Tyler's 1971 Chevelle Restoration

[Nova Research Project]

More details:





And some action shots:

[Nova Research Project]

And then things ground to a halt. The 86 Blazer you see in the background above is Tyler's daily driver. At the auto parts store picking up a few parts Tyler hears some posi chatter on the rear while backing up. Then a loud pop.

I ask him to drive the car in a turn in the street in front of the house. Sure enough it looks like the posi was binding. Typical fix is to replace the oil and add some limited slip additive. Then drive figure eights.

Since Tyler needs 10 hours working cars every week for school and he has not had much experience on axles I figure he can handle this.

He pops the axle cover and sees this:




Tyler, Picking pieces of metal out of the housing.



Lots of shiny metal fragments. Not good [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/mad.gif[/img]

These axles have the gov lock type posi. Hard to rebuild and notorious for grenading for no reason. The fact that the Blazer has 260,000 on it and this just happened is a good thing. Next step is an after market Eaton Posi unit.

This will delay some of the Chevelle work and dig into the budget. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/cry.gif[/img]

Tomorrow promises to be a nice day so expect there to be time for both the Blazer and the Chevelle.

More later,
Greg

[kwhizz]

Ouch!!!!.............

[mockingbird812]

Dang, Greg, that sucks. I'm sure this will be a good learning point for Tyler....and he'll have a good story to tell.

[Nova Research Project]

It was one of those moments where you just turn it on and start driving then it happens and your stuck with it. But on bright side I was able to soda blast a bit of the chevelle, don't worry pics will be up soon and you can see all the different colors as we took the layers off.


- Tyler

[Nova Research Project]

Today was a nice day, Tyler just got started late. First up was to take everything off and drop that axle on the blazer.

I little PB Buster and wire wheel on the die grinder to clean up the rust and gunk from the threads. Everything when well until the nuts holding the springs to the axle. Did not have a deep well the right size.



Good excuse to get more done on the Chevelle. Pull the B&amp;M Shifter and the EEC box.







All the glass is out except the windshield.

[Nova Research Project]

I was messing with a Nova axle while Tyler continued on the Chevelle.

This almost looks like Nu Yawk work. Notice the sheet metal screws and washers for shims.



Time to start on the front end.

[Nova Research Project]

Shouldn't these park lights have reflective silver background?








Time to have fun. I had been using the soda blaster and let Tyler give it a try on the Chevelle.




Then ran out of daylight. What a rainbow looking car.....

Original primer,
Original Green paint,
More primer,
Red paint,
Black paint,
and yellow on the firewall and core support.

[mockingbird812]

Colorful Greg!