Sifting thru 64 Impala grill section parts

Posted by Carl King - 15/06/09 at 07:06 pm

More 64 Impala parts to sift through. Grill sections to be more precise. My objective is to put together a grill section to use on the car that has the least amount of rust pitting. If you want something to look nice and save yourself a lot of work getting it to that stage, it makes sense to start with the nicest parts.

These came from several sources. 2 from the cars I stripped last year and 2 from the guy on Craigslist that had the bumpers and grills. All together there’s 5 including the one on the car.

The most visible part of the grill section aside from the grill itself is the filler panel just below the grill and the half moon filler plates at the outside of the headlight pots. These parts get really badly pitted even if the parts are otherwise in relatively decent shape.

Parts that aren’t so visible and also prone to being badly pitted are the grill supports. I’ve seen strange combinations where the bulk of the grill section is nice but these supports are nearly rotted out. Likewise for the hood latch mechanism.

Between these 5 grills I should be able to come up with a collections of parts to makeup a single nice grill section that will take a minimum of effort in surface preparation to make it paint worthy. Originally the only parts that got “real” paint were the filler panel, the 2 half moon filler panels, the headlight pots and the grill cross support bar. The rest of the parts got a chincey coating of flat black that was never really meant to preserve the parts.

The filler panel on this one grill section is probably the best looking of them all. The only problem with this one is it’s bent from an accident. This one came off the 64 Impala I stripped in Raliegh, N.C. The ends of the filler panel on the 64 Impala where they fasten to the front fenders are notorious for being rotted out completely. The sheet metal at the ends is often rusted thin and would still need to be replaced even if they aren’t rusted out. This one is is great shape by that standard. The drivers side is nearly perfect but the passenger side is still rusted thin and I’ll need to replace the very end piece where the bolts go thru. This one is all there but still not thick enough to have the strength it needs.

The lower filler panels on 64 Impala parts cars are pretty much non existent. These are the filler panels that tie the front fender, the inner wheel well and the grill section together. You can see in the picture in the first paragraph where this passenger side lower filler panel is nearly history, and this is on a grill section that is otherwise in amazingly good condition. No problem, when I was in Denver I picked up a pair of rust free lower filler panels at Svigel Auto Parts. They’re nice and solid.

Here you can see the before and after view of the filler panel just above. After removal I decided it would be a keeper since it wasn’t all rusted out. It needed to be straightened but was worth the hour and a half it took to get it this far.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Finding parts. The entry is tagged under 64 impala filler panel, 64 impala grill section. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.