Posts Tagged Chevrolet
Car of the Week: 1963 Chevrolet Corvette convertible | Old Cars Weekly
Posted by rariccardi in Old Cars Weekly on September 18, 2011
By Brian Earnest
Unlike a lot of Corvette lovers who find one Corvette leads to another over the years, Steve Stone wanted only one.When Stone saw the stunning new 1963 ’Vette hit the market, even though he was only 18 years old, he knew that was the car for him.Forty-eight years later, it’s clear Stone was right. The Madison, Wis., resident has rolled up an astounding 467,000-plus miles on his serious-looking, jet black convertible. When it comes to working Corvettes that have earned their keep, Stone’s car lives in rare air.The car has been driven almost daily for nearly all its life — most of which was spent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The car has ventured to all 48 lower states — including 46 in the past eight years — and nine Canadian Provinces. It has survived trips of 7,100 miles in 2008 and 6,000 miles in 2007. And many of its miles in recent years have come with a trailer rolling behind it
via Car of the Week: 1963 Chevrolet Corvette convertible | Old Cars Weekly.
Old Cars Weekly – 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air racer
Posted by rariccardi in Kustoms, Old Cars Weekly on July 11, 2010
“I really had to be careful not to over-restore it and make it too nice,” Todd Newton said. “The rough edges around the windows and the holes that they cut in the floor — I left them all just the way they were. I didn’t smooth things out or try to do anything different. We didn’t want anything to be too good. If they torch cut something, I did too.”
via Old Cars Weekly -.
1974 Chevrolet Camaro
Posted by rariccardi in Old Cars Weekly on January 18, 2010
1974 Chevrolet Camaro
{Editor’s Note: Since Tim Reid can certainly tell the story of his 1974 Camaro restoration better than anybody else, here is his tale behind this week’s OldCarsReport.com “Car of the Week}
By Tim Reid
In 1974 I was 12 years old. I had watched my dad buy many cars over the years, have a little paint and body work done to them, clean them up, drive them for a while and sell them. Being in this environment every since I can remember has given me a love for cars (old and new).
I have many work-in-progress projects (1964 El Camino, 1965 Chevy Truck, 1947 Ford Super Deluxe, 1952 Chevy). I also have many completed projects (1974 Camaro, 2006 Corvette, 2008 Cadillac CTS, 2008 Silverado Z71 crew cab, 2007 Chevy Avalanche, 1998 Corvette, 2004 Hyundai Tiberon). The inventory changes constantly.
In 1974, my dad was looking for a car to fix up for my older brother to drive when he got his driver’s license. We made the trek down to Indianapolis to a place we had been many times before, Wrecks Inc. Their saying was “We Meet By Accident”. We spent a couple of hours looking over the hundreds of cars they had. My dad had settled in on a 1974 Camaro that was hit in the front. As usual, it took about an hour of wheeling and dealing for them to come together on a price. We loaded it on the trailer and headed back home.
74 camaro
Once we got a car home, the norm was to tear it down to see exactly what parts were needed, then start calling the local salvage yards for parts, and decide whether we would be better off buying new parts or used part. The tear-down was complete within a day or two, but that’s where the process came to a screeching halt. While looking for parts, another deal was found, and the ’74 Camaro got pushed back in priority. After all, it was two years before my brother would get his license. The car was eventually pushed to the back of the priority list over and over again.
Fast forward to sometime around 1999, my dad was selling his house in the Chicago area and didn’t have a place to keep the Camaro so he sold it to a friend of his who had a body shop.
Fast forward again to 2004. My dad called me one day and said his friend with the body shop was retiring and wanted to know if I knew anyone interested in buying the 1974 Camaro for $1,500. The car was still not finished. I talked it over with my wife and 14 year-old-son Tyle. I told Tyler if he would help restore the car, it would be his driver when he turned 16. We traveled to the Chicago area to pick up the car. Little did I know my dad’s friend would also give us plenty of extra GM parts. We had the back of the truck, the inside of the Camaro, and the trunk of the Camaro filled up with extra parts that he had accumulated over the years.
We got the car home, and started the tear-down all over again. There had been some work done, but during the long trip home, I had decided we would do a complete restoration on the car. We removed all the interior, glass, doors, trunk lid, front-end, bumpers, engine and transmission from the car. The car had been stored inside most of its life, so it was in excellent shape for a 30-year-old car. It still had the original Uniroyal Tiger Paw bias ply 14-inch white lettered tires, with the Rally wheels. Surprisingly, they weren’t dry rotted at all. The wheels had a little surface rust in a few places.
74 camaro
We tore into the engine. Once the heads were off, I was glad we decided to go through the engine. There were mice droppings on top of most of the pistons. I sent the engine off to be checked and rebuilt. I also sent the transmission off to be rebuilt.
While those jobs were being done, we started on the bodywork. We stripped the car down to bare metal, and marked the imperfections. The doors had a few door dings from sitting in the garage at home but, amazingly, there was not one bit of rust on the car. We did what little bodywork there was and primed, blocked and sealed everything. We decided to do something a little different with the hood, so I took it and the two mirrors to a friend of mine in Piedmont, Ala. I told him to surprise me, with some flame/fire on the hood and mirrors. He did just that. He put the Chevy bowtie in each of the valleys in the hood, and has fire rolling out from under the bowties all the way up the hood. He also put some ghost flames in the center of the hood. The mirrors look like they are literally on fire. He did an amazing job.
We started assembling the engine after it came back. We decided to paint it the original Chevy orange color, but then we clear-coated over the orange. We painted all the brackets with high-gloss black, and the master cylinder with cast blast paint.
74 camaro
I painted the car with the front-end, doors, and trunk lid off. We painted the firewall the same color as the car (it normally was a flat black). While that was drying, we stripped all the inner structure of the front end and painted it high-gloss black.
74 camaro
Then came the long, slow process of getting the car put back together and lining everything up. We finally got it all put back together, and started the most enjoyable part of restoring a car — wet sanding (anyone that has done this knows I am lying). A little side note, when I was 13 years old I would wet sand complete cars for $6. No wonder the owner of the body shop kept me busy.
74 camaro
It was this time when Tyler informed me that he wasn’t going to drive the Camaro every day. He knew we had gone way overboard for this car to be a daily driver.
We got the engine and transmission put back in the car, installed the windows, and buffed the car. That is truly the point where you can see the results of all the work put into restoring a car. We left the original Tiger Paw tires and wheels on the car. We only drove it to the close car shows (10 miles or less), and trailered it to the rest. We’ve won many trophies over the last few years, but it has really been a topic of conversation at the car shows. Just this last year we replaced the original tires and wheels with some Foose wheels and Firestone tires.
74 camaro
Today, we have ‘74 Camaro with 5,000 original miles. It has original interior, original glass (except the windshield), original weatherstrip (except the trunk), original wheels and tires. The car has ceramic headers and stainless steel Magnaflow exhaust. The bumpers were sent off to be re-anodized. We upgraded the windows to power windows and the door locks to power door locks.
I would like to say I completely restored this car by myself, but I had help from many friends in the areas I’m not as comfortable with. Steve Baskins of Baskins Tire did the wiring, Magnaflow exhaust and installed the Firestone tires. Cecil Bing rebuilt the transmission, Frank Morgan assembled the engine, and Al Marion did the flame work.
74 camaro
1962 Chevrolet Bel Air Sedan
Posted by rariccardi in Old Cars Weekly on January 18, 2010
Brian Earnest, at the Old Cars Weekly Car of the Week website writes about the history of a vintage American icon, the 1962 Chevrolet Bel Air Sedan. thanks for another great story!
1962 Chevy Bel Air Sedan front
Even if tomorrow it were trampled by elephants, or run over by a train, or entered into a demolition derby, Frank Keller’s 1962 Chevrolet Bel Air four-door sedan has still lived a charmed life.
Somehow, the lovely red Chevy has survived life as a daily transportation during its early years, avoided being pounded into the ground by a college kid who apparently didn’t even like the car, and lived through a major tornado that tore the roof off the garage it was in. To top it off, against all odds, the 47-year-old car is almost as rust-free today as the day it rolled off the assembly lines, even though it has never been restored and sat untouched and unloved in a garage for about 16 years.
“We found chips in the metal, but no rust at all!” said Keller, a resident of Chetek, Wis., who bought this week’s OldCarsReport.com “Car of the Week” last summer. “There was no discoloration of any of the chrome or aluminum. Nothing.
“We can’t figure out what is going on with this car. It just defies logic.”
Frank and Diane Keller run the Shady Grove Resort in northern Wisconsin and found out about the car through a customer. The Kellers are a horsepower-loving muscle car clan — Frank has a ’71 Chevelle SS 454, Diana rolls in a ’69 GTO convertible, and their kids, Scott and Wendy, own a ’68 4-4-2 convertible and ’68 Charger, respectively — but Frank liked what the customer told him about the Bel Air. “He told me about the car and gave me a price, and I thought, ‘Well, it might be worth playing with,’” he said. “The man was meticulous about things, and if I believed what he said about the car, I figured it would be pretty nice.
“The car belonged to your typical little old lady, and the guy had bought it from her back in about ’91 for his son to drive to college. Well, the kid only drove it for about two years and then he garaged it. I guess he didn’t care too much for it. It started with 41,000 miles on it when he got it, and it had 45,000 when he parked it.”
62-Chevy-BelAir-rear
And then the car sat, untouched, at least until things got exciting with Mother Nature in 2001. In April of that year, an F4 tornado rolled through the small town of Hoisington, Kansas, where the car resided. The twister tore a huge swath through the heart of the town and destroyed or damaged about 400 homes and a number of businesses. The storm put Hoisington on the map, for the wrong reasons, and made national headlines.
The storm claimed the roof of the Bel Air’s garage, according to Keller, and knocked the adjacent brick home off its foundation, but the only damage the Chevy suffered was a small ding near the center of its hood. “There were only two real dings in the car and that was one of them,” Keller said.
The car then sat for eight more years after the tornado before Keller came for a visit. “When I saw the car, it had about two inches of dust on it,” he said.
62-BelAir-Benchseat
Keller said he and his son typically restore one car a year for fun and profit during the winter, but it didn’t take him long to realize that the Bel Air didn’t need a lot of work. In fact, aside from having some new OEM-style seat covers made and replacing the carpeting, he’s basically kept the car as he found it. Aside from the seat covers, all of the interior is new, and all of the body panels are original.
“I had intentions of building it up and fixing it up, but I was thrilled it came back naturally on its own terms,” he said. “Could it be fixed up perfectly and have the little nicks and scratches fixed? Yeah, but to me, that’s character. I’m going to leave it just the way it is.
“The engine compartment — we cleaned it up, but that’s about all we did. I thought somebody must have painted the valve covers and intake, but they didn’t. It’s never been painted, and all the decals are in place.
“The car had been sitting so long that we had to flush the tank out four times. Then we pulled the carburetor. Those cars were very touchy with gasoline. They used pure gasoline, not the garbage that is out there today.”
The Bel Air lineup occupied Chevy’s mid-priced niche in 1962, and sedans were the most popular. The Bel Airs came in two- and four-door sedans, a two-door hardtop coupe, and six- and nine-passenger station wagons.
Bel Air standard equipment included foam front and rear seats; color-keyed carpeting; foam backed luggage compartment mat; and a specific steering wheel hub. Interiors were higher-grade cloth and vinyl combinations. A full-length upper bodyside molding was used, with Bel Air script appearing on the rear fenders, just below it. A stainless bright gutter cap molding and four taillights, arranged two on each side, were other distinguishing features. A bright rear cove molding added a touch of distinction.
Also standard were a heater and defroster; dual sun visors; crank-operated ventipanes; directional signals; parallel action windshield wipers; front door armrests; ashtray and coat hooks.
62-engine
62-engine2
The Bel Airs came standard with either a 170-hp 283-cid V-8 — which Keller’s car has — or 135-hp, 235-cid six-cylinder. Racier 327- and 409-cid engines were also available. Keller’s car is also optioned with full wheel covers, whitewall tires, AM radio, power steering and two-tone paint.
“It’s got a few chips in the metal, but no rust at all, even underneath,” said Keller of his ’62. “The paint was faded, but I spent two days buffing it out and I could comb my hair in the reflection. I was absolutely amazed. I started buffing one panel, then another… It was amazing the luster and shine that came back.”
The Kellers took their sedan to a couple of car shows not long after it got back on the road, and happily claimed trophies in both shows. “Both times it lost to fully restored four-doors,” Frank said.
The trips also gave Keller a chance to experience the fun of traveling in a full-sized “old school” family sedan — something he hadn’t done in a while.
“They’re a boat,” he said with a laugh. “Hey, they were Chevy’s full-size vehicles.
“The cars today, the technology is just astronomical. Back then, they were just put together! We laugh, my son and I, at some of the workmanship. It was not the greatest. But it’s like being out being out in a big old 20-foot Chris Craft on a lake. You could get seasick in one of these.”
62-profile
Keller plans to sell the car if the right buyer comes along, but he won’t feel bad about having a nice, big red sedan around for a while if he has to. Clearly, the car is growing on him.
“I do buy some cars for investment, but I’m in no hurry to sell it,” he said. “I don’t want to see this car hacked … Somebody out there is going to love this car, and I hope they find it.
“You just don’t see these cars. They didn’t survive. And four-doors never got the respect they deserve, but they were the cars we were all raised with.”