The Fourteenth Chapter - I Can See Clearly Now

I said I would write another entry in my Impala restoration saga before the Summer ended, so here it goes.  I didn't quite get it done before I had to go back to school, but I did manage to sneak it in before my classes started up.  When we left off last, I had just entered the Impala in its first official car show and won the "Most Promising" award.  That gets us to the beginning of June.  After that, I took the car to a few cruises and did some local driving.  I dropped off my suit at the cleaners, did a service call, and attended a party, all in the same day.  That's what I call a good day's work for the Impala.  Now it was the beginning of July, and I was itching to get started on some more serious restoration work.  

The A-pillar repair went about as good as you'd expect from someone who never had any serious metalwork experience and had the precision toolbox of an old hammer and dolly set, and a miniature vice screwed to an old 2x4.  While it held the windshield, the angle was off quite a bit, so I had to thrown some filler into the channel and shape it down in order for the trim to fit properly.  I originally tried to reuse the original trim studs, since they were in nice shape, but I ended up scrapping this idea and just using the screw-on clips instead.  This worked out particularly well, since I didn't realize I was short a stud on the top channel until after I bought the clips.  Anyways, after I had tackled the A-pillar, I turned my attention to the rusty mess that once was my cowl.  I started by removing what was left of the lower dash lip.  This is what the windshield sat up against, and thusly, it had all but turned to powder.  The sealing foam used behind it had only worsened the issue, acting like a sponge that kept the area moist 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it certainly held enough moisture to rot the metal completely into oblivion.  With the dash lip out of the way, I was able to get a clear look at the cowl beneath it.  The cowl for these cars is reproduced nowadays, but I couldn't justify spending $500 and ripping the entire front of the car apart (even though I came close to that anyway) when the only rust was on the top edges.  Instead I employed a piecemeal solution using scraps of whatever I had lying around, my hammer and dolly set, and my lovely little bench vice.  Hey, it's not pretty, but it works.  

Once the cowl was done, I had to focus on fabricating the dash lip.  When I first removed the panel that mounts to the car, I was struck by how similarly the dash lip and the top section of the panel were shaped.  The panel was a bit rusty on the edges, and I already had a replacement from the '65 sport sedan I'd stripped last Summer, so I decided to turn my former cowl panel into part of my dash lip.  I had to cut out the extruded sections around the wiper arms and patch them up with flat stock left over from my floor pans, but once that was done, the piece fit pretty well.  Well, not pretty, but it certainly got the job done.  

Next up, it was time to rip the entire front end off the car to fix a few pesky rust spots under the fenders.  This is where things started to mushroom a bit, as I took the opportunity while the fenders were off to remove the HVAC components, rebuild the interior distribution box, install a new heater core (I still have to hook it up.  October, hopefully), and patch all the rust in the firewall.  The firewall wasn't too hard to fix, but I was a little liberal with applying the seam sealer to make damn sure I'd fixed all the holes.  I don't want any tiny pinholes ruining all the hard work I've done.  

I made sure I primed and seam sealed the backside of the rust holes in the cowl, just to be safe.  With that done, I patched the two end sections of the cowl that were previously unreachable under the fenders and got started on "bodyworking" the dash.  This definitely wasn't my finest work, as the unsupported dash metal warped and bent under the heat of my welder (not to mention my initial cuts were crooked).  I mainly used the fiberglass filler I applied to the dash lip to create a smooth-ish surface to bond the windshield to.  This was my first time using any type of body filler, and I made the mistake of holding my pallette out in the hot sunlight while I applied the filler to the car.  The heat, combined with my generous use of hardener, caused the concoction to cure much faster than the ten minutes specified on the can, so I had to redo some of my work.  Fortunately, I got the hand of mixing the putty and hardener from here on, and the job wasn't too strenuous.  With the dash filled, I used an electric sander and some 100-grit to smooth everything out.  I debated sanding everything by hand, but quickly gave that up when I saw how long it was taking me to do just one section.  Once everything was sanded, I scuffed the top of the dash, masked the interior off, and sprayed it with a coat of primer, followed by a few coats of the closest rattle-can blue I could find.  It's not a perfect match to the original color, but with the repainted kick panels installed underneath it, the dash will blend well with the rest of the interior.  At this point, I primed, seam sealed, and painted the patched cowl and any other repaired areas, and then reinstalled the wiper arms I'd removed and repainted earlier on in the month.  The car was finally starting to come together.  I had to fight some broken hardware, some rust on the driver's fender, and marginal fitment on the new heater core and distribution box, but I finally had the front clip back on the car on August 26th.  So much for two weeks!  I also want to thank my friends who made an emergency trip to my house to help mount the hood and front bumper in the face of an impending rainstorm.  Fortunately, both pieces made it on the car before the skies opened, not that the presence of the bumper would have kept the car dry.  

Now, there were only a few minor things left, like reinstalling the dashboard and sanding down the filler I'd applied in the passenger A-pillar.  This last item took a little bit of time, and I decided to do it by hand because of the delicacy of the task, but it turned out acceptable (by my standards, at least).  Once the A-pillar was finished and painted and the trim clips were mounted, I drug the windshield off Glenn's old '65 out of the garage to clean it up for installation.  I'd forgotten the old butyl was still all over the edges, but a razor blade and some mineral spirits made quick work of it.  Then, I found a small chip and realized the delamination was worse than I remembered, so I proceeded to a mode of intense deliberation where I weighed my options between this piece of glass and the horribly-scratched '68 Caprice windshield I'd acquired a few years back.  While the Caprice's windshield was a newer replacement and was thicker, it was scratched to Detroit and back, and it wouldn't make much of an improvement over the glass it replaced.  Plus, if I ever got around to doing the amount of driving that I planned with this car, chips would be an issue I'd constantly be up against, so having a tiny one in the windshield already wasn't too big a deal, provided it didn't spread.  The same could be said for the delamination.  It was pretty minor and was mostly covered by the trim.  Thus, the windshield out of Glenn's old '65 sport sedan was the one I chose to install in my car.  About an hour of deep thought just to arrive back at the same conclusion I'd made a year ago.  Oh well, the windshield is in the car now, so I could care less.  With the help of my dad, I installed the windshield back in the car with a butyl-based ribbon sealer made by 3M.  I'm not a professional auto glass technician, so I figured using the simplest and most reversible product would be the best idea.  If it works, great.  If not, it's easy enough to remove and have a technician reinstall the windshield with urethane.  Anyways, there I was, August 27th and my car was finally back together.  And just in the nick of time, as I left for school the following Saturday.  

I managed to sneak in one last cruise before the Summer ended, but not before the 7-year-old battery gave up the ghost and forced me to buy a replacement six months earlier than I would have liked.  The battery had survived sitting out of the car in my garage for six weeks, but my few cold starts and short runs of the engine had invariably drained it for good.  The good news is that I was finally able to install the hold-down I'd bought last Summer since the replacement battery was the correct size for the car.  It looks a heck of a lot better than the old bungie cord I was using previously (No photo, you'll have to use your imagination on this one).  Anyways, that's going to do it for all of my Impala antics this Summer.  I have a few more repairs in the works for the Fall, and I hope to try and tackle the rear windshield and filler panel rust this Winter (optimistic, I know).  We'll see how it goes, but...  Crap!  I ran out of corny jokes to use as my conclusion.  Oh well, until next time, as they say.