Sounds like a fun ride. Keep on it.

its been a while but I made some forward progress. I have since dialed in the HEI distributor but I'm having some issues with the fuse block. I'm leaning towards a complete replacement harness even though I have put a decent amount of work into the original harness. I'm thinking about the American Autowire:
http://www.americanautowire.com/70-72chevelle.html
I am kind of caught up on it because I was going to keep it as original as possible but this seems like such a nice harness for the money. I'd like to run my original style headlight knob but I wouldn't mind ditching the ammeter for the voltmeter instead. Anyone else out there running this harness? I see it is basically a plug-in replacement for the HEI with tach leads too and moves the horn relay up under the dash. I probably won't get to this for a while since I just got my taxes done last night and it didn't go in my favor. I noticed my drivers side quarter panel has lightly more rot than I first realized due to a previous repair. The undercoat that covered the trunk drop down made the panel look solid but it rotted from the inside out. Looks like more patchwork on my future. I've since decided to do a complete roof skin and A-pillar channels along with full passenger quarter. Any of you guys ever do this before? I'm trying to figure out if it is easier doing the gutters with the roof or leaving them in place.

Hey guys, not a whole lot going on with my car lately. I did clean it out a little and pulled it out of the garage while we had some nice warm weather. I'm regretting selling the black 70 Malibu at this point because it has been beautiful and I would have liked to have been driving it around to the local cruise nights. I'm still looking into replacing the A-posts but right now I have to concentrate on the boat. I think I might also be in the market to replace my 2 Suburbans with a newer 2007 or 2008 2500 Suburban so yet another expense. I told you guys this was gonna be a slow build!

Hey any progress is PROGRESS! Hang in there. Im with ya dreaming of driving our classiscs.
I purchased the American classic auto update harness and it is a real nice piece. I have been looking at it for two years and would love to install it! Just cant get anything accomplished either.

OK I give up. Out of money, no time, storing car in someone's garage where I can't work on it. I'm listing it for sale. I'll ask high and if it sells, its gone. Everything with it goes too. I wish one day I'd be able to get this car built but my priorities are geared towards getting a house, and a reliable daily driver with under 400k on the clock. No overtime at work, no more second job. I feel someone might end up with a shadow gray L34 Chevelle

Sorry to hear you are going to sell. I agree a house and a good daily driver is more important. I had to wait 30 years to build this car.

Sorry to hear this. Its sounds like its for the best. If you every get out my way. Your welcome to take out mine, if it is ever finished.

So sorry Berg. I don't want to say "I hope you sell your car", but on the other hand, if it will help you get to a good place with a dependable car and house, then I hope you do sell it.

Cars never get out of our blood. You will always be looking for the right car, whether it is around the corner or thousands of mile away. And you will find it, it might even be sitting in your friends garage right now. Any way that things turn out, you can always come here and find some friends that will always talk to you about what ever you want. Good Luck.

I will surely be kicking myself for years to come if it sells... i might be shooting a little high on the price also. I'm working hard on finding a nice dry indoor home for it at the moment

Your asking price is not to bad with the options you list on the car. Not sure on how much rust issues you have. That will effect the price. Just remember these cars getting harder to come by, and if you do store it it will be there when you are ready to build it.

I'm trying to hold off. I won't budge on price. I'm doing everything I can to hang onto it. I'm about to buy a house that I can barely afford just to get a garage with it

Well, it is a month later and I didn't sell it. Actually I chased people away from it by telling them everything it needed and everything that was wrong with it-also had a few young punks come look at it and say how they were going to change the "lame ass 14 inch rims" and put some dubs on it and spray paint it some crazy color scheme with racing seats and digital gauges and I decided at that point the car was no longer for sale. I couldn't see this thing get chopped up and made into some ghetto cruiser and then have to look at it from time to time. I know it was also a bad idea but I managed to pick up some more parts for it to help me along. I ended up needing to get an engine for my '99 2500 Suburban (oiling issues) so i now have a Vortec 454 to rebuild for the Chevelle if I ever feel like it. It runs on 87 octane and has provisions for the clutch ball stud already cast into it- just needs to have threads tapped. I already have an adjustable valvetrain and roller rockers along with a Mercruiser cam swap and I have a dual plane aluminum intake manifold with a 750CFM Holley carb that matches up to the Vortec intake ports nicely. I'd say it wouldn't be hard to get 350hp and somewhere around 380 ft-lbs of torque out of it. I did some welding on the drivers side A post to get it stitched up. I think instead of changing them out I'll be patching them. It is going a lot smoother than anticipated and I'll just have to reinstall the molding clips with the screw kit in the catalogs. I doubt i'm going to be able to get away from doing a roof skin but I am going to try to make some patch panels to save it. I've seen people save a lot worse and I feel at this point if I cut the entire skin off the car i will never see it back together while I own it. Patches for now! It is impossible to work on the car where it is and I only had a very small window of making noise to do it. I really need to be able to glue a windshield back into it so I can put the car outside in my own driveway (as much as it sucks to see it outside-it's been out its whole life) and get a fresh coat of primer on it to give it a little protection from the elements.

I know how you feel. My '64 has been outside under a tarp for a while now. I FINALLY got rid of another car so I could move the Chevelle inside. Stick with it. All it takes is money and time. :)

I'm also glad you didn't let some punk ruin a great looking car.

I think those kids were the deciding factor. It would kill me to see it get hacked up. I guess at this point even if I make very little forward progress on it, as long as it isn't getting worse than when I initially got it I can't see it being a problem. Once the glass is in it I can put new weatherstripping in it and keep the cabin and trunk dry. I'll pick up some moisture eliminating buckets for the interior spaces and keep a close eye on them

Any new updates?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The car is sitting on my friends open car trailer with a car cover and a blue tarp tied down over it. I had a few people come to look at it but no bites. It is sitting without a fuel tank and sending unit and it needs fuel lines to run again. The battery had a cell go bad so it cranks super slow and doesn't hold a charge. I also realized I installed the wrong energy suspension engine mounts so the engine is sitting low. I thought the damper was awful close to the sway bar! The harness issue got worse. I noticed last time I played with it the dash wasn't getting power for some odd reason. I wish I had the money. I'd let the car go for $8,000 if it was going to the right home and it would go with the spare 454 and any/all parts minus the 468/TH400 combo which is going back to my dad. I wish I even had something to barter for the metalwork so I could get a windshield in it again. After that it wouldn't take much to put it back on the road. I got new wheel cylinders and rebuilt calipers with new rotors and pads sitting in the boxes. I already put the new master cylinder in it. We have been getting wacky weather with high winds and rain with a lot of local flooding so everything in life is on hold. I'm currently looking for a roomate and a house to rent with a garage... along with another night job to pay for it all

Hang in as best you can. Getting money and a better lifestyle in the next four years is going to be difficult.

Berg, I hope that you find what you are looking for. I especially hope that you are able to hang onto your car until you can do everything you want to it.

I finally got around to getting some more pictures off my camera. This is from about a month ago when i pulled it out of the garage and brought it over to my buddy's house. I was going to drive it but I was having some serious electrical gremlins and didn't feel comfortable taking the chance. I guess its a good thing because the drivers side front caliper hung up on it after backing it off the trailer! It looks like it is sitting crooked in the front and rear pictures but that is just because it is off the blacktop on uneven ground. I still got it up for sale but I haven't had anyone who actually has money interested in it. It is OK with me, I'd like to keep it. That happens every time I fire it up and move it around though.
http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...6/100_2444.jpg

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...6/100_2445.jpg

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...6/100_2441.jpg

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...6/100_2440.jpg

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...6/100_2437.jpg

http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...6/109_1068.jpg
I found this shot of the 621 Bellhousing and clutch fork all cleaned up with the new throwout bearing before I put the engine in.

I hope you find a way to keep it.

I still got my car for sale, found a reasonable house to rent with the option to buy (still no garage) but I got someone who wants to come up from West Virginia to take a look at my car for around $6,500. It is sad, but I can probably get up the 20% to put down on this house by June! I talked to the owner today and need to go inspect the home. It is from 1750 and hasn't been lived in for over a year. I'm thinking it would take a lot to get it back into shape but once again doing all the work myself I think I can pull it off... Ohh and it has a huge paved driveway. It sucks because I know if I can hang onto it for a few years I'd be able to get back on it here and there. I almost want to drop it off at a friends body shop and tell him to "take his time" with it. It would also be a lot harder to sell if it were indoors at a shop stuffed in the corner somewhere. I might take it to a swap meet on Saturday with a load of parts but who knows...

I hope it all works out for the best. How ever it may work out.

Hey guys, I know its been a long time since I've been on here but I thought I'd give a little update. I still got the car. It is in the driveway of my new driveway on my buddies car trailer. He needed storage for it and I wanted to keep the car off the ground and out of the dirt so this works out pretty well. I got a full driveway with 2 automotive projects to crank out before I get back on the Chevelle. It is wrapped under a few tarps and I have gotten yet another SS domed hood. This one is super-clean and doesn't need any bodywork whatsoever so I'm going to run it. I got a whole A-pillar and roof support clip with the leading edge of the roof from Joe Vega at AZ Chevs. He cut it off into the top of the cowl panel and shipped it to me in one piece. It has all the factory molding studs welded in. I can't believe nobody has these available aftermarket for cutting pieces out of and welding in. It is a lot easier having metal with the correct bends already in it instead of screwing around with the metal brake and trying to hand hammer it to match the original contour. This should speed up my repair since it has sat all winter and now all summer until this point.

Back from the dead! Kind of glad you have managed to hang onto it. Hoping you get to do all of the metal work and seal it up with epoxy primer soon. That will be the biggest hurdle to get over with the project.

Hey, welcome back!

Glad you found a way to keep it.

Thanks guys, I had the cover off of it yesterday. It has been really humid and it rained yesterday, with a chance of rain today so the cover went on it quick. I just wanted to check on the desiccant I put in it and a few of the bags were pretty saturated. I removed them, I'll be getting some more for the boat soon anyway when i wrap it up for the winter. I figure I'd just buy 3x as much so I got it for the car when it goes on sale. I think it will be the key to keeping the mold out of the interior since its being stored outdoors under a cover. I'm kicking around the idea of getting another car port. It worked OK for the last car when I couldn't keep it indoors and still let the air move around it. I just get worried in high winds or heavy snow that it might collapse. If I'm away from the house for 10 hours and nobody is there to clear it off it might buckle under the weight. I picked up some small odds-n-ends for it too. I think I just love collecting parts i don't have any room for.

Well guys, We had about 3 nice days within the last week so i took advantage of the time to pull the cover off the car and play around with it. I aired up the tires and decided to try out my new electric dual action sander. The whole roof of the car and tops of the fenders are covered in heavy surface rust so I decided to go to town and take it down to bare metal. I only got about a quarter of the roof done and the top part of the drivers quarter and shot some rattle can primer on it to keep it from flash rusting. I'm thinking about scraping up some cash and doing full quarters and a roof skin. I've read mixed reviews about the aftermarket roof skins so I'm a little weary but the good news is for the most part the trunk floor, inner and outer wheelhouses and the trunk drop offs are in decent shape and will only need some small patchwork here and there. It was good to have it running again. I feel like its been a very long time since I heard it. I even got some tire spin out of it while moving it around the driveway. My front calipers are hanging up again from sitting. Other than that, we will see where this summer takes my car. Maybe the 10 year plan might work!