December 22, 2024

1971 Chevelle Convertible Full Restoration

Here we have another beautiful muscle car,  Our friend Dennis’s 1971 Chevelle Convertible. Dennis is the long time owner of this classic, and it has seen many changes over the years, its a big part of his family, and it even influenced his Sons to follow dads steps by buying chevelles themselves.  The car was in pretty sad shape when it came in, it suffered from extensive rust in the Quarter panels, wheel houses, and floors, but surely was nothing we couldnt handle. We started by stripping the car down of all bumpers, trim, glass, and interior, then begain working on the body of the car from the front to the back working one panel to prefection at a time.  Stripping the front fenders and doors, we found a few rust spots that needed attention, some cutting and welding and we were back on track. With the front end metal work done, we dove inside the car, replacing the floor pans with fresh metal, then we moved our way into the trunk for the same treatment with a brand new trunk floor.  With a sound footing in the car, we could begin on the rear quarters, We started by removing them and begain metal work on the wheel houses, They dont make new wheel houses for a Convertible car, so we had to modify coupe parts to work with our convertible. Once that was set, we set them in place and begin fitting our new quarters. After a ton of cutting, welding, fitting, and testing, we finally got all the metal work done, and had our panels and gaps lined up perfectly, and it was time to break out the body filler to straighten out any imprefections. With all the body work done, and our panels fitting beautifully, it was time to prime the whole car with high build primer, and block sand it down for that arrow straight finish we desire, We did this process 3 times to get our old muscle car looking better then it did in 1971. After all that hard work, we wet sanded the whole car down and layd our new grey paint on with the classic black stripes.

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