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1966 SS - snail pace project

47K views 186 replies 34 participants last post by  66138 
#1 ·
Since Tony was brave enough to post about his project I thought that I would share mine. Its on the never never plan. I work on what I feel like and never get down on myself for not making any progress.

I'll start from the beginnning and post a few pics when I can.

I found it on eBay from a good guy in Boise Idaho. This is it in Boise. Also hit a little snow on the way home (white out) had to turn back and stay overnight.
 

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#30 ·
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#31 ·
Well some disappointing news. The floor I was counting on turns out to be crap. My parts car was in storage so I had not investigated the floor as I should have. The rest of the car was sooo nice. I guess it had a water leak and the rubber floor mats kept all the moisture in the underlay. Recipe for disaster, to say the least. Looking on the bright side, I have a floor section from a Buick that is pristine, save for a little area under the driver's foot. I now have to piece together two floor sections at the rear of the rear foot wells.

First picture is the bad floor. Second is the Buick floor.
 

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#35 ·
Great work Tom! :yes:


I guess it had a water leak and the rubber floor mats kept all the moisture in the underlay. Recipe for disaster, to say the least.
Had the same thing happen to my current '67 300 project. Factory rubber mat trapped some water under the passenger side & took it out. :mad: The driver side barely survived.
 
#32 ·
A little patch work on the Buick floor.

My welding has improved dramatically by the increasing of the heat. Interesting that turning up the heat has caused LESS blow through :confused: but that's what happened.

I know what you are thinking. "Tom, you idiot, why didn't you patch right to the edge of the pan instead of leave that little strip?"

If you remember I patched the gas pedal area with the same panel. Can't put the patch panel in two places at once. I had to put a little extra patch in the ribbon cable rut. Same old story, salt on the shoes does in another driver's side pan.

Last picture shows the otherside of the floor. I haven't welded that side yet. Penetration is much better.
 

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#33 ·
OK. finished the floor patch, both sides. Looks much better.

Now for fun stuff. I want to do some of the floor work while it is on sawhorses. Much easier to get at. First up is the Muncie hole and cover.

I set my old cut out template, that was made from an old 66 floor. I place it on the hump and paint it red. Then I mask the outer perimeter of the line shown from the paint. Then place the actual Muncie hump onto the tape and paint again. It showns good coverage. I then place the old floor piece over the whole works so I can check my work. Looks good.
 

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#34 ·
Now that I am confident on the location. I can cut out the hole. I cheat over just about 1/4 inch on top so that I can eliminate the entire auto hole.

The holes from the factory look like they are flame cut by hand with a template. Some are very rough. I will cut by hand to emulate this. Came out pretty good. I then cleaned all the surrounding metal so my welds will be better.

Then I place the Muncie hump on and line it up to my marks. I start at the top and fill in the spot weld holes. As I work my way around I clamp each section tightly. Fits really well. I grind it and sand it smooth. I can't duplicate the spot weld look so it will stay like this.
 

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#36 ·
Thanks Pete.

I got to work on the console brackets. It is fun installing parts I bought years ago knowing that I would need them. I don't like the reproduction brackets because they look wrong. So I found a set on eBay. the guy even sent the whole floor section. In my stash I also have the bucket seat brackets I will need later.

From my template I know the front position for the first console bracket. I weld it in. Next I install the brackets onto the console and fit the brackets. I had to bend them a little as I made them a little too straight when cleaning them up. I taped them in position, tacked, removed the console and welded them up.
 

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#37 ·
I have to remove the bucket seat brackets so I can install bucket seat brackets. :confused:

The 1966 Chevelle bucket seat brackets are not reproduced so I had to find some used parts. They don't come up very often and I ended up finding two sets. I will use one from each set as the mating pairs are not in that great condition.

First to remove the original brackets. They are welded and spot welded. It was tough since I am keeping the floor. They finally gave up and I welded over the parts I messed up a bit.

I primed the floor under the brackets and the backside of the brackets.

I am not ceaning up the floor or surface rust as all these exposed parts will be sandblasted at some future time. Probably when the weather warms up.
 

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#38 ·
Taking the brackets off the previous floor was a bear. They were welded pretty well around the perimeter. The other one had spot weld holes drilled out. This means that some factories welded and spot welded them on while some only perimeter welded. I am only going to weld.

They fit in a natural position. Once in position I checked the rear stud to the inboard bolt hole for the seat tracks. 14" is perfect. I then checked the front stud to where the small bracket goes; it is 13", perfect. It seems weird that the center to center is 14 and 13 inches respectively but it because of the seat tracks. The mount in the center at the front but at the rear they have two locations, 1/2 inch to either side of center. 1/2 “+ 1/2 " = 1 " difference.

I also used my carpenter’s square to check that the front studs were in line so I will get the maximum travel in the seats.

I painted a little black paint on it so I could see what It looked like. See if I missed anything. Also it is a little treat to see what it will look like in the future. The paint will all come off when sand blasted.

Turned out good. It was a lot of work.
 

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#40 ·
Test fit time.

I trimmed the edges of the floor and removed the inner rocker bits from the donor floor. I am going to try to force the rockers apart in the car to accept the new floor without cutting notches in the inner rocker tops.

I forgot to trim out the inner rocker tops from under the cross braces so I had to lift it in more than once, many times in fact. I fit it towards the rear about 8 inches, to give more flex, and pried the rockers apart with a long 2 x 4. Worked pretty well, the rockers give about 3/8 of an inch. Just enough room if you have one side hooked on and go in from the bottom. Yes, from the bottom, it just seemed to work out better that way. There was no chance of it going in from the top as I had planned.

One side, shown, has a very good gap to weld up. The other side, not shown, is slightly wider. I am still happy with that side too, I think it will weld up nicely.

So there it is. In. Temporarily of course, until I get the rear section ready I can't weld it down. I don't want to make fitting the rear seat and waterfall section too tricky.
 

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#41 ·
I have been working on the car. Just preparing parts from the parts car, so not too much progress on the actual SS. I thought I'd share the gas tank from the parts car since it is an example that is so original.

First is the anti squeek pads; one was out of alignment. I will clean and reuse these as they are perfect.

There were some grease pencil marks in yellow, pressure tests? Another stamp that is "16" in black; style?, QC?

Finally it shows that the bottom of the rear of the tank was painted black before installation. Pretty rough job too.
 

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#44 ·
I invested a lot of time in preparing parts off the parts car. I haven't posted much since taking apart a car is not that glamorous.

Somewhere along the line the dash panel was stepped on. This caused a crease that I could not knock back into alignment with a hammer and dolly. Since there were some small rust issues at the corners I removed the dash panel.

Removing the dash panel was a snap due to a tool I bought. I got the idea from sevt chevelle (Eric) in the body forum. It is a spot weld buster with an anvil. It is a pneumatic drill with pneumatic pressure, no pushing. I had 20 spot welds drilled out in 2 minutes. I love it. Kinda spendy at $350 but worth it if you have several hundred spot welds in your future. Like I do.
 

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#46 ·
and the other side. Then a test fit. I need to trim a little off the ends before welding in place. I ran out of time tonight to button it up.

Changing a dash in a 66 is not too hard as everything is pretty accessible.
 

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#47 ·
I have been busy. I dismantled the parts car and the floor is out and all the sheet metal has been separated. This was a lot of work.

I need to attach the middle floor to the rear section under the seat. This will take fitting from one side to the other and a cross floor weld.

Due to circumstances of original floor pieces and so that I have the least amount of cutting I will be installing the pieces in a particular order. For installation of the floor I will have to place the rear seat section in the car. Then place the middle section into the car. This is because I will pry the floor area open about 3/8 of an inch to slip the replacement floor in. I will then weld the two pieces together and then attach them to the car. Easy.

After removing the 4 door brackets from the rear floor I cut it to the seam I wanted. I then used the cut off to spray paint gold the seam onto the forward floor. I then placed the rear section on top and traced a black marker to indicate the cut line. I checked a couple times and then went for it.

After a few iterations for touch up, I am happy with the fit and it will now need to be sandblasted before installation.
 

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#50 ·
Very nice work... You gotta love it when somebody takes a perfectly good car and hacks it up like that...:confused:

I get paranoid just trimming small areas for speakers and upgrades... LOL
 
#52 ·
Thanks for the kind words fellas.

Did a test fit to make sure it went in like I imagined. I did, with a small hitch, there was a burr in the cross brace/floor socket. Once I figured that out and fixed it things went together as they should.
 

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#53 ·
Welded in the dash today. It went in easy. I welded the gutter up a little more than GM did. This should use a little less seam sealer. Blue sure looks good with the red. Maybe I should go with blue interior. :D
 

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#54 ·
Fixed the rear speaker hack job. Here is a couple pics. This probably took 16 hours to do because of the repairs to the patch pieces. I just could not find good parts to put in. Well the're good now.
 

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