Just curious if anyone knows of some good links to some frame off restos for the 72 or has done one themselves. Also, if any of you have some good tips or instructions of where to start or some things to keep in mind with keeping things organized for when putting her back together. Time for me to learn! Thanks! smile.gif

A great 72 Chevelle web site is Jeff's 1972 Chevelle SS Restoration. (http://www.72chevelle.com/) Good luck with yours! graemlins/waving.gif

Mike

Thanks Mike! I'll take a good look at it and see if I have any questions. smile.gif

Me too! Link in my signature below...and I'm always willing to help fellow Chevelle resto victims!

Awesome! Thanks so much guys! Having not done this before, I'm just sorta wondering where to start after pulling the engine and tranny. Taking the front panels off and the front assembly? What kind of equipment will in need in the shop to lift the body off of the frame after all the main frame bolts are out? These are the types of things I wish there were pictures of haha. Thanks for all the help guys!

send lots of roses to your wife. start now! it will come in handy i assure ya.

I would take as many photo's from different angles on as much of the car as possible. I wish I would have bought my digital camera a lot sooner and if it has an adjustment take the largest amount of resolution you can of the area so you can always zoom in some later and still see details.
Bag and tag all parts or sub assemblies together making notes to if one bolt is longer than another or if one had a washer and one didn't where that one went.
If restoring carefully remove any oil or grease to expose factory markings and document it with notes and pictures and maybe a tape ruler in the photo for scale.
Another ANAL thing I did as there were not any reproduced stickers out at the time was on my front spring tags I needed a way to document them so I did some work with my computer and in paintshop was able to have a record of it and if it was printed out it would look identical to the original. If later the original was lost or damaged worse I had something to try and make a new one off of. I did have to play around with the color of the printout compared to what I was seeing on my monitor.
One mistake I did was not keep the major parts together like all of the engine parts and all of the front suspension parts. I still bagged and tagged but sometimes I have to search some to find things that go together in groups.
Also when I had the time was to unbag the old original parts and then clean them or refinish them and then put them in a new tagged bag and tried to keep marking off of a master list what had been done so far to that point.
There are ton's of part that make up a car and anything that you can do to keep it more organized and make it easier to reassemle later will only give you less frustrations later.
Good luck on yours.
Jim

Wow, those are some great tips! I rememeber running into some trouble just by simply piecing an engine back together and not labeling a lot of things. I could only imagine running into that corner on a complete car. I'll be sure to label everything and to seperate everything into groups for front back sides, interior, engine etc. I'm thinking I'm going to go out and get that digital camera I've always wanted as well. What exactly did you use to label the parts? Most of the time they are greasy and you can really stick anything to them. Only thing I could think of would be to stick labels of some kind on the baggies for the bolts and maybe some kind of twisty tie label for other parts. Let me know, I'm curious. And thanks so much for all the help!! One question since I'm just getting started... on the front panels, is it just a series of bolts until they are free? And how do they lift out of there? Thanks everyone!!

I would start on the front end with the bumper and brackets, then the grille & fender extensions. Once you get those off you'll be able to see pretty clearly which bolts to tackle to remove the rest of the front end. Having an assembly manual nearby is always handy, in fact I would say it's required reading before taking on this type of project. If you don't already have the engine and trans out, I would wait until you get the front end off. Makes the job much easier if you only have to lift it up a few inches.

I have a good maintenence book for this chevelle, but I don't have a teardown for the chassis parts. Where could one obtain such a book?

Ground Up has a factory assembly manual here (http://www.ss396.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=36302&Category_Code=&Store_Code=396) . Any restoration parts supplier should have them as well, NPD, Year One, OPG, etc.

Awesome! I appreciate the reply! I'm ordering one right away! smile.gif

Earlier this year I bought a Sony digital camera that was a little larger than a pack of cigarettes and bought an extra memory card for it. I also bought a soft pack carrying case with an extra pair of batteries and a quick charger and total was about $275.00. Since I bought it I have taken well over 2,000 photo's and it works just fine. I think it was a 3.2 mega pixel and has a flash and I have been able to get pretty close to a part to capture the detail in the part. It can also record short movies but the audio is poor due to it's small microphone. I also used the camera to take pictures of the house and other items so that if needed I can show them to an insurnace company so the investment was good in my situation.

As far as bagging parts I pressure washed the engine and underneath on mine (being careful not to blow off anything that would be needed for documentation) to try and remove what dirt, grease, and crap was stuck to it after 25+ years and then used ziplock bags (one small sandwich sized and one larger) for the parts. I also used a black majic marker and wrote right on the bag but checked to make sure it didn't rub off with my fingers.
A also put in little post-it notes if needed inside the bag with the parts.
When I had some parts off that neede cleaning I got some Simple Green and took a 5 gallon bucket of warm water and put in some Simple Green to make a weak solution and then stuck the parts inside of it and later would pull them out to see how the cleaning was going and if it wasn't clean it got put back in the bucket. I also used an old tooth brush to get into some of the grain or details on some of the parts and once they were clean and dried off I got a clean baggie, relabeled it and sealed it up for later when I needed it to put back on the car.
I also had to use big trash bags for my door panels to keep them clean and put on labels in the twisty ties to what was inside (left, right, front, rear, cleaned, or uncleaned).
Jim

Jim, what camera did you get and where? That sounds like an outstanding deal!

Also, when you tossed the parts in the Simple Green, did you keep seperate buckets or soak seperate parts at a time? Cause that would take forever doing it that way if you're trying to keep them seperated. Just curious what your little system you had going was. Sounds like a great idea. Thanks!

The camera is (please wait while I get out a magnifying glass to see the lettering) a Sony Cyber-Shot model DSC-P32. Like I said it is small and I have used it a lot and even have taken it into salvage yards that do not allow photo's as it can be put in your back pocket and no-one's the wiser. I could have bought it off of the internet cheaper but working for a local retailer I wanted to support what was in town. Not only that but if I had questions I could talk to someone face to face with the camera in hand to figure out things on it.

I may have had 2-5 gallon buckets of Simple Green mixed up as I had limited space at the apartment I was renting before I bought a house 3 years ago but it seems to me I would have one for long term soaking like heater hoses, radiator hoses and such and the second bucket for more easily cleaned stuff.
I would let is soak overnight and the next night pull a part out and try scrubbing it with an old tooth brush or a slighly larger brush and if it cleaned up I held it under some running water to get it rinsed off. I then either took a towel to it to get the majority of the water off of it and let the rest of it air dry on top of the washer/dryer or took a hair blower to try and heat up the part to evaporate the moisture out of it more quickly.
I never kept a time frame on how long it took but
I'm not in a race to see how fast I can rebuild a car how I want to.
You will find out Simple Green or other cleaning products will not always clean a particular part. Sometimes I had to get out some Gumout spray to try and wash off some of the grease and oils or have a little steel bucket of reducer to soak a part in to get it clean.
I also had to make up solutions of muriatic acid and water or red devil lye and water to do certain things to a part. I used a big plastic storage tub when I was doing rust removal on some parts and after I cleaned out the same tub I used it with the lye to de-anodize aluminum parts.
Here is a link to the emergency brake mechanism I cleaned off first with soaking it in Simple Green and then soaking it in another solution of red devil lye and water. Once it was clean of oil and grease the lye and water took off the rust and then I immediately sprayed it to keep the rust from forming once again.

http://hometown.aol.com/krystaldesigns/pageA19.html


Jim

de-anodize? To remove rust or something or what do you mean? Thanks for all the help! I've been looking at some of those models of cameras and think I'm going to go with the 4MP with 3X optical zoom! Thanks for everything!

I'll kick in my .02 when ever I can. I know alot about what not to do. graemlins/clonk.gif

Originally posted by Professor_SS:
I'll kick in my .02 when ever I can. I know alot about what not to do. graemlins/clonk.gif Sounds like you have a lot to say! Would be great to get your .02 when you have the time! Thanks for the help all! :D

Originally posted by Malibu_man72:
de-anodize? To remove rust or something or what do you mean? Thanks for all the help! I've been looking at some of those models of cameras and think I'm going to go with the 4MP with 3X optical zoom! Thanks for everything! I made up my own mixture of Red Devil Lye and water to remove the anodizing on my aluminum parts so I had the bare aluminum to polish and maintain.
I also made up another mixture of muriatic acid and water to remove rust off of parts.
I have also casually looked at some other guys doing rust removal using some type of solution and a battery charger but I don't know if I want to try that quite yet.

When I bought mine I was not worried about 3X or more zoom, I just needed what I got. There are so many options out there to where it can be confusing. So far so good with mine.

Jim

Thanks Jim! I'll have to try that for some of my parts that need attention.

Professor SS: Ever going to come back and enlighten us with your 2 cents? That would be awesome! Thank you all!