Hi,
I am a long time viewer first time forum poster. I am currently working on a 70 Chevelle Malibu, restoring it to show, hopefully, at the Muscle Car Nationals here in Chicago and the World of Wheels car shows. I bought the car in 1986, going nuts for it the second I saw it, even though better judgment would have told me to look before you leap! Buying a car that spent its life in Chicago means there is going to be rust... and rust there was!
I drive the car on and off till about 1992 when it had a few too many breakdowns and problems. I had rebuilt the engine to a killer 11.25 : 1 compression high lift cam race head beast, but that made it not so fun on the street. Hay I was young and crazy, so that what I did. I got married a couple years ago and shortly afterwords the wife said, you know if a baby happens your going to have to sell the car. Well neither one of us wants kids but accidents do happen, so I figured I better poop or get off the pot and get going on the Chevelle! That year I started disassembling the Chevelle in preparation for taking it to Hot Rod Auto Body in Schiller Park IL to get the rust and body work situation done. I had the car dipped at Redi Strip, they use a multipart chemical strip, where the car is submerged in a chemical bath to remove all rust, paint Bondo dirt and anything else that is not pure solid steel, it even eats aluminum. The car came back shiny silver.. it was cool!
I planned to spent about 30 - 40k on it and that's it! Well I am way over that! The car is still in the body shop almost 2 years later, because it needed floors, doors quarters, fenders, frame and suspension etc.. I thought I would just buy the quarters for it online, have them installed and get it painted... Again... nope! The quarters, repops made in Taiwan did not fit worth a darn and the time and expense made me wish I bought original GM pieces no matter how much they cost!
My latest YouTube video shows a little of my engine rebuild and first firing of my small block Chevy, amazingly enough it started on the first fire. The engine wsa only driven a hundred miles or so then parked for 18 years, but I decided to take it apart again and put a more street-able cam in it and replace the crank and bearings, since I remember nicking the crank putting it in but used it anyway. I broke the cam in for 20 minutes at 2000 RPM on a little engine stand I rigged up to work, with gauges and a throttle control.
Anyway, the videos of my long and expensive restoration are on YouTube, so if you go to
www.youtube.com/dukenukem65 you will see the vids that are titled "My Chevelle", or see my MySpace page at
www.myspace.com/duk3nuk3m I met Kevin at the Musclecar Nationals November 20th and he encouraged me to post some of my car info, so here it is.. Thanks for listening and I hope you check out my videos..
dukenukem@sbcglobal.net
