64 Impala grill-o-rama

Posted by Carl King - 22/06/09 at 08:06 am

It seems like 64 Impala grill-o-rama around here the last couple of weekends. With 5 grills to take apart and sort out the parts, I’ve developed quite a pile of both good and bad parts.

I think it’s easy to conclude that you can’t be too quick to rule out a car as being a good parts car, no matter what condition it’s in when you first look at it. I’ve run into some real surprises while stripping these grill sections. Who would imagine that one of the rustiest 64 Impala junk yard cars I’ve ever seen had some of the nicest used parts on the grill section.

 

 

Here’s a good example. This headlight pot was so rusty around the outside edges the nuts on the bolt holding the headlamp bracket were almost none existent, I had to grind the bolts off. Yet the headlamp bracket was one of the nicest ones I found. It has a fair amount of surface rust, but no pitting to speak of. This will make for a grill part that doesn’t require a whole lot of surface preparation to look good once it’s painted.

Exactly what I’m looking for.

So now I have one really nice grill to work with (far left), and 2 others that aren’t far behind. The one on the far right here has seen better days, and it came off of the car I stripped in Raliegh last year which had the nicest front bumper filler panel. Go figure. I’ll likely relegate this one to the scrap pile unless I’m felling bored and really ambitious one day and decide to try welding it. Not a bad idea really. I may as well practice on something with the least amount of risk. If I screw it up, there’s not much loss in tossing it or cutting it up for welding filler material. The piles of parts are sorted too. Nice ones on the left and not so nice ones on the right.

I still haven’t taken the grill section off my 64 Impala yet. I’ll save that one for the documentation in the disassembly guide I’m planning. For anyone unfamiliar with stripping the 64 Impala, I can offer some guidance on the subject since I’ve already stripped 2 just last year.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 8:19 am and is filed under Finding parts. The entry is tagged under 64 impala grill. 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.