you see over top the primer is guidecoat, which I used a lot of to make sure the car is straight and to make sure there is no heavier sand scratches left behind. The primer was blocked in 100,220,320 and then 500 before paint. The last picture is an up close of the fitment of the windshield moldings after hours was spend re fitting them.