5 degrees outside? No problem! More soda blasting, wire brushing, sanding. Note I'm staying away from the cowl piece for now, as it will have to be repaired.
Blasted passenger's side door jam.
Just the first coat of primer
AND..... DRUMROLL..... THIS IS MY CAT IN A BAG
Sorry that had nothing to do with the car but it was cute!
Hey guys -- quick update on some work on cleaning up the front end.
Harbor Freight had a great deal on a 21 gallon, 2.5 horsepower air compressor for $169. Runs everything I need, air gun, sander and I can soda blast for about 60 seconds then wait a minute for it to recover.
De-greased and soda blasted intake manifold.
Valve Covers
Front end. This is a factory A/C car (just like Dean's Impala), I removed all of the A/C set up so I can get to the frame. I'll probably eventually get the A/C rebuilt but it's not a priority at this point. Everything that's in primer has been a combination of soda blasted, wire brushed, sanded, and de-greased. I also took off the inner fender -- it will have to be replaced. The driver's side inner fender isn't bad at all and I think I'll be able to salvage that one.
After the front end is cleaned to the best of my ability, we are going to pull the motor, degrease and clean it up. After it's clean we will install the new camshaft, lifters, timing chain, and pushrods.
A big thank you to Cortney's parents who let me borrow this sweet tent. Now I can work on her whenever I want and 99% of the weathers stays off. (It does have a back I just haven't put it on yet)
I've been cleaning a lot of the engine parts and will post those soon!
My good friend Mike and I finally got a nice day to start taking a look at the 396 engine in the Impala. First thing we did was take the entire core support out (which will be replaced) which made it a lot easier to get to the engine parts.
We took off the fan, alternator, fuel pump, eventually getting to the timing chain. The timing wasn't jumped but the chain had too much slack in it from being run over the years. I have a brand new, double row chain that will be installed.
Next we took off the intake manifold and valve covers, exposing the inside -- which actually looked pretty clean, at least someone changed the oil fairly often.
More pictures to come!! At this point we have all of the lifters, camshaft and pushrods out. As soon as we get another nice day we will replace all of the lifters, camshaft, pushrods and timing chain! HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY IMPALA FRIENDS!!
Hey guys -- I finally got my new soda blaster hooked up and couldn't wait to try it out so I made a quick video. This tool is GREAT for getting to those hard to reach places (like door jams).
I'll try and make more videos in the future but just wanted to post a short preview.
I'm almost done the dash (minus the dash cap) and I'll update that later this week! Click the link below.
I know it's been awhile, but I finally got the impala back up to my house in Pennsylvania. A friend of mine is going to help me with the 396 engine. We're going to replace: Cam Shaft, Lifters & Timing Chain. I will also be replacing the core support and getting a new hood.
In the mean time I started working on the dash. Below is my progress, more posts to come!
Here's some pics of a finished door panel that was painted this past weekend. 3 of 4 panels are painted, the last one will be done when my new shipment of paint arrives.
