64 chevelle dissection/resurrection

rjs89ia

Well-Known Member
Well I've been busy doing body work on the chevelle I plan to put my 302 in. Over the past couple of weeks I've managed to separate the bodies from the frame on both cars and drill all of the spot welds out underneath. I started with the 4 door car first as the floor and firewall will be the donor for my 2 door. Something interesting I found while under the 4 door car is that over 3/4 of the spot welds holding the inner and outer rocker panels together were not holding. Poor for quality but awesome for me as I was dreading drilling all of those welds. The 2 door so far has all of the upper and lower spot welds drilled, just need to finish drilling the welds on the firewall and cut the remaining trunk floor. Prior to finishing the drilling on that car I plan to brace the inside to minimize movement. Over the weekend I was able to get the body pulled off of the 4 door and set it off to the side. Spent most of Sunday wire wheeling and using the body hammer and dollies to straighten all the edges out on the floor.
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This thread will be interesting to me, I had a 64 Chevelle as a teenager. Just recently I also had a 65 Chevelle.

Sure don't hurt to have a backhoe handy when you need to lift the body off!
 
You really did take them all apart !
Both cars were pretty much shells to begin with. Except the 2 door which had
This thread will be interesting to me, I had a 64 Chevelle as a teenager. Just recently I also had a 65 Chevelle.

Sure don't hurt to have a backhoe handy when you need to lift the body off!

The 64 grew on me from a young age. I have another 2 door 300 in the garage on the rotisserie thats the same paint code as the one in the pics. Plan was to build em the same and have one street and one strip. I dream of having one as a hauler but dont believe these early cars would handle well with a car trailer on the back.

Tractor belongs to my neighbor. Sits in my yard most of the time as I happen to be the mechanic and the one that actually fixed it so it was useable again.
 
Anyone here ever taken on a full floor replacement like this? Maybe not in this manner but something similar.

As you can see I've seperated the firewall to the kickup over the rear end in the trunk. You may ask why I didnt take it all the way to the tail panel and that is because the trunk was rusted through in a few places and some goon decided to smear it with bondo or fiberglass filler. Seems to be a trend with 64 trunk panels as all three cars in my possesion from 3 different areas of the US have had some sort of quick fix filler in the trunk area. At any rate I have 7 piece trunk floor pan that I got with the 2 dr car when I bought it. I actually have a 1 piece trunk floor pan w/ braces and a 1 piece passenger pan w/ braces for the car on the rotisserie.

I can say it is nice having 3 of these cars as it helps being able to cross reference when putting things together. The 2 dr car in the pictures was actually assembled in 63 and one of the differences I noticed was that the rear body brace and trunk floor were different than the later assembled cars. The early trunk floors were smooth across the mating surface with the rear brace where the later cars had stiffening ribs in the pan that were extended up into the brace which also had reliefs. I can get some pictures later to help detail.
 
Anyone here ever taken on a full floor replacement like this? Maybe not in this manner but something similar.

As you can see I've seperated the firewall to the kickup over the rear end in the trunk. You may ask why I didnt take it all the way to the tail panel and that is because the trunk was rusted through in a few places and some goon decided to smear it with bondo or fiberglass filler. Seems to be a trend with 64 trunk panels as all three cars in my possesion from 3 different areas of the US have had some sort of quick fix filler in the trunk area. At any rate I have 7 piece trunk floor pan that I got with the 2 dr car when I bought it. I actually have a 1 piece trunk floor pan w/ braces and a 1 piece passenger pan w/ braces for the car on the rotisserie.

I can say it is nice having 3 of these cars as it helps being able to cross reference when putting things together. The 2 dr car in the pictures was actually assembled in 63 and one of the differences I noticed was that the rear body brace and trunk floor were different than the later assembled cars. The early trunk floors were smooth across the mating surface with the rear brace where the later cars had stiffening ribs in the pan that were extended up into the brace which also had reliefs. I can get some pictures later to help detail.

No I have seen a car taken apart as far as you have.

Right at the stage to build a Tube Frame Chassis Drag Car or Tube Frame Road Race Car.

I cut the entire front floor pan up to the Lower Toe Boards on a 1968 Chevelle a few months back.
We were doing drag race chassis work.
Added NHRA spec 25.5 Under Floor Pan frame stiffeners made from 4130 Chromemoly Tubing.
 
Back about the time I started trying to make a buck on flipping cars, maintaining I could turn any wreck into gold (about the mid 90’s) I acquired a 1969 Dodge Coronet 500. Totally clueless it didn’t occur to me to really dive into that car checking everything. I was fooled by the extremely thick undercoating and the firmly glued down carpet the seller wouldn’t let me pull back even a little bit.

About this time MOPARs were constantly climbing in price, so I paid every bit of a retail price. I used to have the balls to take on anything and ask questions later. When I found out the hard way the floors were there just in theory (tossing a set of heads on the back seat and the seat fell through the floor) I went bananas and tore into replacing the entire floor back to front foot wells. The lessons I learned the hard way. No internet, no forums and no friends to help me I didn’t think of all the bracing, the stabilization of the body aaand critical alignment issues. Up to that time my only experience welding was back in high school shop class. I was afraid of welding then and it wasn’t any better 18 years later.

I kept returning to the supply house buying sheet steel, angle iron, some square stock, cutting wheels and rods every couple days of a 2 month project, I must have spent 10X more than I should before I canvassed the region stopping in shops, asking questions When I finally finished the panel and door gaps were perfect. Looking from the underside I was quite proud of my work. Later those lessons I learned got me through a re-flooring of a mid 60s Chevy II, and 1970 Opal GT and that last one I ever had my hands on was a ‘67 Fairlane.
I couldn’t do that work today if my life depended on it. Those first jobs I used a permanent marker and drew the indents where the contours went on the sheet metal pans and ran back and forth to a fabrication shop until I found used English wheel, planishing tool and a couple more starter tools. By 2005 I made dam sure I didn’t buy anymore rust buckets.
 
Self tapping sheet metal screws used during mockup work too.

I've got clecos (aviation technician by trade) and self tappers. Been telling the wife that I need to get somemore vice grips to help hold stuff together. Was fitting the trunk fillers to the floor panel yesterday and it was apparent i need more of those.
 
I've got clecos (aviation technician by trade) and self tappers. Been telling the wife that I need to get somemore vice grips to help hold stuff together. Was fitting the trunk fillers to the floor panel yesterday and it was apparent i need more of those.
You can never have enough clecos LOL!
 
Back about the time I started trying to make a buck on flipping cars, maintaining I could turn any wreck into gold (about the mid 90’s) I acquired a 1969 Dodge Coronet 500. Totally clueless it didn’t occur to me to really dive into that car checking everything. I was fooled by the extremely thick undercoating and the firmly glued down carpet the seller wouldn’t let me pull back even a little bit.

About this time MOPARs were constantly climbing in price, so I paid every bit of a retail price. I used to have the balls to take on anything and ask questions later. When I found out the hard way the floors were there just in theory (tossing a set of heads on the back seat and the seat fell through the floor) I went bananas and tore into replacing the entire floor back to front foot wells. The lessons I learned the hard way. No internet, no forums and no friends to help me I didn’t think of all the bracing, the stabilization of the body aaand critical alignment issues. Up to that time my only experience welding was back in high school shop class. I was afraid of welding then and it wasn’t any better 18 years later.

I kept returning to the supply house buying sheet steel, angle iron, some square stock, cutting wheels and rods every couple days of a 2 month project, I must have spent 10X more than I should before I canvassed the region stopping in shops, asking questions When I finally finished the panel and door gaps were perfect. Looking from the underside I was quite proud of my work. Later those lessons I learned got me through a re-flooring of a mid 60s Chevy II, and 1970 Opal GT and that last one I ever had my hands on was a ‘67 Fairlane.
I couldn’t do that work today if my life depended on it. Those first jobs I used a permanent marker and drew the indents where the contours went on the sheet metal pans and ran back and forth to a fabrication shop until I found used English wheel, planishing tool and a couple more starter tools. By 2005 I made dam sure I didn’t buy anymore rust buckets.

That bit about the seat falling through the floor was pretty good. Each of my 2 drs came from the midwest. My original car belonged to my uncle who died and then to my grandmother who passed away some years after he and then I got it. Anyway it sat unfinished outdoors in southeast Iowa for a very long time and the elements had its way with it so I'm stuck with a lot of rust and very little support for that model (most parts are for malibus and not interchangeable). Good thing about the one I'm working now is that I'll build the experience so I can get it right on my original car which is a little worse off. As far as the car moving I haven't really noticed a whole lot the most I saw was on the 4 door car when the busted center post loose for it sprung a half inch out. My plan when I put the 2 dr body on the floor is to re hang the doors prior to welding anything and set the gaps to be sure its pretty close.
 
I went back to the guy who sold me the dodge for some parts he found. I told him about the rust and how the entire center hump collapsed through, then he tells me he expected as much, the car sat sinking in the mud up to the rocker panels for 9 years before he cleaned it up for sale.
 
its amazing how much of our skills result, from being forced to learn how to rebuild, fabricate and repair cars that were never in the condition we assumed they were when we purchased them.
Its also amazing how often we screw up a project , thinking we are going to make improvements
...only to find out that theres going to be a great deal of, rethinking of our original concept, and being forced to back-track.
once again, the need for a decent quality welder (generally a good MIG, or TIG, and accurate measuring tool, is invaluable)
 
If thing s do not want to line up & likely will not because of settling & twist,
making a Tube Frame Chassis car at home is possible.
You have a large enough garage.
Make an entire New Floor pan in 2 or 3 sections.
Drag Race layout door slammer.
 
I went back to the guy who sold me the dodge for some parts he found. I told him about the rust and how the entire center hump collapsed through, then he tells me he expected as much, the car sat sinking in the mud up to the rocker panels for 9 years before he cleaned it up for sale.

Aint that a crock. Did you tell him thanks a lot?
 
its amazing how much of our skills result, from being forced to learn how to rebuild, fabricate and repair cars that were never in the condition we assumed they were when we purchased them.
Its also amazing how often we screw up a project , thinking we are going to make improvements
...only to find out that theres going to be a great deal of, rethinking of our original concept, and being forced to back-track.
once again, the need for a decent quality welder (generally a good MIG, or TIG, and accurate measuring tool, is invaluable)

I suffer from a great deal of intimidation with my first car theres just so much thats rotted away. Thats why I've settled more towards fixing the 2nd car first as it is going to be more of a race car so it doesnt need to be 100% perfection but more of a base to learn from so when I do tackle the 1st car I'm more comfortable with my decisions. As far as tooling and equipment I have invested in quite a bit in the past few years in anticipation of all this work. My welder might be on the small side (110v hobart 140) but it seems to do ok especially for sheet metal.
 
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