Leaderboard

I purchased an A/C kit from Classic Auto Air but I wasn't happy with the appearance of the HVAC control unit faceplate; it looked too modern. I wanted something that was more era-appropriate for my 1970 so I made some changes. First, I measured the faceplate and control slots from all directions. I then made a template in Adobe Illustrator and created the artwork that would go over top of the original CAA faceplate. I had them professionally printed and I cut the slots using an Exacto knife and straight edge. Next, I asked a buddy of mine who has a laser cutting machine to use those measurements to cut a piece of thin acrylic plastic to go over top of the new faceplate artwork. I secured it with a very thin strip of tape that will be hidden behind the dash trim when installed. I didn't like/want the black knobs that came with the CAA unit, so I bought new (reproduction) control knobs and drilled them for set screws. I pieced it all together and viola! Something that's much more appropriate for 1970. I don't think a casual observer will even notice. Attached are images of the original control unit/faceplate, the CAA unit before mods, the new artwork and clear faceplate cover and all pieced together.

Mark, just stop counting!!! lol

Don’t knock it till you try it.

I already did the above mentioned "Hella 'Conversion Plus' Halogen lamps" 🤣 Don't hold your breath on this one but I did make a mental note for the future

Mark, I have never seen a 3-speed manual floor shift nor seen documentation that they were ever produced. rob

Good for you! I think first gen Montes look partially naked without bumper guards. I have managed to find and install three pairs (two rear; one front) on my two Montes. One rear pair was NOS in the original box but those don't show up very often. I got another complete set from a member here that was pretty rough but I planned to completely refurbish them with rechroming and new rubber strips anyway. I stripped the old rubber and attachment bolts off all four pieces and sent them to Tri-City Plating in Elizabethton, TN for rechroming. After they returned them, I cleaned and painted the insides with Bumper Chrome spray paint, installed new rubber strips from the Parts Place and installed them on my '70. It cost $75 apiece for the replating and around $40 a set for the new rubber strips but those prices have probably gone up by now. I have some detailed installation photos for both front and rear guards, if you are interested. Good luck.

Agreed but these are 360 each and no tracks. And need everything a restoration would need. Plus you have to find all the parts for headrests. So you kinda need a donor set anyway.

Steve glad to hear the good news!!! Thank Goodness you follow up!!! Mark Glad your here to direct us!!! Good Luck to you Ron, as i see you are next!!! My wife and I were scheduled for our yearly's this Sat but The Doc said because she wasn't feeling up to par this week they rescheduled 2 weeks down the road.

She runs! IMG_2239.mov

It really is a night/day difference for about 12 minutes work and the roughly $40 cost of the LEDs. I don't tend to drive much at night anyways now, but it's better to have it & not need it...

Frank i am sure you already asked Steve D? Spring Carlisle is just around the corner, are you in a rush?

I somehow knew Joe would find it, thank you Joe

The problem I'm running into is finding reasonably priced used seats that I can rebuild for less then the price of building them new. I've confirmed that all the parts are available if I have to go new.

https://www.firstgenmc.com/forums/index.php?/resources/productionnumbers/

Great, another upgrade added to the list 🙃🤣

Ok guys and gals I am making it official. I will be attending this meet woo hoo! I'll be sending the info to Rob soon.

Here's something you don't see every day

When I was a Boy Scout one of the leaders had a new Oldsmobile Super 88 two door ht. I rode with him on a ski trip to Mt. Hood. I believe the car had a 394 cu. in. V8 with about 315 hp. I was very impressed with that car.

Here's an update on the Monte LED conversion that was mentioned in another thread. Initially, when I built the car, I installed Hella 'Conversion Plus' Halogen lamps. These use a 9003/HB2 bulb insert into the light housing. These are also the US/DOT approved lights, vs. the 'ECE' (European) spec lamps offered as well. A call to Hella at the time said use the DOT ones. (Amazon may not have stocked the ECE ones, or I probably would have got both types to compare). While a step up from the regular lamps they replaced, they simply can't compare to LED lights. I played around a couple weeks ago with the lights on my Western Snow Plow frame. Bought a bunch of different brands from Amazon (offshore-real cheap, fair amount of poor reviews for longevity; Sylvania-not cheap at all; and Philips-reasonably in the middle). After a lot of swapping I determined the Philips were the best. Ended up changing the Low, High, and Fog lamps as well, still trying a few different brands, ended up with Philips. Decided to see if they offer a LED replacement for the Monte, which they did (9003USLED) This time I never bothered to try anything else. After installing one side, I took a quick measurement with a light meter. The comparison on the low beam was 28,000 Lux vs. 38,000 lux. A pretty substantial gain. At that point I decided to go ahead and install them permanently. A little Trim Black' paint on the heat sink will hide them a little better, but since it's a 'Safety' modification, it shouldn't count against me . The Z/28 is the next one to convert, already have the bulbs in stock. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/hla-002395301 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTFGJXP5?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details Low Beam: High Beam:

Hey Tom, Are you using a "W" block or Mark 4 block ? Rumour is that the Mark 4 uses a different pump, whereas the "W" uses the same one as a small block except with a bigger holding tank and discharge fittings. Hope that helps, and welcome to the machine.

Summit and Jegs are both great on the customer service side, and one sometimes has parts that the other doesn't. I went through a few cowl induction hoods before getting one that was salvageable (horrible packaging for something so large and heavy), and I can only imagine how much Jegs paid shipping them back and forth.

Remind me not to go to your cocktail party's 🤣🤣🤣 Good luck to you.

Yal, I’m studying hard!. My test Wednesday the 6 th.. joy joy .🥲

I gotta agree with you Joe, other than that one time I had an issue with summit they have been great. They even made the issue I was having right. My brother just bought some guages from summit he got a better price and service from summit than he did from the manufacturer. Parts have gone up so much ( as everything has) and customer service has gone down so much you do need to shop around for sure.

Summit is almost the 'Amazon' of the performance world nowadays. Whenever I see something I want (especially if it shows up at OPGI first), I'll simply google the part number, and almost always Summit will be there in the search results. Same with Amazon, so it's usually a toss up of getting past the Summit minimum free shipping threshold, or paying a couple dollars more & getting it shipped for free from Amazon. Summit's customer service is right up there with Amazon as well, top notch.

My daughter just sent me this link about Monte Carlos. I haven't read it all yet. I hope you all enjoy it. https://www.motortrend.com/features/history-of-chevrolet-monte-carlo/#amp_tf=From %1%24s&aoh=17086360144883&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.motortrend.com%2Ffeatures%2Fhistory-of-chevrolet-monte-carlo%2F

I’ve been waiting for my floor mats and 1 key blank that I went to their facility to purchase in September. They assured me that there would be no shipping charges, we’ll see. If these were urgent I would’ve cancelled. Never had problems prior to 2020, but this is my second issue now, so I think I’m done. Aarons Monte on the cover is the only reason I’m looking forward to the 24 catalog.

20190609_115754.mp4

You can make a column shift tilt into a console/4speed column. The lower bowl is now sold new. This was a column shifted tilt that I converted to console/4speed tilt.

Hi Dan, I have been saving this for 20 years. If this would help you send me an email and we can work something out.

I bought my first Monte Carlo about 1988 and it was a '71 with a 402 and a 4 speed. I made some improvements and sold it after 4 or 5 years for a profit to use the money for home renovation, with plans to get another one someday, knowing how rare they are. I bought a one owner '71 350 Monte from a neighbor about '94 and used it for a work car for 2 years. My son and I restored it for his high school car in '08, and he still has it. It was the first car I've done all of the body work and paint on. I bought our '70 SS454 soon after finishing my son's '71 and did a body off resto-mod on it. The build thread is still here, in the SS454 forum. I drove 13 hours to Denver, Colorado, 3 years ago to buy a very solid and driveable '71 402, 4 speed that came out of Tennessee. The short story is we agreed on a purchase price and the guy backed out on me. That was 26 hours wasted, not to mention the fuel. Right after that, I had a guy in northern Alabama sending me photos of another one that he had for sale and it was another southern car and it was also very solid. It was an Oshawa built car and he sent photos of 2 line sheets he had found. He was going to do a rest-mod and had already had the transmission rebuilt. He had the engine rebuilt at a local machine shop. The short story is the block had been decked and the machinist restamped the block without him knowing of the deck work/restamp. I noticed a mistake in the partial VIN stamp in his photos. He quit answering my phone calls and messages, even though I told him I was still interested in the car. That brings us to this car. I saw a reply a guy made to someone on a Facebook group post about 6 weeks ago. He said he had this car and would be selling it in a few weeks. I sent him a PM and asked him to let me know when he would be ready to sell. He replied with a lot of history of the car and some pics. 2 or 3 weeks later, I was 5 hours south of here, loading it up. The man that ordered the car in '71 worked for GM at a proving ground. He ordered it for his brother, Gus, at their hometown Chevrolet dealership in Thayer, Missouri, which is barely north of the Arkansas border. He ordered a '71 SS454 with a 4 speed. I believe he thought maybe he could use his position with GM to push the order through successfully for his brother, but they were not able to get it done. Gus decided he wanted the 4 speed more than he wanted an SS454. Gus was working as an engineer for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft in a suburb of St. Louis. He was married with no children, like his brother, and they both were car guys with Corvettes. Gus had had a Corvette stolen while living in Florrisant, MO. After that happened, he started putting alarm systems on his cars, including this car. He drove the Monte a lot as a work car until the summer of '83. He kept it decent and driveable all through the years, but he put very few miles on it after '83. When Gus retired, he moved back to Thayer. He kept all receipts for any maintenance done on the car and he always kept detailed records, which I now have. The car came with some extra parts, including an excellent NOS grille, still in the box, that Gus bought many years ago, after damaging the front bumper and grille a little bit. He was planning to someday restore the car and he'd had a cheap repaint done in the '70s, along with a full rebuild on the numbers matching engine. In 1974, Gus wanted a better shifter, so he installed a Hurst. He saved everything he removed with the Muncie shifter and put it in the Hurst box. 49 years later, it's all still in that same box, and now in my garage. The shifter still has the factory black shifter knob with no shift pattern on it. Gus found the build sheet under the dash pad when he did some work on the car, and the protect-o-plate is also included with all of the documentation. I'm very glad to have gotten the opportunity to restore such an amazing Monte Carlo. It has more options than any of the 3 other 4 speed Montes that I mentioned above, and it'll make a very fun car. The original color is a little different than what it is now, but not a lot different. It's supposed to be Rosewood Metallic. I've already removed the hideous fog lights, and I'm going to continue keeping detailed records so a future owner will have it all. The carb is a service replacement for a '71 that was assembled in '79 and installed in '81. The car has AC, a working tach and gauge dash, a 3.31 posi rear, the optional NK4 Sports Steering wheel, the auxiliary lighting package, a non-working AM/FM 8 track with 4 speakers, rear window defogger, Rally wheels, and Gus had the F41 suspension that he purchased from Chevrolet added after he got the car. He also had Sears add cruise control and I found a vacuum hose for it off on the brake switch. I just reconnected the hose and it still works! He put a pair of chrome valve covers on from his brother's Corvette parts supply. The car now has a freshly rebuilt carb, new battery and tray, and new Moog rear springs. The 42 year old tires don't leak and have very, very few cracks for their age, but they won't be on the car too much longer. I've bought NOS quarters and some other sheetmetal already. I'm trying to locate a solid tailpanel and the last few inches of the trunk floor. The rest of the trunk floor and the floor pans are solid. Dan