The Impala Project

I ran into an ad on Craiglist a few weeks ago. The guy was advertising reproduction 64 Impala fenders and full quarter panels at heavy discounts. I called a few days after seeing the ad and found he got the scratch and dent stuff from Dynacorn. He usually does the car show circuit but since it was a slow year, he was selling them online.

Shipping for reproduction body panels is not cheap and only raises the chances that they’ll get seriously damaged, so I talked the Mrs into going along on the Labor day weekend and spend a night in a Bed and Breakfast nearby. That was a no brainer. She was all over it. We drove up on Saturday and came back Sunday with the parts.

The guy seems to do this as a sideline and his inventory is constantly changing. He never knows what he’ll have cause he only gets the reproduction body panels that can’t be sold for retail.

The 64 Impala quarter panel I got had a simple dimple in it but otherwise looked brand new. He was off on his inventory. He thought he had quarter panels and fenders for both sides of the car in the trailer and I was prepared to get them. He only had the drivers side. He had a 64 Impala hood sittin in the garage that had a barely noticable crease in it. I knew I could fix it so I took it.

Search craigslist in the Pittsburg area for 64 Impala parts and you surely find him.

rusted off spring

spring rivet removed

The removable parts on these headlight pots are the adjusting screws, andthe plastic inserts, the stainless headlight ring, the headlight casing, and the tension spring. The tension springs are rarely in good condition. They’re subject to direct exposure to rain, snow, and road grime. Any finish on them has been rusted off decades ago leaving the tension springs in rough shape. I managed to save only a few.

Drilling out the rivet is no big deal. A 11/64″ bit will eat the mushroomed shoulder off and you won’t risk damaging the rivet hole since the rivet hole is exactly 11/64″. The rivet is a 5/32 blind aluminum rivet. This same rivet can be found in quite a few place on the 64 Impala grill section. It’s also used to hold the vertical supports to the backside of the headlight pots, the grill to the tie bar, and the small vertical grill supports to the grill and tie bar. I haven’t managed to find the correct replacements yet, but I will.

headlight spring installed

headlight springs

Since my only objective at this point is to put the best parts back together in one assembly I don’t need to be anal about fasteners yet. Here I used a #8 bevel head machine screw to hold the spring in place. The important part of this exercise is that I’ll have all these parts fastened together so I won’t lose them. We all know how parts disappear when we finally need them a couple of years later.

headlights installed

64 impala grill complete

Now the grill section for my 64 Impala is in one piece using the best used parts I can find. Since I have 3 other assemblies, none of which are in great shape, I can use them for practice when I want to develop my metal and trim working skills. I don’t want to learn on my best parts. I can afford to ruin the others.

64 Impala tie bar

Here’s a challenge. It just so happens that the nicest tie bar in all these 64 Impala grill sections I’ve taken apart has some rusty old machine screws holding the grill in place. Good luck undoing those.
The cutting torch is not an option here.

Up to this point I’ve been using the torch to cut off rusty bolts. It’s fast and easy. The problem here is the high risk in damaging both the tie bar and the grill. The melting point for aluminum is really low compared to steel. Since this grill tie bar is only stamped out of what looks like 16 guage sheet metal there is a a chance that I would blow a hole thru it, or it would become warped from the high heat of the cutting torch.

rusty nut behind tie bar

I could use the dremel and a cut off wheel but that would mean hacking away at the backside of the machine screw and nut. It wouldn’t be pretty and I’d surely break a half dozen or so cutoff wheels in the process. Expensive.

center drilled screw head

So I decided to use something more industrial. My Snap-on hand held grinder. This thing has been around a long time, probably 30 years now. My father bought it when I was a teenager and used it in the transmission business. I ground the heads of the screws down on the grill side so that they were flattened enough to center punch and drill out. Since these screw heads had a built in shoulder washer, the risk in damaging the grill from slipping off the screw head while grinding was rather low. I used a very light pressure to minimize the risk.

screw head drilled out

rusty screw removed

Above you see the head ground down and center drilled with a 1/8″ bit. Next I used a 1/2″ bit to drill out the head. The drill bit ate away enough of a divet to weaken the screw head’s attachment to the shaft. By grabbing the rusty nut on the backside with a pair of pliers, it just snapped of with very little effort.

This meant I didn’t need to do anything to pry on the head of the screw and risk scratching the grill surface.

tie bar removed

Wholla! The 64 Impala grill tie bar is off and in good shape. Now I can take all the best parts I’ve piled up from disassembling all these grills and put one good grill together.

My first priority was to use the least rusty parts. None of them are perfect, some were bent as well. If the nicest part was bent I spent the time needed to

behind grill section

64 Impala grill assembled

straighten it. From this collection of parts I was able to assemble a fairly nice 64 Impala grill section. I’ll set this aside, for use on my car and figure out what to do with the pile of less than perfect parts. Even if they aren’t good enough to refinish, a lot of the clips, screws and other fasteners might prove to be worth harvesting.