1970 HLS30-06521 Re-Restoration

[CanTechZ]

30 minutes ago, grannyknot said:

What exactly are you going to do to it?  It looks in pretty fine condition now, but I understand perfectly the desire to just take things apart, no judgement here.

Basically I'm doing what I should have done during my first restoration back in the 80's.  I recently cleaned off most of the old undercoating and discovered more chassis rust than I expected to see, probably will replace the front frame rail on the left side and replace the let side floor plus other rust repair as required.  Before I bought the car in 1978 it had a cheap paint and bondo over rust paint job.  As it has had two re-paints I will go to bare metal and then go back to original color, it is currently Ontario Orange Metallic, a '71 Corvette color.  This will be a glass out, drivetrain out  complete job. I will get into more detail soon as well as describe in more detail what was done during the first resto.

[CanTechZ]

Here's one the first items to be removed, the dealer installed rub strips. They were attached with a combination of sheet metal screws for some and pop rivets for others. They definitely wont be going back on.

Thinking green, I was able to re-purpose them...

[CanTechZ]

Slowly making progress over the last couple of weeks, removed front and rear bumpers, grill and all lights, horns and tail light finisher. Also drained and removed the fuel tank and removed all emblems. Drained coolant, removed fan shroud, radiator and battery. So far no parts have been harmed and no stripped fasteners.  Wick Humbles book has proved useful.  This would probably have been less that half a day for @motorman7. Lol

Happy to report that all of the emblems are metal originals, not the later plastic replacements. No posts were broken during removal, I did find that the front hood emblem was missing one post and had a lot of  double sided adhesive tape keeping it in place.  I used a flat putty knife to remove them.

[siteunseen]

Do you know when the metal to plastic switch happened? My early '72 is all plastic.  Thank you for any info. Cliff

Edited November 2, 2019 by siteunseen

[grannyknot]

3 hours ago, CanTechZ said:

Happy to report that all of the emblems are metal originals, not the later plastic replacements. No posts were broken during removal, I did find that the front hood emblem was missing one post and had a lot of  double sided adhesive tape keeping it in place.  I used a flat putty knife to remove them.

Are you going to try and restore with new chrome plating and paint?  I have never tried to re chrome the pot metal but have had some success with Testors paint and a tiny brush.

[CanTechZ]

55 minutes ago, siteunseen said:

Do you know when the metal to plastic switch happened? My early '72 is all plastic.  Thank you for any info. Cliff

Sorry, I don't know for sure but I think they were introduced for the '72 model year.

[CanTechZ]

Just now, grannyknot said:

Are you going to try and restore with new chrome plating and paint?  I have never tried to re chrome the pot metal but have had some success with Testors paint and a tiny brush.

Unfortunately all of my emblems have some pitting, but are otherwise in good shape. I'm going to look into re-chroming, not sure yet about the paint method. I will discuss this with my body/paint guy as he has done a lot of complete restorations and hopefully be able to help.

[CanTechZ]

Here are a few pictures of the fuel tank removal. I was lucky that my car is a non emissions model so I had only two fuel in connections and fewer vent hoses to deal with as well as no evaporation tank. The most challenging part was removing the rock hard filler neck without damaging it.  First issue was freeing it from the tank inlet, careful use of a heat gun on low with some twisting action by hand to free it before prying with a small prying tool did the trick.  I did work in a well ventilated area making sure no fumes were present.  After the tank was out, to finish removing the filler neck, I again used the heat gun, on low, to soften it to the point that the upper square flange and vent connection could be collapsed inward enough to drop through the two round holes in the body. The neck was then free to drop out from the bottom.

 

I was happy to find there were no cracks in the fuel filler neck and it cleaned up very well, with a bit of effort using grease and wax remover and kleen-flo rubber care. Here is the result:

This is what it looked like before:

[Patcon]

The tank looks really good

[siteunseen]

Does the Kleen Flo soften the filler neck? If so I need a couple of cans. ?

[CanTechZ]

1 hour ago, Patcon said:

The tank looks really good

Thanks, it's a replacement installed in 1988, was a birthday gift from my wife LOL.  Check out the price,

[CanTechZ]

22 minutes ago, siteunseen said:

Does the Kleen Flo soften the filler neck? If so I need a couple of cans. ?

It did a little, maybe more with additional applications.  It works much better on softer rubbers like the bumper strips and rubbers seals for the front turn signals and marker lights.