The “2nd Best” ‘60 Chevy wagon build…

R,
Wagon turned out great. I'm the one that furnished the liner for the tailgate window. Also installed the interior in my 60 wagon and found, like you, that it wasn't as hard as I had feared.

Interestingly enough, I pulled my 49 Buick sedanette (basically the same as your 48 Cad) out of storage after 10 years, and am back on this build. Given the similarity between these two cars I will follow your Cad build with as much interest as I did your wagon build. I do have the 49 chasis done so if I can furnish any info on what worked for me please feel free to contact.

 

Strange, looks like we think alike as far as build projects...yep the Buick and Cad are near identical -matter of fact, the trunk in my Cadillac had been filled with twigs, leaves, etc. as a nest for pack rats when it was sitting in the Kansas trees...hence, I cut the trunk floor out of a '49 Buick and welded it into my Caddy - fit perfectly...!!!

Thanx for the (future) help on my chassis, I've got an early Nova/Camaro sub that I'll be using...haven't figured out what rear yet...prolly a Ford since they are so popular...any help would be appreciated.

For the life of me I could not remember from whom I got the channel liner -must be getting old...!!! Glad you chimed in on this thread...and I ended up with exactly 8 inches of the liner left...talk about cutting it close...!!!

Thanx for posting,

R-

 

I´ve just read all 16 pages , great build ! You´ve got a killer wagon!thanks for sharing

 

Great job, Roger and Dan! 19 months...........it takes me that long to plan a build. I would also appreciate a PM about the liner for the back of the wagon.....we've been wondering what to use in the back of the 67 Malibu wagon we're doing for the kids. That looks perfect.
Hope to see you guys on the oad again!
Bill

 

Love your build post. I know that it takes a lot of time to write up the story behind the
pictures. Its priceless to a lot of guys building their projects. Look forward to seeing
the wagon somewhere this summer.

 

where's the video....gotta have video

 

Roger, did you find any info on the sectioned Caddy that was going up for sale?

 

Apparently sold before that post even got on the HAMB...

R-

 

Thanx Baumi, should make a good cruiser...

Appreciate it Bill...and watch your PM box...

Thanx Mick, I doubt we'll take the wagon very far from home this summer Mick...we don't know how that large engine will do on fuel...besides we're not done driving our Cadillacs yet...!!! See you in a couple of months...

What video, Lar, what video...??? I'm old school Larry, ain't gotta clue how to place a video in this post...and what, you wanna see it driving..??? But thanx for the post...

R-

 

My Impala isn't getting the gas mileage that I wanted but it maybe the way the way that
I drive it... It may not be low enough, my Merc gets a lot better gas mileage. Plan on
taking it to the Round Up and I'm going to try to behave on the way down. I'm hoping to
get 18 MPG.

See you in a couple of months? You guys are coming back to the SK500? Very Kool! I
thought I saw a rumor that you were heading this way. I will send you a pm, I have a
kool reliability run planned on Friday this year and need your feedback.

Happy Trails, Mick

 

I need to get up to ColoRODo, if I can figure out a trip maybe I can shoot some video of the car


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Yeah, we're going to try again this year, barring any unforeseen snow storms...and I understand Kevin Anderson is also coming down from Indy. Was hoping you'd take us to Wooloroc (sp?) since we never made it out there the one year you had that on your event...but send me your scheduled thingie and I'd be happy to provide feedback...

Thanx,
R-

 

Are you going to make a new thread on the Cadillac, or will you continue this one? I just want to know so I can subscribe to it.

Oh and remember that radiator I bought from you? It is now all recored and looking great! Check my resto thread in a couple of days and I'll have posted a video about it.

 

A new thread...and I've been keeping up on your Caddy...was sad to hear you had to recore that rad...

R-

 

Yeah I was too, but it was probably for the best. I mean it would be awful if that new engine overheated, and we both know those old caddys with no rad shroud always ran a little hot. Hopefully I can retrofit an oldsmobile shroud to fit my caddy.

 

The absolute, we’'re done now, won’t happen again F-I-N-A-L UPDATE # 19 (unless we decide to keep the wagon and paint it this coming winter…!!!)

Okay…, now that that is out of the way, let’'s call this: “And so its new life begins…!!!”

Well, we've been driving the wagon for a couple of months now (last update was 2/21/2014) …took it to its first “cruise” on March 9, 2014, almost exactly 30 years after it was taken off the road (the license plate we found in the car months ago had expired in May, 1984) and its first cruise happily coincided with daylight savings time. …Yea,…SPRING is on its way…!!! Well, around here maybe…!!! In between our late snow storms and Spring-like days of 74-80 degrees and quickly dropping to 30 degrees and snow, …Ma Nature can be brutal in our ColoRODo Springs sometimes, but she can also be good to us. Fortunately, she'’s been decent this year, haven'’t gotten any real heavy branch-breaking snows lately and we’'re getting a real slow Spring.

Anyway, we’'ve gotten lots of good comments on the car so far, but there were still a few bugs to work ou...t…had to have a new vacuum modulator put in the tranny,…old one didn'’t work anymore - scared us cuz it wouldn'’t shift into third...…tranny guru/neighbor/buddy Fred Morgan put us at ease when he told us it wasn'’t serious. Put it up on his lift, put a new one in and fixed the leaking tranny pan …then had him remove the two rear coils and cut ‘'em, …dropped the car down some...…looks better sitting level now. …Look at pic #283 in this thread and see how high the rear sets, – almost above the wheel rim,…compare that to this photo below.


Looks better when lowered a bit… and I’'d like to go a bit lower but that'’ll come in the future.

When Fred was done sealing up the tranny pan, the car shifted better and didn'’t mark its spot in my garage (or anyone else’'s)…!!!

Now, let me tell you the 454” has got some power, …I can get second gear scratch with it (and I have huge 235 75 R15’s on the back)…!!! I suspect it'’s got a shift kit in it. After Fred removed it from his lift, I brought the car home and installed a battery shut off switch under the hood, added an aluminum catch bottle for the radiator overflow and put the polished wiper arms on it…, now the outside of the car looks complete. Not a whole lot left for us to do on the car …and haven'’t taken it on a long distance trip (around the city) yet to see how it handles… but we will soon enuff. We'’re getting lots of good comments and thumbs –up when we do local cruises….

We finally took the car to front end shop for alignment… and believe it or not, it was almost perfectly aligned the way we had bolted everything back in,…all the shop did was adjust it slightly and tighten everything up…...sure drives nice now, especially now that the rear end isn’'t sky high. I’'d like to drop the whole car a bit more but that entails a lot of work… so we’ll leave it be for now.

Couple of weeks ago, I was still at a dilemma of cutting the doors to put in a couple of speakers for the stereo until the tech at Best Buy told me about Custom Autosound’'s dash speaker. I got on their website and ordered a “dual” speaker for the dash …to put it in the original stock AM speaker hole in the middle of the dash… I was skeptical of its sound…figured it wouldn'’t sound like a pair of speakers in the conventional place (each of the doors), …boy was I wrong…!!! The speaker cost $45.00 but well worth it… and the damned thing was even chromed…...that alone had to add to its cost…!!! It sure puts out a true stereo sound and I didn'’t have to cut the doors for the speakers...… easy solution for you guys that have a GM car and an original AM speaker in the middle of the dash and want to put in a stereo CD player…!!!


Nice little package... …that Chinese chrome adds at least 20 MPH to the car, or another 3 miles per gallon…!!!

With the front speaker taken care of it was time to figure out the rears…well, same problem - I didn'’t want to cut holes in the rear panel supports (behind the upholstery), so I decided to build a couple of boxes to put a pair of round speakers in the corners. Dan and I had already run speaker wire to the rear before we put down the jute padding and carpet so all we had to do was hook up the speakers,…uh-huh…, yup…!!! Finding the place to put them was the challenge …as you can see, I solved that little problem altho it took me a couple of days to build the boxes and fit them into the corners. Had to fit the boxes so that the spare tire well cover would open without hitting them,… got ‘'er done…!!!

The speakers can handle 140 watts and the stereo effect is amazing…and just last week we ordered one of those hidden antenna thingies for the car… and the plan is to hide it in the headliner (we didn'’t, just hung it under the dash and it works great.). Sometimes Dan likes to listen to the radio in other towns when he drives so now he can….

While I was building boxes, I figured I would upholster them to match the rear panels, which I had just upholstered, think they turned out OK…



In the meantime, we ordered all the door rubber, …that set us back $220.00 for all the rubber we needed… and proceeded to spend the better part of a day getting it clipped and glued on, …including the “J” rubber on the front side of the door, …what a pain that was. I think you’re supposed to do that BEFORE you put the door on …but we didn'’t take the doors off so had to work around it…!!!


Doesn'’t look like much for over 200 bucks, eh…??? FWIW, two door rubber is different than four door rubber…, four door rubber will work but the original holes for the clips is off… you'’ll have to drill new holes to make four door rubber work…!!!

At the end of March, we took the car up to the glass guy and had him cut new vent windows for us…, the old ones were bubbled at the edges and needed them replaced before we could get the rest of the windows tinted… when we picked up the car, we immediately drove it over to the tint guy,…now that the tint is done, it looks good… and it’s supposed to cut ultra-violet by 53%...OK great…!!! Looks good with dark windows…

In the meantime we put on some miles, drove it over to the upholstery guy so he could take a look at our door panels (to see how I designed the upholstery on them) and the rear seat so he could match the front and help us with the headliner.


Here’s a shot of the rear seat, but notice no door panels yet….

Had a hell of a time putting the rear seat back in, …I couldn'’t remember how the hinges went on the short piece that falls into place when the seat is laid down (I mean, it’s ONLY been 19 months since I took them apart…!!!) …but before that I took the extra carpet we got when we ordered the carpet kit and proceeded to fit that and glue it in place. Glad I ordered that becuz when the seat is laid down, some of the floor can be seen alongside the seat hinges/rear door panels and it didn'’t look very good in bare metal. I finally got the hinge figured out, got it all in place and working and then had to take it back out to paint the bottom of it and glue on some vinyl cuz it looked bad when the seat was up…nothing like doing something twice or three times…!!!

At the last weekend end of April, just before we were to leave for the SK500, we took the car to our upholsterer for him to sew up our door panels and install the windlacing and headliner…and, as it is, we didn'’t get to go to the SK500 (for the second year in a row) due to a family emergency and the weather around here (and no, we didn'’t plan on driving the wagon to Dewey), we would have driven our Cadillacs - we don’t quite know that much about the wagon …yet… to take it on a 13 hour one way trip.

Anyway, here’s a quik tutorial on how our upholsterer does door panels:


Glues Landau foam down on the plastic panel board I made and trims it out for the fabric section and the carpet striker.


Then trims out the fabric after laying out the pleats with chalk. Once trimmed out he sews the pleats.


Then glues the pleated fabric to foam, in this case he doubled the thickness of the foam so it would match the depth of the Landau foam already on the panel. Then he glues that to a backer board. While that’'s drying, he sews up the brown welting that will trim the area.


After the glue dries, he'’ll take the welting and staple it to the fabric covered backer board. Once that’'s done, he positions the pleated fabric piece to the panel and glues the hell out of the backside of it…and then he’ll staple the back side so it doesn'’t come loose. In this shot you can see the carpet striker already in place with a small piece of chrome dividing it…we did this simply because the vinyl is so light that when you exit the car, most times your foot will hit the vinyl at that exact spot as you swing your leg out and leave a scuffmark on the vinyl…the carpet striker prevents that.


Once everything is in place, we’'ll snap the door panel in place, adjust it a bit via the hidden clips, the door molding trim, the handles and armrest and viola, the door panels are done…. FWIW, it took five hours to do the driver’s side door panel (the first one we did) …basically we had to figure out HOW to do the panel (that I could see in my head…!!!) The other three door panels were put together in under two hours each. It’s no wonder ‘upholstery’ is not cheap…,it'’s all in the prep…!!!

After we decided we weren’'t going to make the SK500, we did more work on the car… we decided to change the color of the five-spokes and polish the rim.

On that last April weekend, we enjoyed lots of rain and snow here so we stayed in the garage and worked on the 5-spokes. We changed them from the tan color they were to the more acceptable gray color. I sanded the outside rim with 800 grit wet and dry and then finished with 1500 wet and dry…then took one of Foose'’s/Mother’'s “power balls” (chucked it in a drill- put on some “Blue Magic”) and polished the rim…...they came out really shiny. I was amazed that little sponge rubber ball actually worked...!!! I figured it’'d tear up real quick …but it didn’'t.



Now I have a dilemma, …I picked up a set of near-new wide whitewalls from a friend, picked up a set of 15” steel wheels and painted them brown (to match the brown welting in the seats -that's why...!!!) …so the question is which would you run: the wide whites/hubcaps or the 5-spokes…??? Guess I can always put the car up for sale with the buyer’'s choice of wheels/tires.



Out on the highway, we determined the rear-end is a 3:70, …a bit much on the highway but I have a 3:55 laying in my shed that I think I'’ll put in….I had a 3:08 3rd member but ended up selling it about six-eight months ago, …should have kept it but I think ideally a 3:36 would be the best. Guess I’ll have to go to my favorite junk yard and pick one up.

Every where we go in the car we get asked “What color are you going to paint it…?? I finally got tired of explaining “we” (Dan and I) weren’'t going to paint it - it was going to stay like that all summer and we'’d let the next owner paint it, …well, to sorta solve that problem when we are at a cruise or rod run, I simply marked up both sides of the car…


Now there’'s no question what colors we have in mind for the car…, we’'ll wait and see if the car goes away OR we eventually paint it…!!! And that ain’'t striping tape ya see there, it’s quarter inch masking tape.

The only thing left to get in is the headliner… and that'’ll happen sometime this week (or next). …Dan and I are getting a tutorial in installing it, …our upholsterer has trouble lifting his arms above his head and didn'’t really want to install it but we talked him into ‘supervising,’ so Dan and I get to string the ready-made headliner up and he'’ll stretch and staple it once we get it into place… and that should be a real good time...…but I don’'t think we shoot any pix of that. Dan and I might look a little strange sitting in the wagon with the headliner wrapped around our heads and our arms above our heads…

Anyway, all the hard stuff is done on this car…, the “for sale” signs are now in the quarter windows and it’'s now time to enjoy it for the summer….

Layta,

R-

 

sweet

 

I have a question. I have a 61 Chevy and I need the "fuzzies" that go into the upper and lower channels for my rear window in the tailgate to roll up into. do you have a source on them?

 

Myself I'd run the 5 spokes, but I'd flake the shit out of the roof too and add bellflowers to it as well.

 

Looking great! Love the interior. I thought the tan spokes looked good on the wheels, but seeing what you've done already, I'm sure the new color will look good with what you do.

 

Sorry enlow, I do not...perhaps someone reading this will reply...

Thanx,

R-

 

I felt compelled to say that reading your build threads are an absolute joy. Thanks so much for the thread!

 

Great build, I can't help but want to see the white walls on there now.

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Enloe, I recall reading Cody Walls' '59 chev wagon build thread where a couple of the guys mention using the "female" side of 2" wide self-adhesive Velcro strips in the channels. I have the same problem with an early falcon wagon as I've bought the reproduction channel rubber but it fails every time.

 

Thanks for the update Roger!! Looks like a fun driver for you guys. Do you flip a coin to see who drives it?????

Nice job on the design of the door panels. They turned out great!

I think the 5 spoke wheels give it a cool American Graffiti look, I like steelies too but I have a real soft spot for the torque thrusts.

Have fun!!!

Bill

 

thanks for all the great "how to" and general tips on the build. i would like to see the same treatmet on the headliner if you could swing it. Details on the wind-lace and headliner on are not to common and for wagons are really scarce.
if not, thanks any ways for a this build
Thanks

 

See #279 on page 14 of my build for some pictures and a link.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=628480&page=14

 

LOL 1959Nomad...looks like I'm not done updating this thread after all...I'll see what I can do for a tutorial on installing a headliner...!!!

Thanx for the comment...

R-

 

Love it

 

thanks, my headliner arrived yesterday but I'm not sure when i will start on it. plan is to pull staples and replace tsck strips tomorrow then clean up the bows.