Embedded Files
Acquiring the Payload
When you last heard from me, I'd just spent an entire Summer searching fruitlessly (so it would seem) for a classic car to make my own. By August of 2021, Summer was coming to an end and I would soon have to embark on the next chapter of my life, known as college. I was just about done when I casually mentioned the '65 Impala on FB marketplace had been dropped down to $3k. Completely out of form, she asked me if I wanted to go see it and encouraged me to contact the seller. A few days and messages later, I found myself looking at a primer-gray '65 Impala sport sedan tucked away in a garage in Woonsockett, RI. The story was that the owner received the car in the 80's on his 16th birthday from his father (it was his first car) and had kept it ever since. The car came with him when he and his wife moved from Arkansas to Massachusetts in 1996, and from what I've discovered since I've had it, likely wasn't on the road too much after that. The owner was selling it because he was getting ready to move again, this time to Wisconsin, and the new house lacked the space for the car. From what I could see in the dark garage, the car was reasonably solid. The rocker panels existed, even the pinch welds on the bottom were solid. I also saw that both quarters were immaculate, with the exception of a small rot hole on the passenger side. As the owner and his wife mentioned, the trunk floor had some holes in it, and the lower rear window channel was starting to rot away. But that's an easy fix, right? The interior was shredded and complete with a sagging headliner, but the floors were surprisingly solid, save for a small fist-sized hole on the driver's side. The 283 was fitted with a remanufactured Rochester 2GV, which had a random spring replacing the throttle return and a manual choke cable half-connected. I was told the car ran and would drive with some work, but it wasn't able to do so when I looked at it. I thanked the owner and his wife for their time and told them I'd let them know what I thought.
It wasn't really love at first sight, but the more I thought about it, the more the car began to grow on me. I remember telling myself I wanted to buy that car, but the unfortunate timing of the whole thing made buying a car three weeks before going off to my Freshman year of college unfeasible. I had to tell the owner I really like the car, but that I wasn't able to move on it due to the imminent start of the schoolyear. I did mention, however, that if the car was still up when I got home over the Summer that I would buy it.
The Impala as it appeared in the first picture of the FB Marketplace Ad
And that was it for awhile. I would periodically check the Marketplace ad to make sure it was still for sale, and indeed it was. The ad stayed up so long that it no longer appeared in the search results for "1965 Chevy Impala." I remember looking each week and silently pumping my fist every time I opened the page and saw the ad was still up. The days went by. Slowly, at first, but then faster and faster. Before I knew it, my Freshman year was over, and the Impala was still up for sale. On the Tuesday after I got home, I called the owner's wife, who had been the poster of the FB ad, and asked if the car really was still for sale. When she assured that it was, I foolishly offered $1500 for it, only to jump way back up to $2750 when it was refused. She said she'd let her husband know and call me back. Less than ten minutes later she called me back and told me the car was mine. I was ecstatic! My dream of owning an old car was finally coming true! I arranged to have a flatbed pick up the car the following Saturday and bring it to my house. The acquisition was relatively uneventful. I met up with the owner and exchanged money for the car, a bill of sale, and the title (yes, this car still had a title after all these years). He also gave me a receipt for the Arkansas license plates he bought for it in '96, shortly before moving back to New England. When the flatbed arrived, we put the car in neutral and pushed it out of the garage and into the driveway, where it was pulled up onto the truck.
The car just after it was loaded onto the flatbed.
The drive home went smoothly, other than one of the hubcaps bouncing off the seat and out of the open window before the truck had even made it to the end of the road. The driver's door window was fully down when I bought the car due to a broken window track. This was good news for me because I had initially thought the glass was broken or missing. The only issue came when we arrived home and the driver went to offload the car. As he angled the ramp down, I watched in slow motion as the chrome-tipped dual exhaust hit and slid about 6 inches along the driveway. That wasn't the end of the world, but I was a little annoyed. The worst part came when the car was on the ground and my dad had it in park so it wouldn't roll. The drive decided to turn the winch back on and move the car forward so he could "take off the chains." Despite me screaming my head off and yelling "IT'S IN PARK" at him about five times, he still managed to drag the car about a foot before my dad ran over and took it out of gear. So, not the best driver, but I can't complain about the price. Fortunately, no damage was done, and I was now left with a '65 Impala that needed a little bit of love to get going again. The first task was to clean out the sad excuse for an interior. For this, I enlisted the help of David, and we both donned coveralls and face masks in the 90° F heat and began removing as much as we could from inside the car (this is where the photo on the "About" page of the site came from).
On the trailer and heading home. The missing trim piece was later found in the trunk.
In the process of digging through the interior, I found a few important things, like nuts, bolts, and part of the parking brake assembly. There were some brake and transmission parts, too, from when the transmission was re-sealed (I was told this was done sometime in the recent past by the previous owner, although I'm not sure when this occurred and exactly what was replaced). I also found some other interesting things, like seven pens, two dead cans of starting fluid, the sticker off a golden apple (David's supermarket Summer job experience paid off here), and a half-empty bottle of Coke from 2000. I used a bit of the Coke to clean off some of the spare change I found in the floor, which totaled to about a dollar, and then chucked the rest. The big surprise came when I pulled up the carpet in the passenger side front floor pan, and half the floor came with it in a mess of rust flakes. Apparently the floor wasn't as solid as I had thought. The "fist-sized" hole on the passenger side was also a little bigger than I remembered it, and closer inspection revealed most of the pan was also bad. In the end, I realized it would be best to just replace the entire floor pan.
The interior after it had been "cleaned." The front bench seat had another cover over this one that I took off during the cleaning process.
Here's the back half of the interior. I couldn't get the rear door panels off since the doors were stuck, but I did manage to rip most of the seat cover off the back seat.
While the car's time down South had spared it from the NE road salt, it hadn't prevented the floors from rotting from the inside out whenever it rained due to leaks in the aging hardtop weatherstripping. Hardtops look cool, but they're a pain to keep sealed up properly. In our cleaning spree, David and I had discovered that my car had a sense of humor: it was trying to be a two-door. In reality, the rear doors had stuck from rusty latch and lock linkages and needed copious amounts of WD-40 and some persuasion before they broke loose. But that wouldn't be for a few more weeks. With the interior mostly removed from the car, I took inventory and made a list of all the work the car needed. The first goals were to replace the weatherstripping in an attempt to thwart any new damage caused by leaks, and to get the car running and assess the engine's condition. With my list established and goals in mind, I set off to get the car fired up the following Saturday (well, technically I got my wisdom teeth out, spent the week feeling woozy and out of it, and then worked on getting the car running, but let's not obsess over the fine details). Stay tuned for more motorhead madness in the next installment of the series.
The car spending its first night in my driveway.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse