1968 Coronet 500 Project

[JimKueneman]

The rear end is now out and seal kits, brake components and bushings are on order to give the rear axle and suspension a restoration.
It sure seems like forever but I have really only worked on this car for 12 weekends with anywhere from 0 to 8 hours in the garage Saturday and Sunday and a few hours on the weekday evenings when possible. I really need to see positive progress instead of negative (i.e. more parts being removed and none going back on)

 

[Mocajava]

This is a great thread with the amount of work you are doing and the way it is documented for us all to see and keep up. I wish I had done the same and need to be more vigilant in taking pictures and explaining how I proceed on me 69 Coronet. You are doing a great job and I applaud your perseverance. That car will be BETTER than factory when you get done, these old cars were slapped together in the factory. Please keep us updated as I have a lot of the same things going with mine and enjoy seeing how you address the different aspects. It would be nice to hear your forward plans for drivetrain and interior as there are so many guys on this site that have been down this road and really do have some great insight and experiences to share that you can shortcut the process. Keep us posted and thank you Jim!

 

[JimKueneman]

This is a great thread with the amount of work you are doing and the way it is documented for us all to see and keep up. I wish I had done the same and need to be more vigilant in taking pictures and explaining how I proceed on me 69 Coronet. You are doing a great job and I applaud your perseverance. That car will be BETTER than factory when you get done, these old cars were slapped together in the factory. Please keep us updated as I have a lot of the same things going with mine and enjoy seeing how you address the different aspects. It would be nice to hear your forward plans for drivetrain and interior as there are so many guys on this site that have been down this road and really do have some great insight and experiences to share that you can shortcut the process. Keep us posted and thank you Jim!

Thanks, the plans right now are minimal. I want to drive this dang thing! My plan is a simple facelift right now. I will remove and pull down the motor and transmission. All that I plan to do right now on the engine is a simple rebuild (ring, bearings, valve job) for now to get it running with known pedigree and lipstick to make it look good. Same for the tranny and rear axle, simple rebuild kit to know what I have and ensure no dried out gaskets/seals.

The things I plan to rebuild are:

-AC/Heaterbox (cleaning and painting) with new gasket/foam kit from Detroit Muscle Technologies.
-Wiper Motor (cleaning and painting)
-Dash cleaning
-Mockup the wiring with the removed dash and test out the wiring to decide what to and not to replace
Simple rebuild/resealing of:
-Engine
-Tranny
- Power Steering Pump
- Steering gear

And paint job.

I will admit that I claimed this is my first restoration which is true but my dad was a John Deere mechanic his whole life and I was a GM mechanic for a decade before going back to school to get an electrical engineering degree so all this work, other than the body work, is not alien to me

 

[JimKueneman]

And if you want to see how I got up to speed on the bodywork it is all here

http://www.forbbodiesonly.com/moparforum/threads/suggestions-on-bodywork.110602/

 

[Superfreak]

Very nice work you are doing. Any future plans for a big block?

 

[JimKueneman]

Very nice work you are doing. Any future plans for a big block?

Who knows. The focus now is to have a dependable driver. If the opportunity presents itself sure I'll build up something drop it in. I still want the satellite so may just wait for it there. My speed days are over I just want a weekend cruiser..... for now

 

[JimKueneman]

Now that I have the unbody about stripped I have the process down so I may as well show the easiest way I found.

In the start of this thread I talked about Aircraft Stripper and using a cheap undercoating gun to apply it to the underbody. Let it set for 20 minutes then hit it with the high pressure washer. The water neutralizes the stripper so let it set a day to dry out. The next day do the same thing. There is a balance of cost vs work that I have found is 2 coats. After 2 coats there is not enough undercoating left to offset the high cost of applying more stripper.

Here is a photo after the first application of stripper.

And after the second

Now get a torch or heat gun and heat the undercoating and metal to soften it. I use metal spreaders for filler exclusively now and usually only the 1" wide one. It feel like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon but it goes faster than you would think and the small width allows you to get into most every crevice.

Oh and tape up your sleeves so the hot undercoating does not fall down them..

When done it will look like this. It took about 50 minutes to do from the torsion bar cross member to the rear shackle on the driver side floor pan for me now that I have the hang of using the spreader.

I love these 3M disks I found at the body shop supply store. They are 3" and rip through the left over undercoating and paint. This took less than 15 minutes under the car.

When done it looks like this:

 

[JimKueneman]

Next I use a 3" knotted wire brush on a die grinder. The knotted brush strips much better than the classical kind. Wear glove and be careful you can loose skin with this setup.

I am using southern polyurethane primer so I used there recommended grease and wax remover. Put it in a _real_ spray bottle that can handle chemicals and spray a good coating in a small area. This will loosen the remaining undercoating film so the wire wheel can quickly strip it off.

When done it is almost ready for paint.

Tomorrow I will switch to a small 1" wire brush to get into the corners where the 3" would not go, then get the DA sander with 80 grit paper and hit as much of the metal as possible. Lastly I will hand sand where I can get the DA. A few place I will get the nasty sand blaster out to clean up surface rust (I minimize the usage of that thing as I still get grit falling out of my trunk lid when I open it after using it to clean up a rusty area).

My Southern Polyurethane order did not make it here today so I don't have enough grease and wax remover to give the underside a coating of epoxy primer. They are very specific on using their 2 types of remover when painting on bare metal. After this work I will not take a risk of poor adhesion because I was impatient.

I will likely spend the rest of the weekend cleaning and installing the new seals, gaskets, and brake parts in the rear axle and prepare it for epoxy primer and paint as well since my order from the Diff Doctor and Classic Industries arrived today.

 

[JimKueneman]

Some thoughts on sandblasting from today. I have a love/hate relationship with it now. Before it was just hate. It makes a MESS. Until today I have never had it work very well either. It would plug up, blast nothing then blast a stream of media or none of the above. Today I figured out the 3 most important things in making the inexpensive harbor freight 20lb blaster work.

1. Sifted media
2. Sifted media
3. Sifted media

Get a 4' x 4' piece of fabric window screen from the hardware store and stuff it in the funnel that comes with the blaster and sift the media even if it is from a new sealed bag. Once you blast it you can sweep it up and sift it again to reuse it until it is blasted in to dust. Here is the rear end and suspension before the day of blasting:

and after:

Run the compressor at 90 lbs of pressure. My Husky 60 gallons from Lowes easily kept up. This is a lot like the undercoating, it seems like you are trying to fill a pool with a spoon with the small nozzle on these huge parts but it does go quite fast once you get the rhythm down. I consumed about 15 lbs of my 25 lb bag of slag media cleaning all these parts.

Next I will disassemble the rear end and replace the seals, replace the brake lines and cylinders (for $6 per cylinder from Classic Industries I could not see spending the time rebuilding the originals so that is why I did did not be more careful about plugging fitting in the cylinder when I blasted)

 

[JimKueneman]

Lots of sanding and prepping for epoxy primer this week. I shot the rear suspension parts and rear axle with epoxy primer after replacing the 45 year old axle seals and gaskets. After that I sprayed the parts that are normally natural metal with Seymours Stainless Steel spray paint. My understanding the springs can be either black or natural, I could not tell very well so I wanted natural. I also drilled out the rubber bushing for the shackle and front bushing to prepare for the new Energy Suspension bushings. Once the spray paint dried a few days I will shoot everything with 2 part polyurethane clear to give it a more durable finish after I shoot the axle housing black tomorrow.

Notice the high tech part holding fixtures….

 

[JimKueneman]

Today finished up prepping the underbody from the torsion bar crossmember back and shot 2 coats of SPI Epoxy Primer. I am turning a corner now, tomorrow I am going to mix up a batch of SPI Orange Base and SPI Universal Clear and shoot some final color on the underbody where I shot the epoxy today. All I can say laying on your back shooting upside down really sucks and really makes a mess of your gun. Took me 10x longer to clean it as the back spray covered it in epoxy, it was completely coated in primer mist when I was done…..

 

[JimKueneman]

It was a http://www.southernpolyurethanes.com kind of day. First I sprayed the underbody with SPI Orange. Laying on your back spraying paint upside down sucks. I got a good even finish where it matters in the wheel wells and frame that can be seen through the wheel opening.

After that I mixed up some SPI Universal Clear and put 2 coat over the Seymours Stainless Steel I sprayed on the natural metal parts the other day on the rear suspension and rear axle.

I then got ambitious and mixed up the SPI black and shot the rear axle, what a shine that Universal Clear creates! I started to think about mocking up the parts to see what they looked like together and ended up assembling the whole damn thing!

 

[JimKueneman]

After dinner I still was not done so I went back out in the garage and cleaned and painted the rear brake components I sandblasted last week and installed the new brake cylinders. I did not have enough time/energy to install the parts plus they were not really dry yet. What do you think of my faux Yellow Chromium part. According to the B-Body Restoration book this should be close (enough) to factory original. Well I guess these photos are not clear enough to see the "Yellow Chromium" part. I will get a better photo tomorrow.

 

[jamie]

Great job! You can't go wrong with SPI products and Barrys' customer service is THE BEST!

 

[Mike67]

Jim I'm at a loss, my hats off to you, great job and great documentation...
I'm just starting on my 67 replacing a pan and patching some holes....I was going to strip the undercoating off of mine and reapply new. Your pics are making me feel ashamed of even thinking about it!
Great job!

 

[JimKueneman]

Jim I'm at a loss, my hats off to you, great job and great documentation...
I'm just starting on my 67 replacing a pan and patching some holes....I was going to strip the undercoating off of mine and reapply new. Your pics are making me feel ashamed of even thinking about it!
Great job!

I have gotten so I can lay on my creeper and stare at the underbody for hours. The sheet metal under there is a work of art, the bends and folds where the metal was rippled to make a compound curve, it is crime to hide it with undercoating.

 

[JimKueneman]

Tonight I reassembled the rear brakes and finished installing the rest of the hardware around the axle (restored emergency brake cables, restored brake line bracket, new brake hose). The brakes are mostly period correct but the adjuster cable does not seem to match the manual or other photos. Not sure how much of the hardware is original or not, I do know it is older than 1985 when the car was parked

 

[JimKueneman]

Quick observation, assembly of pristine reconditioned/new part beats disassembly and cleaning of said parts hands down.

Next step is to push it back outside and give the front fenders and front underbody one more spritz of Aircraft Stripper. What is left seems to be way tougher than the rest. After that back in the garage and pull down the front suspension for restoration and get ready to pull the motor.

 

[Charger72]

Glad I came across this build, very nice.

 

[Super Rob]

Solid work! May I ask why you didn't paint the 3rd Member black?