The Sixteenth Chapter - Rolling Along

I know, I know, we are way overdue on another Impala update.  This was originally supposed to be two separate posts, a Spring and a Summer one, but the crazy hectic schedule of my final semester of college as well as the deadline to get my interior done (more on that later), meant that I didn't have much time for working on this blog.  I sort of had some more time this Summer, but I was bouncing back and forth between projects and running around all over the place, so I once again put this post on the backburner.  I guess I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I'm an adult now in the real word, and I have real-life things and responsibilities to attend to.  That being said, I'm taking a cop-out on that and going back to school for another year to get my master's, so we still have one more year of make-believe!  All kidding aside, I firmly intend to keep chipping away on and driving my Impala whenever I can.  In fact, it might actually be easier to do so since I won't be 200 miles away from it for weeks at a time and have to work on it during my seasonal breaks.  And here I go blabbing about unrelated matters again.  You didn't come here to hear my life story, you came here to see the progress on the Impala, at least I hope you did.  As most of the cast from Monty Python's Holy Grail said, let's "get on with it!"

Next, with the help of David, I installed the front seat after I had bolted all the trim back onto it.  I left it off when I dropped the seats off to get upholstered to save myself time and money.  The seat install proved to be a bit of a pain because rather than use a soldering iron or hot nail, I elected to poke through the carpet with a screwdriver.  Eventually, I discovered that the repro seat bolts were a little longer than the originals and were able to thread in and pull the seat into position.  The seatbelt install also gave me a bit of trouble (Yes, I know, I installed the seatbelts before the seat went in.  I just included it here because it fits better).  The original front belts have rubber covers that hide the anchor bolts, and in the chilly March morning, the rubber didn't want to flex too much.  Thus, I fought and swore again as I poked myself with a pick trying to get the covers back on.  Eventually I persisted, and the covers went back to their home of sixty years.  The back seatbelts were much easier, since the bolts don't have covers and are hidden behind the seat cushions.  Because the belts were bolted in through holes drilled in the rear floor pan, having David on the inside of the car to hold the bolts in place while I removed the nuts underneath the car was very helpful.  Once the seat was in, I was able to take the car out for a short drive, where I discovered I barely fit in the car because the seat was up so high with the new foam.  Fortunately, it sunk in, and I can now comfortably enter and exit the car without my head going into the headliner (that's not why they call it that!).  With this recent milestone complete, I was back to school, and unable to work on the car.  But the interior needed to get done because the car was registered for a parade in May.  

This is the part of the story where I have to say thank you to my parents.  They've really embraced this project and taken time out of their day to put in plenty of enthusiasm and effort (and swears) when I am unable to.  After I returned to school, my mom started sewing up the driver's side sunvisor and making the rear seat trim, and my dad started assembling the door panels.  The latter task proved to be a nightmare because the repro company had made some mistakes they were unwilling to own up to. Hint, hint Cars Inc, I will never be buying door panels from you again.  Fortunately, like I have learned to do plenty of times with this car, my dad kept at it, and eventually he got the panels assembled, fitting, and looking great.  My parents got the back seat in at the end of April, and then it was off to... 

New Jersey, of all places!  You might be wondering why I had my car shipped to the Garden State.  The answer is because back in November, I offered and was accepted to drive the Impala in a reunion parade with the class of 1965.  The car was in pieces by this point, but this was perfect motivation to get it done before graduation.  What better way to celebrate your 60th anniversary than by marching with a 1965 Impala?  Of course, my parents (mostly my mom) didn't think the car had been tested enough to be driven all the way down to New Jersey.  It was also a timing issue, because all this was going on as my semester was wrapping up, and I had several Jazz concerts and other things I was a part of to attend to.  Fortunately, the car made the trip down without a hitch, and I soon found myself giving rides to all my friends who I'd been yapping to about the car for the last three years.  In the span of three weeks, I racked up 570 miles, more than I'd accumulated in my prior two years of owning the car.  All these shakedown runs on rural NJ roads revealed that my car was pretty healthy.  They did, however, uncover a few problems, including the fact that my steering box had a serious thirst for fluid (and a tendency to shower the driver's side of the frame in it), as well as a very bad shimmy in the front end on hard bumps above 45 or braking on turns.  A closer inspection revealed the centerlink joint at the pitman arm was hosed, but this would have to wait until the car returned home to get fixed.  I had to get creative sometimes with my braking and accelerating, but I was able to work through the shimmying each time until it went away.  Unrelatedly, I forgot to mention I changed the passenger side parking brake cable and fixed the rear brake shoe orientation when I was home in March.  Pretend I put that sentence in two paragraphs ago.   

Nope, you're not having eye problems, there are two 1965 Impalas in the pictures above.  The red car belongs to my friend Mike, who goes to school nearby.  I met Mike at a car cruise in Flemington, NJ the previous Summer (which somehow was never documented here, need to get on that), and I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the owner of the regal red super sport was a young guy my age.  We got in contact soon after, and I ended up going for a ride with him in his car in September of that year.  I promised I'd return the favor when my car arrived in May, and I made true of that promise.  We actually got together a few days before this photo was taken, and Mike took my car for a spin and said it handled about the same as his, despite the fact that all the steering components were pushing half a century in age (some of them were originals, so much older).  When we reconvened the following Sunday, we had entered our cars in a show in Clinton.  We were the only Impalas there, but there was a 1967 Pontiac Bonneville convertible (which I didn't photograph, ugh), so we had some more full-sized representation.  We were pretty late to the show, so we ended up all the way in the back.  The result wasn't very picturesque, so we waited until most of the exhibitors had gone to snap these two photos of our ride side-by-side.  Mike and I have kept in touch this past Summer, and I'm actually going to check out his car again soon and compare his steering feel with mine so he can make the final decision of whether or not to rebuild it.  Finally getting our cars together was great, but it wasn't the main attraction of this New Jersey tour.

And now, for your feature presentation.  The day of the parade, the carburetor trouble I'd been fighting off and on decided to rear its ugly head, and I barely made it to the staging area without stalling.  It turns out the automatic choke cam for the idle speed screw had done a 180 and was effectively doing nothing.  Thus, the throttle blades were sitting as far closed as they could be and barely kept the car alive.  Ten seconds of tinkering with a screwdriver, and everything was hunky dory again.  You've got to love the simplicity of old cars.  Anyways, the parade was a blast and went off with a hitch.  I had the pleasure of escorting an alum who was a Slavic languages major and who had gone on to manage several successful businesses.  I also wasn't alone in the parade.  Among the parade "floats," there was a 1967 Cadillac convertible, a 1970 Beetle convertible, a 1955 Oldsmobile 88 Holiday sedan, and a 1962 Corvair.  I chatted with the Corvair owner for a very long time about various and sundry things, so I unfortunately didn't get to chat with the other classic owners.  There were also plenty of alumni who came over and talked to me about either owning an Impala at one point or knowing someone who owned one.  I guess I was pretty visible with the big, blue barge and the fact that I was the only student who had entered a classic car in the parade.  Anyways, some of the parade vehicles can be found below.  I unfortunately didn't get photos of the Corvair or the Caddy.  The Corvair had a pretty bad oil leak, but it thankfully pulled through the parade.  

After the parade, I gave my friends a few more joy rides, and then it was back home to Rhode Island for me.  The car was stored at our friends' farm until a few weeks later, when it was shipped back home.  Unfortunately, water got in through the AC box, and I had about an inch and a half in the rear floor.  I was very lucky though, as I was able to mop most of it out and then dry up the rest when the car arrived home.  For the first half of the Summer, I focused on my '05 Corolla, which needed some rust repair before going in to get painted.  During this time, I mostly just drove the Impala to cruises whenever I could.  I did some minor work, like replacing the passenger side exhaust donut (it still leaks, but not as badly) and making up a new exhaust hanger for the passenger side.  Of course, this car has a good sense of humor because about a week before the end of my break, the original driver's side hanger let go, so now I have to buy the pair.  In the meantime, the exhaust hanger is a literal coat hanger.  

I also took some time to touch up the doorjambs on the car.  Most of the original paint was in good shape, so all I had to do was clean up the edges.  I pulled out all the old seam sealer and treated the areas with some Eastwood rust encapsulator.  I figured I'd give this stuff a try because it was recommended to me.  I'm still a Rust-oleum fan, but the Eastwood stuff seems to be holding up well.  Once the rusted areas had been treated, I put new seam sealer in and finished it all up with a fresh base coat of color-matched mist blue.  The match isn't perfect, but it's really good.  And if you're starting to notice more blue on the car, it's because I discovered the magic of Comet while cleaning up the doorjambs and decided to use it on spots along the car.  I wanted to scrub the entire car, but as long as there's more important items needing repair on the car, I'd rather do those.  

Eventually, I got tired of the puddle in my driveway and crazy shimmy on bumps, so I finally bit the bullet and pulled my front end apart.  The culprit of the shimmy turned out to be a trashed bearing and taper pin on the pitman arm side of the centerlink.  The play was so bad that I could actually see the centerlink moving away from the pitman arm if I pushed on the wheels.  This wasn't the car's original centerlink, either, so my Impala is at least on its third centerlink.  More provenance for the high mileage.  To freshen everything up, I also replaced the tie rod ends, idler arm, sway bar links, sway bar bushings, and strut rod bushings.  I left the ball joints in place for now, since they're replacements and still holding up well.  I also left the control arm bushings because I didn't have time to get to them.  I'm going to order some new bushings in the future and hopefully install them a few years down the line when I get more work done.  Once all the steering components were installed, I turned my attention to the steering box.  I had bought a rebuild kit around the time I bought the car, but I kept putting off rebuilding it.  Finally, when I realized it went dry about every 300 miles, I decided it was high time to get around to it and rebuild the box.  For reference, the steering was fine before the rebuild, it just had a bad shimmy and the box leaked like a sieve.  Getting it out of the car proved to be more than my dad's Ryobi impact driver could handle, so I had to borrow a beefier Milwaukee from my friend rated at twice the torque.  With the box out, I began the lovely task of scraping off 60 years worth of grease, dirt, and other crud until to my surprise, the part number appeared on the casing of the box!  The input shaft end was also a pain to take apart because it had a lock ring holding it in place.  I unfortunately bashed up one of the tabs before I finally managed to get it free.  Rebuilding the box itself turned into one drawn-out nightmare, as my dad and I fought with teflon o-rings and a pitted sector shaft in the cluttered space around the car in the driveway.  Honestly, choosing the driveway as my workspace was half of the problem.  Fortunately, we managed to get everything back together, although I did give in and bring the box inside to install the ball bearings and pitman arm.  All in all, it was a manageable job, and now that I've done it once, I feel confident I could do it again and do a much better job.  Unfortunately, that pitting I mentioned earlier on the sector resulted in there still being a slight leak from this seal, although it's down to the order of one drop every 2-3 weeks, as opposed to 2-3 drops every hour.  Over a period of two and a half weeks, I watched a single drop slowly collect on the bottom of the pitman arm (I also put about 100 miles on the car during this time).  I can live with that.  After the steering system went back together, I took the car to a local (35 miles away) alignment shop that specialized in older cars.  The shop was recommended to me by a friend who DJs at local cruises and has several cars of his own, and they did a fantastic job with the Impala.  It was during this trip that I also found out my driver's side lower control arm is bent, which is the most likely culprit behind the leaning tower of Pisa look that has plagued my car since I bought it.  Some tow truck driver back in the day probably hooked onto it and yanked it, and it's been sagging ever since.  Fortunately, the steering system didn't care and went right back into alignment, regardless of the bend.  Maybe I'll keep an eye out for a control arm, but for now, I'm not worried.  

Well, after the steering rebuild, I decided to enjoy my car in the few weeks I had left of my break.  The first order of business was to rally the troops and go out for that Sunday drive we'd been talking about for months.  Me, David, Daniel, and our high school friend Anthony got together one fine Sunday morning and drove the scenic route out to East Killingly, CT.  Once there, we took some photos by a pond and an old mill that had burnt down, and then we drove by a few more ponds and then back to Anthony's house, where we had started.  I feel a little bad for Anthony, since he had the exhaust fumes of three uncatalyzed vehicles blasting him in the face the entire time.  No wonder he kept the windows up.  I also caught up with my friend Phil, who recently bought his own full-sized Chevy, a 1962 Bel Air 4 door sedan.  We met up and compared our cars, before taking each one for a spin.  Even though the Bel Air rides on a different frame, the quality was about the same as the Impala, maybe the slightest bit less floaty (I'm biased towards my car, I know).   Also around this time, I made it to my last two cruises of the season.  I went to one of the last Dan's Place cruise nights, where I caught up with the usual suspects and hung out until well after it got dark.  The sun also gave quite a show that night, and I snapped the photo below in the waning light.  

It's unfortunately back to the grind this semester, but I will be slowly accumulating more parts for the Impala, and I hope to put the trunk pan in when I'm home for Fall break.  Until next time!