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Credit cards are paid off, expenses are minimal, I have decided it's time for a project. Since I was a kid I have wanted to (re)build a muscle car at least partially because I think that most things on the road today are absolutely ugly. It's worth nothing that this is my first major car project. I have been looking for a base to build off of for several months and finally found this:         1966 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu 2 door coupe. I found it for sale locally where the owner just wanted out of it because of a series of events that I think worked in my favor. The owner had money but apparently didn't do any research to restore an older car so his expectations didn't necessarily line up with reality. I had a couple hours to talk to the guy while waiting for the slowest tow truck in the city to show up. He bought it on Ebay from Florida and he said it looked okay in the ad pictures so he bought it without having it inspected by anyone or looking at it himself, and had it shipped straight to his mechanic so it could be media blasted and primed and done right. Predictably for a 50 year old car from Florida the body was apparently held together with bondo and dreams and turned to swiss cheese with entire swaths of metal missing when it was stripped. Instead of finding another car, he hired a mechanic/metal shop to replace all the rusted metal on the car wholesale. The entire Roof, all the external panels, the entire trunk and the entire floor pans were replaced wholesale. He had receipts for 15 to 16,000 in metal work he had done over a number of months replacing almost everything, including the factory firewall with a nice smoothy. He then sealed the floors and trunk and had a basic priming done, decided the car was a money pit because it "wasn't any closer to really driving than when I started" and sold the whole thing to me for 7500 after asking for 8k. The Plan: This leads to today where I have essentially a blank slate of a 66 Chevelle that I am going to have to replace nearly all parts on it that aren't in the pictures, which is almost everything. Which I am fine with, because the goal for me is not to restore it to the way the car was in 1966, I want to rebuild this car with the even better poo poo that we as a people have come up with in the last 50 years in the mean time. This is going to be a long term project, I estimate 5-6 years. I am going cash only and will not be going into any debt for the duration. The ultimate goal is to make a car that is an an enjoyable daily driver, and that I can run in the Silver State Classic Challenge which means I can't gently caress around and cheap out with parts selection because this thing will need to be stable and not get me killed when going 165 on a 2 lane highway, possibly faster if I get ambitious about it. The first major change will be the body being moved to a Roadster Shot Independent Rear Suspension Chassis which is pricey but actually removes a lot of the guesswork from the rebuild. It lowers the body 3 inches on the chassis without altering the ride height, because the exhaust now runs inside the chassis instead of below it. It also wholesale replaces the suspension with one from a modern corvette, not just coil overs but the entire suspension geometry is modern and built to run with wider tires. Speaking of which, the chassis supports 10 inch wide rims up front and 12 in the rear so I can run 275/35ZR18 in the front and 335/30ZR18 in the rear. This chassis in other people's cars:   The current engine block is leaving, and I will be initially running on an LS3 and will probably change that out later but I am not sure for what. I want to keep good weight balance but I will not be exactly sure what I have to work with until I get the new chassis. All other parts of the car will basically have to be bought new. I am open to suggestions for safety improvements, because I know older cars have issues with safety compared to modern cars. Feel free to tell me how stupid and/or crazy I am and how I have no loving idea how deep this rabbit hole is going to go!  Advice appreciated!
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Oct 8, 2016 20:59
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| # ? May 2, 2024 14:53 |
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