64 impala drum

Last November when I stripped a 94 Buick Roadmaster for the 350 LT1 engine and trans, I was lucky enough to be able to pull the front disc brake assembly complete with Antilock Brakes and all the necessary wiring and controllers. Now its time to take some measurements to see if the spindle/rotor assembly will work on my stock 64 Impala control arms.

An alternative motive for doing this is to get rid of the junk if the parts aren’t going to work for what I’m trying to do.

So I tore my 14 year old son away from his game system and dragged him kicking and screaming out to the garage to help out his old man. You’d have thought I was asking him to help move an outhouse or something.

94 buick front disc

We shared the task of jacking up the front end, and removing the wheel so we could get comparison measurements of the 94 Buick spindle/rotor assembly and the spindle/drum assembly on the 64 Impala. I asked him to hand draw a face view and a top view of the disc brake assembly so I’d have a visual reference along with the measurements.

We took the measurements from the top side of the

94 buick rotor

top ball joint knuckle down to the spindle center line, and up from the bottom side of the lower ball joint knuckle. This measurement will tell me if using this setup will maintain the height of the front end, or raise or lower it. We came up a difference of 3 inches between the spindle and the lower ball joint knuckle for the 64 Impala and the 94 Buick. This is a bit much for what I’m trying to do.

abs sensor

The Buick spindle was 3 inches closer to the lower ball joint than the original 64 Impala setup. Some people might think, “Oh great! A drop spindle”, but when you realize lowering the spindle would move the wheel further away from the car body effectively raising the car. Oh man, that won’t do.

These assemblies were equipped with ABS sensors. If I’m going to junk these parts I need to remove the sensor assemblies so I

backing plate

can put ABS on my 64 Impala. At this point I don’t know if I can really do this with these parts but if I throw them out with the parts, I know I won’t be able to.

What looks like a ring gear is really a many toothed reluctor where the magnetic sensor rides just outside of the ring. The motion of the spinning gaps and tooth crests tell the ABS system the wheels are still in motion. If the wheels lockup during braking and the car is still moving, the sensor indicates the brakes have locked and the ABS system eases off the brake.

rotor and abs parts

I need to get this ring off. When I get the spindle/rotor assembly I can use, I can have  machine shop fit this ring to the inside of the rotor. The magnetic sensor was easy, just one bolt holding it in place. I had to use the cutting torch to heat the ring, forcing it to expand so I could use a hammer and pry bar to tap it off.

And there I have it. Now I’m gonna look into whether or not the Chevrolet Part Interchange Manual will reveal the correct parts I need. If not I’ll look into picking up a disc brake conversion kit.

Used parts for the Impala Project are at an all time high right now. After stripping 2 whole cars for parts I needed and extra parts I took for the sake of having extra, my parts storage is swelling.

64 Impala door sill plates

So now I need to go thru the collection, find the best of what I have to use for the restoration of my 64 Impala and unload the remainder.

Some of it I’ll use as disposable material for developing some of my restoration skills like buffing and polishing, metal shaping etc. In many cases I have at least 3 sets of everything from moldings to grill sections.

64 Impala hood lip moldings

rear view of hood lip moldings on a 64 Impala

Like these door sill plates for example. I’ve arranged them left to right from best to worst. The set on the left came off my car, the other sets came off of the 64 Impala’s I stripped. I came across the extra  hood lip moldings the same way. You can see they aren’t all nice and shiny. In fact the 2 nicest ones have the worst mounting hardware of them all. The one on the right which is pretty much destroyed has the best mounting hardware.

64 Impala headlight rings

I’ve amassed quite a collection of headlight rings too. Here’s a dozen in this stack and my 64 Impala still has another 4. This way I can choose from the best to buff and polish and still keep a few more in case they’re ever stolen off the car or damaged.

This grill section is surprisingly ince considering it came off the rustiest 64 Impala I’ve ever seen. This came off the multicolored 64 Impala I stripped in Raliegh, NC this past November (2008). Note how the fastener holes at the end of the filler panel are nice and solid. In most 64 Impala’s on the east coast, these are completely destroyed by rust. You will rarely find a good used filler panel. There was evidence of this car being in a serious accident at one point in it’s life. I suspect the front end was replaced just a few years

64 Impala grill section

before this car went to the junk yard, cause even the inner fender well I got off this car was rust free and solid, not even rusted where it fastens to the lower fender skirt.

I’ve got loads more to go thru. My truck is still full of body parts from the 64 Impala I stripped in Raleigh, NC  last year. At least I have a lot to choose from.

Spring Carlisle ticket

I didn’t get a vendor space this year and now after being there, I realize I should have. Spring Carlisle was packed with both vendors and visitors.

This time I went there mostly to buy, although I did deliver my split front bench seat to Greg. He has a 63 Biscyane 2 door post he’s restoring and needed the split bench. I took the backs off of it so it would fit in the back seat of my Plymouth Neon. No shipping! Shipping a bench seat could prove to be costly so it turns out to be a good deal for him.

The Mrs. had put the oven on self clean before running out to do her errands not realizing there was a greasy cookie sheet in the oven. My son said the stove was spewing smoke like a fog machine.

So now I can stay on track for heading to Spring Carlisle. It was promising to be a beautiful but hot spring day. They were calling for 90 degrees.

My objective other than delivering the bench seat was to find a few more classic car ads and brochures for a trivia section I’m planning for the Impala Project website, make a few impulse buys for parts I’m gonna need anyway, and take a bunch of pictures of some pristine 62 thru 64 Impala’s for both reference and to use as decorative images on the website. You’ll see those up there sometime soon.

I found the elderly gentleman with the classic car ads right where he was last year at Row D1. I came away with 5 classic car ads for $15. Pretty good considering 3 of them were 2 page ads.

On impulse I picked up a new reproduction side view mirror for my 64 Impala. It was the best one out of a few the guy had. Not all of them were as clean and sharp as you would expect.

Spring Carlisle cars for sale

So now it’s time to take pictures. I was

Spring Carlisle 2009 Vendors

really happy to see a lot of people with cars for sale since I knew upon arriving that it was ripe picture taking territory this spring. They weren’t neccessarily happy to be there, as hot as it was, since they said the buyers weren’t really there. By this time the sun was startin to burn on me too.

64 Impala SS sideview

I ran across a guy with an original 64 Impala SS with about 60 some thousand miles on it. The car really looked like it might have been garage kept all these years. It wasn’t in great shape, time was showing itself in the craze lines on the bumpers and trim and someone had done some body work on it at some time since there were waves on the body lines down the side. $18,000 wasn’t a whole lot to ask for this car although you’d need another $10,000 to make it really sharp.

63 Impala SS for sale

This guy has a 63 Impala SS for sale. I think he was asking $28,000. He said he’d only had it for a year. I didn’t ask but I think he was selling cause he was tired of it already. It’s in really nice shape, I can’t say what kind of work was done on it or if it was original. The guy was from Pittsburg.

I had designs on leaving early since I had a 25th anniversary party to go to in the early evening. Judging by the way everyone else was leaving around 2 PM, I’d of thought they were going there too. It was pretty hot about this point and I can see why the crowd was leaving. It was hot walking around in the sun. I came back home looking like a tomato.