My 1972 Impala Convertible Restoration Project

I've been asked to share my trials and tribulations I've encountered over the years restoring my 1972 Impala convertible.  So I created this blog along with a Picasa Web Album to track the progress and also offer support to others trying to restore their B-Body Chevy.  A note on the dates.  I've intentionally fudged the dates to get the blog in more of a chronological order. 

So first a few facts about this car and mine specifically. 

The fifth-generation Chevrolet Impala are full-size automobiles produced by the Chevrolet division of General Motors for the 1971 through 1976 model years and was one of GM's top-selling models throughout the 1970s. Models included a sport coupe using a semi-fastback roof line shared with other B-body GM cars, custom coupe with the formal roof line from the Caprice, four-door sedan, four-door hardtop sport sedan, and a convertible, - each of which rode on a new 121.5-inch wheelbase and measured 217 inches overall. Station wagons rode on a longer 125-inch wheelbase.

The 1972 Impala introduced a lower height grille which extended below the bumper and revised taillights now set in the bumper. 1972 saw the last Impala convertible, the following year moving to the top of the line Caprice Classic. The Impala rag top sold 6,456 copies, placing fourth with just under 9% of the market, right behind the Corvette 6,508, ahead of the Mustang's 6,401. Total Impala production for 1972 ended up at 597,500 units and other series totals included Caprice, 178,500; Biscayne (in its final year), 20,500; Bel Air, 41,900; and station wagons, 171,700.

The 250 cubic-inch six-cylinder engine was offered in Impala four-door sedans and Sport Coupes along with a three-speed manual transmission and manual steering at the very beginning of the model year with 1,500 Impala sixes built. After the short run of early-1972 six-cylinder Impalas were built in the fall of 1971, the six-cylinder engine and three-speed manual transmission would be relegated to low-line Biscayne and Bel Air sedans. For most the 1972 model year, all Impalas were V-8 powered and came standard with Turbo Hydramatic transmission, power steering and power front disc brakes. The standard Impala engine was now the 165-net 350 cubic-inch Turbo Fire V8 with optional engines including the 170-horsepower 400 cubic-inch Turbo Fire V-8 (the base Caprice/Kingswood Estate engine), 240-horsepower 400 cubic-inch Turbo Jet V-8 (rated at 215 horsepower on station wagons) or the 270-horsepower 454 cubic-inch Turbo Jet V-8 - these were the engine offerings in 49 states, in California the only engines offered where the 165-horsepower 350 and 170-horsepower 400 Turbo Fire small block V8s due to that state's much stricter emission regulations. The Astro Ventilation system was redesigned for 1972 with the vents relocated from the trunk lid to the door jams for improved reliability and efficiency over the troublesome 1971 system that was a major source of complaints from owners to Chevrolet and its dealers.

The 1972 Impala was the biggest one yet, over 18 feet long, and wider than any Chevy before it.  In 1972 horsepower rating system changed, so now the 365-horsepower 454 from 1971 is rated at 270-horsepower.  From 1972 to 1976, the Impala outsold the nicer Caprice.

My 72 was well optioned.  It has the Small Block 400, Power Windows, Power Locks and Power Seat.  For as long as I've owned the car, it was triple black.  Black outside, black interior and black top.  Now that I'm a little smarter, I've decoded the cowl tag and determined the car was originally Ascot Blue.  I knew it was not black once I started to take the door panels off and it reveled the true color.  I just wasn't sure what it was.  I've owned the car for about 22 years now.  In 2007 I decided to do the car justice and do a complete ground up restoration on it. 

Now, I knew it would be difficult as parts are not readily available for the car.  There are very few aftermarket parts made for this car, especially along the lines of stainless steel trim and body panels.  This was going to be my biggest hurdle to over come.  The 2nd hurdle to overcome was money.  I didn't really have a lot of money to spend on the project.  I came up with a great plan.  (And God bless her, the wife bought into it!) In searching for parts I came across a pretty clean looking 1972 Caprice not too far from me.  It had some decent pieces on it that I could use.  Then I thought to myself, I suppose I could sell the rest of the car to other people doing the same thing, and keep what I need.  From that, Sharpie's Auto Parts was born.  This provided the funding for the project as well as a way to get more parts.  I sell most all of the parts through Craigslist and eBay.  Many times I "traded up" for better parts that came with each car, then sold the other one.  Sadly 6 Caprices and Impalas have given their life to get mine back on the road.  However, parts from these cars have made it to all the continents except Antarctica.  So they did have an honorable exit.  I've made some good friends all over the world restoring these cars.  I primarily stick to 71-72 Chevy B-bodys, but they are hard to come by.  So in a pinch I branched out to other deals I've come across locally.  To date I've parted out a 1996 Olds Aurora, 1987 Cadillac Allante and a 1998 Cadillac Deville.  I also came across a Big Block 402, 72 Impala.  In hindsight I should have kept it as it is much more rare than mine, but I swapped some parts on it and sold it for some good coin to keep the project moving forward.  Also early on I acquired a 1987 Fiero GT.  With that car I realized the old saying "The sum of the parts is greater than the whole" was just not true.  I ended up selling that complete car for a wash.

So If your reading this, your either a fan of my car, or your looking for parts for your classic car.  Through out my entries I'll tell you where I got my parts from, or where I had them reconditioned as well as the obstacles I've had to overcome along the way.  If you want to jump right to a slide show of my uploaded pics, click here.  If you want to check out my current list of parts on ebay, click here.  I have two rooms and 1/2 of a garage full of parts, so if its not posted, I may have it.  Heck I probably have two.  As an employee of General Motors, I have access to a vast inventory of data.  I've gotten old drawings for parts that we had to custom make from scratch, and used the systems for general referencing to dig through NOS websites to find just the right part.  So I do take special requests if your looking for a specific GM part.

So with that, I'll start going into my restoration. 
This first pic posted was taken in the fall of 2007 just before I started to dismantle the car.  As you can see, it was in decent shape.  It had some rust and bondo issues from shoty work of owners before me.  I knew somewhat of the trouble I was about to be in; as about 18 years ago, I had the car repainted.  It was at that time I knew the quarters were pretty bad and had quite a bit of bondo in other areas.  However as I post more pics, you'll see just how bad it gets.

First task, find a reputable body shop...

The first chore was to find a body shop that I could work with.  I knew I wanted to pick a place that would be comfortable with working at my slow paying pace.  I also wanted a place somewhat local, as I wanted to check in on it from time to time.  So I grabbed our yellow pages and hit the street.  I visited a few and checked out their work.  I discussed my terms of the project by not having to be the highest priority.  In the end I settled on Pro Street Creations here in Farmington Hills.  So far I am very pleased with the quality of work and the flexibility he has when it comes to payment.  He is only doing as much work as I can pay him, and for me that works out great.  Now Pat (the owner of Pro Street) did not take on my project at first.  Pat mostly did Mopar cars and a few Chevelles.  I saw the work that he had done and I really wanted him to do my car.  With a little persuasion, he took on my project.  So within a few weeks, I had the car stripped down pretty good and drove it to Pat's shop.  (sitting on a milk crate)  Here is a picture of what it looked like after I stripped many of the parts off of it.  After all I only wanted Pat to do the body work.  I was to do the rest.  I also took many pictures of all the areas I thought would be tricky to either find parts for or put back together.

After Pat got a hold of the car, he and his team began to strip the car down.  The plan was to take the car down to the bare metal and determine what we needed to buy.  At this point I've already been scrounging the NOS sites, eBay and Craigslist looking for other parts I knew I needed.  So I had an idea of what was out there.  Again there are very little parts in the aftermarket, so it's been a long road looking for parts.

Here are some shots after it was stripped, and the front clip engine/trans already pulled.  It was about now I started to wonder just what I had gotten myself into.

So as you can see it was pretty rough.  I knew the quarter panels were not right as someone before me had removed the corner lights that were supposed to be back there.  I just didn't know how bad it was.  So now I know what I needed to buy at first.  I needed both fenders, both quarters, both front floor pans and a trunk floor.  That was just for starters.  It was at this point I started to look for donor cars.  Every one I found around here was rusted in the same areas as mine was, or not much better.  I ended up finding a place in California call GM Sports.  They had a huge inventory of 70's era muscle car parts.  I called them up, and after a few days of checking they found everything I needed but the passenger side rear quarter.  Every passenger quarter the team at GM Sports found was previously repaired piece they didn't want to sell or a POS.  Eventually I gave up on waiting for them to find a suitable quarter.  We wanted to get moving on the project, so I had them air ship the other parts to me.  It turns out shipping it by plane was actually cheaper.  I just had to go to the airport to pick them up.  In about 1 week later I did just that and picked up my parts.  They all came in great shape just like they said.  The parts were far better than the ones I had.  And of course still way better than a repair panel.  So Pat had a good start on parts and I started to think about the possibility of buying other cars for the parts I knew I would soon need.

Engine work...

The engine and transmission was pulled and brought back to my own garage.  I had not yet purchased the parts as we needed to know what to buy first.  The trans was pretty easy.  It was just a simple Turbo Hydromatic 350.  I bought a complete rebuild kit complete with all the bands off eBay for about $100.  At that time I also bought a shift kit to sneak in there as well.  My father in law is a master mechanic at a dealership here in town.  He was able to put the transmission together for me pretty quickly.  That was something I didn't trust myself to do.

Here are some shots of the engine on the engine stand.  I wanted to take lots of pics of every angle to know where everything went.

I already removed the AC Compressor as I think it was putting my stand over capacity.  So I wanted to get it off of there before I broke the stand.  So now that I had the engine all documented, I started to strip off the accessories.  Got it down to the bare essentials. 

I decided that machining the block was not something for me to do.  So I asked around and decided to do with IDJ Automotive in Roseville.  They were reasonable in price and the services they offered, and they were highly recommended.  So I took all the internal parts out and took them the block, crank and heads.  I needed it all checked out and cleaned so I knew what size of parts to buy.  I also had planned on them pressing in the camshaft bearings as well.

So IDJ cleaned up the block and polished up the crank.  Due to the miles on the engine we had to go 0.30 over on the bore and 0.20 under on the crank.  Now I was able to buy the complete rebuild kit and get all the right parts.  I bought the rebuild kit also from eBay for about $300.  It was a complete kit with all the internal parts, bearings, oil pump and gaskets. 

It turned out that I had one 350 head and one 400 head.  The heads for a SBC400 has an extra steam port to help cool the engine.  At this point I had already started to buy other Impalas and Caprices for parts, and luckily the one I had also had a SBC400.  So I took IDJ both 400 heads and they picked the better of the three. IDJ put in all new valve seats in exchange for the SBC350 and SBC400 heads.  A good deal for me at the time.

After I got the block back, my father in law again helped put it all together.  I won't bore you with pics of the assembly, we've all seen how that goes.  I went with a Lunati Voodoo cam and 4bbl 650CFM Holley carb.  I bought the cam, carb and intake as a kit from Jegs.  I don't see my exact set up anymore, but I paid about $750 for all of it.  Assembly was pretty routine, no major obstacles.  It was done in a few days.

Here is a shot of the completed engine.

It's shown with an aftermarket timing chain cover, but just before we painted it Chevy orange, I opted for a stock style.  No one was going to see it anyway.  The engine sat on this stand for about 1 year, then it was finally mated to a B&M converter and attached to the transmission.  It came time to put all the accessories back on the engine.  My power steering pulley and crankshaft dampener were not worth saving, so I started to look for those as well.  To my surprise, my buddy at Jay Chevrolet was still able to buy these from GM!  So another win for OEM parts!  We painted most all the accessories black and bolted them on.  Over the months of the restoration, I accumulated many extra parts, including alternators and brackets.  For some reason my alternator is not quite right yet.  Its sitting a little crooked.  We think it is due to the aftermarket Weiand intake.  It may have shifted that bracket in a little bit.  The frame was now done so it was dropped onto the frame.

Here is a shot of it painted Chevy orange.

Yes, OEM exhaust manifolds.... No emails please.

Here is a shot of the brackets and accessories after being painted.

Next up frame overhaul!!!

Frame work...

What to do with a frame this big...   That was my first challenge.  I called around to some places that dip parts to remove the rust.  As a convertible the frame was fully boxed.  Dipping it would have been ideal to get to all the areas inside the frame.  I expanded my search further and further out, but still no luck.  The frame was just too big for any dip tank.  Some places opted to dip it twice, one end at a time, but for whatever reason, they did not recommend it.  I had to find a different way of restoring the frame.

For a 35+ year old car the frame was still very solid.  The only repairs necessary was replacing the back cross member and a couple motor mounts were a little eaten away.  The rear cross member looked like someone at some point tried to tow with it and bent it up.  Luckily I had the spare parts from other clean frames.  Complete frames were not a huge seller so scrapping one out for this part was just fine by me.

Here is a shot of the stripped frame.

In the end we opted to just wire wheel it and use POR-15 on the frame.  

I think it turned out really nice.  We also coated all the suspension components and rear axle.  Everything on the chassis was upgraded or replaced.  Starting in the front, all the control arms got new bushings from Performance Suspension Technologies.  All new ball joints also from PST.  All new steering components including centerlink etc, again from PST.  Brake calipers were new GM parts. 

All the gas, brake and transmission cooling lines are now stainless steel from Inline Tube.  They are somewhat of a local place and they can bend just about every tube out there to the OEM specs.  I bought all the brake lines, fuel lines and trans cooler lines from them.  I was also able to get clips and brackets necessary to complete the job too.  Getting those local was nice as I did not have to bend them to ship them.

The rear axle got new rubber bushings, again from PST.  They were not in the catalog, but they still had them.  I had no issues with the axle so we didn't touch it.  Just cleaned it up and painted it.  We did replace the wheel cylinders (NOS) in the rear wheels.

Springs and shocks also came from PST.  They should be a little better than the original equipment.

That about does it for the frame.  The frame was pretty easy and straight forward.  Nothing really to go wrong there.  At this point the frame would sit about 1 more year until it was finally reunited with the body.  At this point the original body is sitting on a donor frame from one of my other cars.  Luckily the frame was common on 2drs and 4drs, minus the boxed part.  Only the wagons had a different set up.

Out with the old...

Now that the frame was done, it was on to the main part of the body.  At this point my parts were in, and all I really still needed was a passenger rear quarter panel.  I pretty much had everything else I needed.  (I still continued to look for better pieces)  The rear quarter, esp the passenger side, was going to be extremely hard to find in decent shape.  The passenger side is the most likely to get hit of the two sides in an accident.  Also if it was a clean undamaged piece, it was also more likely to rust quicker.  Most cars were not posi-traction, and the right wheel slung more mud and salt up into the wheel well.  As we all know, many cars die from salt rusting a car from underneath, especially true here in Michigan.

The rest of the car needed work anyway, so the passenger panel was something we could hold off on and continue to look for a good donor piece.  So it was on to the other side of the car.  You don't want to cut too much out anyway, as nothing will line back up.  I'm still dealing with 35+ year old steel, so it was never perfect.  I had all the original drawings of the car as well as an assembly manual, but it was best to leave as many of the original lines intact as possible.

Pat cut out the driver side quarter panel, the trunk floor, the tail panel and the front floor pans.   By the time I visited the shop, he had already tacked in the new donor floor from California.  Here is a shot of the barely recognizable car...

Here is another closer shot of the trunk area. 



Paticularly keen observers will notice this is a trunk floor from a coupe or sedan.  Original convertible anything is nearly impossible to find.  The convertible trunk on teh B-Bodies was a little different as the spare tire was not sitting on the rear axle hump.  (Although the jack and tire iron was there in all models)  The top needed to go there, so it was relocated further back and on the passenger side.  So I needed to try and find the spare tire bracket that went over to the side to mount my spare tire.  I was told it was a futile search, as who would care.  "Who's going to ever see it" I was told.  Well I cared.  I wanted the car as close to original as I could possibly get.  I had to try.  More later on what I did there.

With nearly all the major rusted and damaged sections removed, it was on to grafting the new and donor panels back in.

In with the "new"...

Now we can start to rebuild the car.  As mentioned in the previous section, the truck was already tacked back in.  With that lined up we began to work our way around the car.  Hoping by the time we get to the passenger side, we'll find a good donor piece. 

Next up was the driver side rear quarter panel.  Here is a picture with the donor piece getting ready to go on.  This came from a 2dr coupe, but the plan was to cut just below the top edge, preserving the original convertible steel.  The coupe panel was the same as convertibles from the side.

Continuing our way around, next up was the tail panel.  I scored an NOS tail panel off eBay for a great price.  All we had to do was swap out the trunk latch, as it did not come with that.  This was a great find.  The bottom lip of the original trunk was in very rough shape.  All the cars I've seen and parted out had the same problem.  Gunk would build up at that base of the trunk lid and just eat away at the steel.

And now back to that passenger quarter panel.  I still had never found a good one and we almost decided to go with one that I had removed from another car.  It needed some patch work around the base of the wheel opening, but it was far better than the one we had.  Then out of no where, Pat the owner of Pro Street was at a Mopar swap meet.  (He's a Mopar fan more so than a Chevy fan)  He happened to see what appeared to be a quarter panel looking just like mine sitting on a guys truck.  He asked if the guy knew what it was for, (And Pat already knew what it was for...) and the guy said it was for some 70's Chevy.  He didn't really know.  Pat asked to look at it and sure enough it was the passenger side 71-73 NOS rear quarter panel we had been searching for!  Pat got it for only $200 bucks!  Finding that rear panel was probably the luckiest thing to happen in this restoration.  So home it came and it was grafted in place and looked phenomenal. 

Work continued and more steel was replaced.  The floor pans were cut out and donor pans were cut back in.  Again these came from California, and were far better than my original pieces.  When we did the driver side, the donor panel was just shy of a rusted area around the firewall.  Luckily I had two spare firewalls and we cut a section off one of those.

The last major piece to graft in on the main body was a section at the top of the firewall.  This time it was the area where the wiper linkage runs.  Same story again where gunk built up over the years and ate away at it inside.  So Joe did a great job of cutting out a section of the donor firewall and grafted in a new piece of steel.  It was a really tricky part to do with all the layers of metal and all the curves.  Joe did a great job of welding that in.

Earlier I also mentioned the spare tire bracket.  As convertible are nearly impossible to find, at least for parts, we had to make our own.  Luckily I have access to GM archives and I acquired the original drawing for the bracket.  I could still get the hold down bracket for the clamp, but the drawing showed exactly how the big the base was to be.  So I gave the drawing to Joe and he mocked one up in less than a day.  Looks just like the original.

Looks like it came from the plant!

That pretty much completed the main part of the body.  The car was ready to get prepped for primer and paint.  On to the rotisserie!

We have paint!

Now that the car is up on a rotisserie, we can work on the underside.  For the past year or so the car sat on a donor frame from a sedan I parted out.  The underside and firewall were cleaned up and all the imperfections were addressed as this was the last time any major welding was going to happen on the floor.  Also at this point the seams were sealed up as well, making sure no water will ever get in again.

The first coat of primer went on and the car finally started to look like a car again. 

Now you can't just toss a big ol' boat of a car like this on a rotisserie w/o it destroying itself.  So what you have to do is support the car from the inside.  Before the car was removed from the frame, brackets were welded in to hold everything in place.  W/o the bracing, the car would just buckle at the doors.

Once the car is returned to the frame and the rest of the car is lined up, these will be cut back out.

The car sat for about 1-2 weeks so the primer can fully cure.  Then I had to make two very important decisions.

1.  What color to paint it.
2.  Shall I paint the underside body color.

First one was easy, I had pretty much decided a while back to return the car to its original color of Ascot Blue.  I had no idea when I bought the car it was this color.  But if I was doing all the work to return it to its original state, I had to put the original color back on.

The second took some convincing.  The original car was just painted chassis black on the firewall and underside.  However Pat convinced me to make it a little more flashy by painting the underside body color.  This will add a lot more contrast and look a lot better.  I just hope I don't get dinged at car shows for it.

So blue it is on the underside and I gave Pat the go ahead and make it so!

After seeing the paint actually applied, I am glad I did it even if I get dinged for it at the car shows.  It was at this point I really started to get excited to get this car back on the road. 

The car had to sit for another couple weeks for this coat of paint to cure.  After that it got a shot of clearcoat.

Married again... No pre-nups needed

Once the clear coat cured, the car could be returned to the original frame.  Before that however the engine and transmission were reunited and dropped on to the frame.  After that all the accessories were put back on.  There is one hiccup yet to be resolved here.  The alternator is not lining back up like it had before.  This is most likely due to the new position of the alternator bracket.  It is not 100% back in the original location due to the after market intake.  It's not critical to address right now, but we will get it right before the front clip is installed.

With basically 95% of the chassis done, the car was set down on the frame.  Now one thing that took me a long time to find was the body mount kit.  For some reason it was a rare parts set to find.  I eventually found a set from The Parts Place Inc. (Not to be confused with Parts Place Inc for VWs)  Now I'm not 100% sure what exactly happened, but the two bolts that mount the frame at the door sill poked through.  My body guy also made a comment there were two bolts short.  I'll have to look at the next coupe or convertible, as I just don;t recall bolts going under that sill plate.  Plus when he did it, the bolts poked right through. I seemed to recall there were just bumpers there and no actual bolt.  Not real sure.  I also need to consult the assembly manual.  It should say in there.

Here are some shots of the car back on the frame.

Now back in its true original configuration, work can continue on the main body.

Prepping the body...

Work is now concentrating on getting the main body ready for paint.  This time the top side was sealed and the interior portion got a coat of chassis black.  No one will ever see this, it will all be hidden by carpet and trim.

The exterior was sanded and the imperfections were patched up.  It was soon ready for its first coat of primer.

As you can see the underside was sealed off, after all we don't expect to have to spray that again.  Just like the underside the body was left to cure for about a week.

While the main body was curing, we started to address the doors.  My driver side door was in decent shape.  It had one small rust hole forming in the lower corner.  Seems liek everydoor I had seen had this problem.  It was a quick fix for Joe to perform.  As for the passenger side, it was a lost cause.  I had to get a different door.  Luckily I had a decent door to use and it was brought in and restored instead.  This door was a non power window door, so we had to punch the factory knock-out out to allow the wiring to come through.  The doors were soon finished and ready for their first coat of primer.  I still need to address the power window set up.  I'm not sure yet what I need to replace as far as the rollers, track and etc.  I'll likely get to that after the car is painted.

As mentioned previously we never found a passenger front fender.  The one from California was just not quite good enough to use.  I had already found a driver's side NOS.  Actually everything in the front clip was NOS that I accumulated over the past 3 years.  Luckily we found a guy who had a 1973 or 1974 fender NOS.  As best as we could tell the fenders were identical except for the front end section at the bumper and the fender extension.  These sections from the California fender were in great shape, so we graffed the two pieces together.  It came out way better than I had ever thought possible.

This fender still has one minor dent in it, but that will get addressed later when it comes time to put the front clip back together.

Here are a couple more shots of the car after the 2nd block and sanding that was performed on the car.  At this point the car is ready for its 2nd and hopefully final coat of primer.

At this point I'm bringing back all my trim that I had taken to ABC Chrome in Waterford.  The guys there did an amazing job.  I highly recommend them.  He even did my giant bumpers.  Bob at ABC Chrome swore to never do a set like those ever again.  (For the right price he will, as I'm not done with these guys) Anyway, we needed to bring the trim in and dry fit everything to make sure stuff still worked together.  I don't foresee any issues as everything has been going back together pretty well.