The “2nd Best” ‘60 Chevy wagon build…

Thanks for the heads up, I'm subscribing

 

You're gonna keep the pink wheels, right?

 

Hitchin' a ride! I really enjoyed the Cadillac build and being a '60 Chevy nut myself I'm looking forward to your creative problem solving approaches.

Of course, I JUST SOLD my '60 Bel Air two door post a few days ago. :'(

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Pink...??? Awww belair you must be color blind...those wheels are really red...and of course, the rest of the car will be painted flat black in due time, including the side windows (faux sedan delivery)...gotta keep with the trends ya know...!!!

R-

PS-NOT...!!!

 

subscribed- loved the caddy build and look forward to this one. Jim

 

There was also a Luby Chevrolet in the Queens NY area back in the day.

 

too cool.

 

I love 2Dr wagons! Nice son you have. Let the fun begin!

 

Cool wagon guys! Subscribed. I hope your Son gets time to pitch in on the effort. I know that always make my projects more fun.
I built a '59 wagon a couple years ago and got to know a guy near me who has "TONS" of parts for 59/60 Chevys. Let me know if you need contact info.
We're "just over the mountain" from you in southern Idaho.

 

Hey Jay,

Did you ever find a publisher for your book...or are you handling it all yourself...???

I got to read Jay's book before it was finished...and if you've got youngsters of reading age, get 'em this book...and if you're a grandparent, get your grandkids this book, they'll love it...

Thanx for posting Jay, and fan attic, I may be contacting you...and thanx to the rest of you for following along...!!!


FWIW, this is what my garage looks like today at 9 AM...have to get the snow blower out to find the path...I've still got work to do on the '60...!!! UPDATE: It's been snowing here since 7PM last nite... I now have 12" of snow in front of the garage and on my yard and it's not supposed to quit til 6 or 7 tonite...that should add another 4-6 inches...watch out Midwest...!!!

R-

 

Thanks for the kind words Roger!

I have been handling the publishing duties, and have sold 100 so far. I have a fresh batch of 100 waiting for the jackets to bring to the Lonestar Roundup.

That snow is headed this way too.

 

Brrrr . . .

 

I mowed my lawn yesterday....

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Thankfully, that went south of your old stompin' grounds here in Fremont NE. You know? You mentioned you didn't know what Dan did during the week. Maybe you call and wake him from his nap and he comes over and clears your driveway, HA!

But seriously, tell him Hi from The Classics Car Club, and best of luck to you guys on this build. Gonna be weird seeing you build something that isn't a Kustom. Guess you could keep the stock grill, door handles, etc... and paint it Watson-style. That's still a kustom, right?

Or, as you said, it will be for sale someday. Maybe resell red? Heh heheh. I know you too well for that to happen. Don't need to open that can of worms here. Keep us posted if there are parts on your "need" list.

Later, Bill

 

Hey Bill, thanx for the post...was out in the garage all day yesterday (Dan got here at noon...!!!), after I cleaned the driveway of 13" of snow...sun came out and melted it dry.

We got a lot done on the '60...finished spraying the Lizardskin under the rear of the car and on the interior floors-should be heat resistant now..and a bit more quiet. Then we pulled the rear brake drums off and found the brakes to be worn down to the shoe's nubs...so we'll have the drums turned, clean it all up, paint it and replace all of it including the wheel cylinders and lines...

As for stock grille, door handles, etc.- Yes. It will remain stock...the only thing that won't be stock is the engine/tranny...and the paint...but no resale red. I've got an idea of how to two-tone it....!!!

We finally found a split bench front seat for it...cost us a buck and half...couldn't get him to take less...he said "it's a good thing you're not buying a '57 Chevy split seat-they go for seven bills...and up." Unreal...and I keep thinking how many of those I trashed years ago when I was playing with '57 Chevys.

The next build will definitely be "kustom"...I sure want to get my '48 Cadillac Sedanet in the garage...but got to get this wagon out of the way first...

R-

 

Roger,
Look forward to following the Wagon Build and what you do with it. Might be Cruisin' News material too? (if you don't mind). Great to see "someone your age" (LOL/inside joke) continuing to do builds.

Miss being the owner of a "long roof" myself, but that's been a lifetime ago now!! This was the difference between 1976 and 1980 "when I was younger"!!

Congrats on the honors recently bestowed on the Caddy.
Keeponcruisin'

 

Long overdue for the street…

Mid September, 2012, the car was towed to my place, pushed into my garage and parked in my ‘build spot,” next to my long work-space counters…

Oh, this’ll be the third update to the build…


In my garage…now the fun begins…

The first thing I wanted to do was pull the front clip…but I’d had some friends over to help push the wagon into its spot (where it'll reside for the next few months) so all of us spent a few hours looking the car over and BS’ing about it…we speculated that it had been off the streets for a very long time. The logo on the door gave a hint that it was someone’s delivery vehicle and…


Kinda looks like a Texaco logo…or a Gulf logo, eh…???

…the banged up rear cargo area showed it had taken a lot of abuse in its last few years on the street and the white specks of paint all over convinced us perhaps it was used as a painter’s’ work horse…altho there aren’t any dents on the roof from ladders banging around…!!!

We all agreed it would be a good build, once it was done and it certainly was time to put the ol’ girl back on the streets where she belonged.


Here’s what it looked like immediately after we parked it in my garage…!!!

Strangely enuff, when we pulled the rear seat to clean under out, we found a license plate…it was a ColoRODo 1983 plate…could it have been off the street since 1983-‘84…???

And strangely enuff even more…the Pontiac wagon we’d just sold had been sitting in a garage since 1983…must be kharma, eh…???


Here’s me holding the 1983 plate…

That afternoon Dan and I unloaded the interior and looked at how bad the floors were –not much I can do about that yet, so I grabbed a wrench and proceeded to the front clip…I wanted that thing out of the way so I could see how bad the front suspension was, if it was. It didn’t look bad from over the top of fenders, but I wanted a closer inspection…it took me about half an hour to unbolt everything holding the fenders/clip on…after that it was simply heaving it up over the front tires…


Got that out of the way…now to check out the suspension and outline a plan of attack.

The first thing I noticed was the steering box was loose…it wasn’t connected to the tie rods at all and they were held up with wire…Dan and I studied it a bit then realized that it wasn’t even the original steering box…someone, some time had tried to put on a late model power steering box…and gave up. There was no way the later model box would bolt to the frame…and certainly no way for the pitman arm to match up to that box…besides it was bolted to the frame with only one bolt…I took a wrench, unbolted it and tossed it in the trash…now where am I gonna find a stock steering box…??? This may not be such an easy build after all…!!!

After studying it for a while, I decided the first ‘mechanical’ thing I needed to do was tear off the A-Arms, have them sandblasted, get ‘em all rebuilt with new bushings, new ball joints, etc. and paint them. Dan volunteered to clean the frame of the 40-50 year old accumulation of dirt, grease, mud and whatever else stuck to the frame when the A-arms came off. Once that was out of the way, the plan was to wire brush all of it all the way back to the X in the frame, sand most of it, pre-clean it and then we’d epoxy everything and paint it Chassis Black…that’d certainly make it look new again, but that would require some cash outlay…and we weren’t ready for that just then anyway. We’d chatted about pulling the body off the frame, but I didn’t want to go to that much trouble…the frame was solid (remember, this is a ColoRODo car all its life and salt is not used on our roads…!!!) and if we cleaned it all good it’d be fine. Since we had to redo the floors, we could do the top of the frame at that time if it needed cleaning…and the bottoms of the floors would be cleaned by way of having the new portion (half of it anyway) out of the car already…

In the meantime, I made up a list of everything I needed to rebuild the front suspension from Eckler’s catalog or Classic Industries catalog, including some 2” shorter coil springs…figured if I was going to eventually sell this car, it had better be done correctly…and once we put the suspension back together, we’d start on the brakes…have the drums turned, all new shoes, all new brake cylinders/hoses and all new lines all the way around…don’t want to take a chance that the lines are rusty inside since it’d been sitting so long. We’d also update the master cylinder with a dual setup. Yeah, I know I could’ve gone the way of disc brakes…but I’m not convinced discs are any better than the factory drums…I mean, drums/shoes have been on cars since almost forever…and the front shoes on this wagon are 2 ¾” wide…widest I’ve ever seen for a Chevy drum. Besides, I don’t drive like a bat-outta-hell anyway and I figure the next owner can do the disc brake thing…give ‘em something to do to make the car his…!!!

We kinda put that aside for the time being since the floors were so bad…figured we needed to scope that out next…IF we couldn’t fix the floor there was no sense continuing. I took a screwdriver and proceeded to poke holes in the floor…all over. Looks like all of it will need replacing, it’s mighty thin. Dan and I speculated that since the driver’s window mechanism was broke and it was down all the time, the many winters since 1985 (or so) the wagon had been sitting took their toll on the floors…snow (and/or sleet/rain/hail) coming in, melted when it warms, allowing water to set…eating up metal since all the factory rubber mat was long gone. No matter now…what’s done is done.

Time to check the catalogs…see what’s available. Well, replacement metal is available…but at a hefty cost of $200-275 total for two passenger side “pans” needed. We’ll have to go at this slowly…besides, we already had one really good side (the driver’s side we got at the swap meet was very solid.)


What happens when I get a trusty plasma cutter in my hands…!!! This is the passenger’s side…and it wasn’t the worst of it…you can see how the driver’s side is completely missing…and the driver’s front is just as bad.

I’m usually the one that does the ‘thinking ahead’ on these projects, but Dan chimed in after we got done perusing the catalogs. “Ya know, last time Scott and I were at the junkyard, I remember seeing a couple of 60’s in there. Think the floors in any of them would be good…???”

“Maybe,” I replied, “salt wasn’t used in ColoRODo way back when. Let’s go check it out.”

We had to wait a few weeks for the weather to warm up a bit and in late October, we jumped in Dan’s truck and took a drive…it wasn’t just a drive cuz we’d loaded up the toolbox, a couple of Sawzall’s, some fresh batteries and about two dozen metal chewing saw blades. If there was a’60 down there, with a good floor pan…we were going to own it…and anything less than $275 for the floor would be money well spent. We drove around the yard, scoping out several ’60 Chevys he had…in most of them the floors were already gone – not missing, just ate up – rusted…put-your-finger-thru-it-gone. I was about to give up when we spotted what was left of a four door hardtop sitting away from the rest of the cars…the front clip was gone and most of the rear fins were missing but the trunk floor - what was left of it, was solid…no rust. “Maybe this is a good one,’ I said. “Even the rockers look solid…hopefully the floor is good, too.” We checked it out…the ‘indoor/outdoor carpet’ covering the floor was blue (???)…the seats were gone but several well used pillows were inside, including a very dirty blanket amidst all the other detritus…looked like someone was using this car as the ‘love shack’ for a while. It took us a few minutes to pull all the trash out of the car and to cut the ‘carpet’ out to see what was under it…lo and behold, the floor was solid…no rust we could see on the passenger’s side, even the matte that Chevy put on the floors from the factory was in good shape.

“Wow,” Dan said, “it is nice.” “Okay,” I said, “let’s go see if the yard owner will let us cut this out and how much this is going to cost us.” The yard owner looked it over and said “$100.00, but you cut it out.” Cool, better price than I figured. “No prob, we came prepared.” Sad to say, it took us the rest of the afternoon before we ran out of batteries and…before we got it done…got about three-quarters thru it and didn’t bring a charger…and only had two blades left…cutting out a floor is not easy…!!! “We’ll be back tomorrow…with more batteries.”


Here I am, beginning the cuts to remove the entire floor.

We arrived early and were done by 2 PM, loaded it in the back of the truck and went to pay the man. He asked how much he’d told us and after he studied it a while, he said, “Looks like there’s a bit of rust under the foot feed, prolly won’t be able to use that part, you’ll have to cut that out and weld more metal in…how about $50.00 for the whole thing…???” I couldn’t get my cash out fast enuff…didn’t want him changing his mind. Did I just get lucky…??? I just saved 225 bucks - that is, IF you don’t count my labor and Dan’s…plus the gas for his truck back and forth.

Once I had paid him, I asked about the steering box on the four door ’60 I spied…didn’t think I’d find one of those…he asked if it moved/turned and I said yes cuz I’d pulled the cap and checked the grease in it and it still looked clean. “$45.00,” he replied…”and you pull it.” “Deal,” I said, “we’ll come back down next week cuz there’s a few more things we may need off that sixty.”

That next week turned into about a month…or so…we were busy tearing the wagon apart…

Well, that’s it for this update…stay tuned…

R-

 

Can't count the labor! That's free!

 

Subscribed!! This is exciting to see. I had a 1960 Brookwood 2dr Wagon, black with a white roof, for my 2nd car at age 13! The Brookwood had a bad tranny and my dad let me buy cheap cars to work on instead of plastic models. I loved that car and yours reminds me a lot of it.

 

Looking good Roger! Gives me a reason to check in more often.

 

back end of the inside of the wagon looks a lot like my 60 invicta, yours is a 6 pasenger???

 

Ah! the good old days when I went to the junk yard with buddy George. ,,,We would go on our lunch hour, and eat a sandwich or skip it. The big buy one day was= George bought 5 VW bugs. I think the parts broker was waiting for him. They all were wrecked, but George would fix them at night in his garage at home. He sold them to finance a motor coach he was building.

 

I doubt this will help you, but it may help someone else and felt it was worth posting here. I had a '62 Buick Invicta 6 passenger wagon that I wanted to convert IN THE WORST WAY to a 9 passenger. I searched for 2 years for a 3rd row, rear facing seat and finally found one in Idaho.

The price was a little steep but the guy was really helpful. Just as we were closing the deal he asked me if MY wagon was a 6 or 9 passenger. "Six," I said.

The guy was very knowledgeable and explained to me that there was a major difference in the floor pans between the two, and the seat wouldn't work with mine. He said that all GM wagons '59-64 were very similar, and the differences were small enough that you could cross breed with small workable/solvable problems. From just behind the driver's seat all the way back to the roll pan is different. He didn't have a floor pan to sell me, and his honesty cost him a sale.

Hope you don't mind me dropping this info here, hopefully someone can use it.


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Here ya go fellow Texan, had this in my stash of draggin' waggins'. Both these are more doors, but there's a 2 door in my historical documents zomeplace......

 

Six passenger, Eugene...'small' wagon.

Thanx Zeke, for checking in...

Daddio, thanx for that bit of info...when I pulled the upper floor out of the '60 to straighten and repaint it, I could tell right away that there was a great difference between a six passenger and a nine passenger wagon...the factory floor pan just didn't have the room at the back for a rear facing seat.

Thanx everyone for your comments...

R-

 

Oh, come on. These "to be continued..." endings are driving me nuts.

I'll keep an eye out for the next update.

 

I wish I lived closer, I could use a rear quarter. If the doors were the same size, I would
use the doors off of the flat top and make your wagon into a hard top. Hhhhummm? Thanks
for keeping us updated.

 

With a HT windshield ala Nads car, you could have a nice chop too

 

Mr. Jetter , I did a copying of 2 pics of your Caddy. something went wrong they morphed, so Caddy sectioned and top chop. but

 

WOW...problem with sectioning and chopping the Cad is I couldn't get into it...!!! It would be quite uncomfortable on a long trip...but...

Thanx, Bill and thanx for the note on my website...appreciate it...one of these days you're going to have to explain your user handle to me...I cannot figure it out...!!!

R-