Dad's First Car to My Never Ending Project...

[FeSo4man]

Hey y'all,

You've probably seen a smattering of my questions over the last couple years, but now that I'm hopefully a few months from getting my car to "completion" (for now), I figured I should give a proper introduction on the car, and give myself a place to log the journey!

 

This '71 monte was my dad's first car. He got it in '75 as the second owner (evidenced by the cigarette butts I found under the carpet- no way that could've been him!) and held onto it ever since. He would drive it fairly regularly up through the 90s (there are pictures somewhere of me in the back seat as a baby), but it got parked for an extended stay in the shed sometime in the early 2000s. Growing up, he told me stories about his memories in the car that he and his buddies made, and I always had an infatuation with that dusty muscle car in the shed. Once I got to about 10 or 11, I'd hound him about getting it running to go for a drive. I'd get him to tinker with it every now and then, but it wouldn't take another drive till around 2016 when I decided I wanted to fix it up to take to my high school graduation. To my surprise, a new battery, starter and fresh gas later it fired up! Here's what that looked like, with both him and me at graduation- the same car he drove to his. 

 

After another break while I was at college, I finally had a disposable income and some time of my own- and decided that maybe it was time to get the car repainted, and replace the leaking heater core. I'd always wanted to do a full restoration, but didn't really think it was in the cards- until I set off the snowball of all snowballs. After a series of "well if I'm taking that off, I might as well do that too"... I was completely gutting the car. Here are a few before pictures while everything was still in one piece: 

 

 

One good thing about the teardown is it made me very meticulous when going through the dash- because I decided I never wanted to take that thing out again. Also pictured, an 8-track tape mouse nest found above the headliner. 

 

 

Skipping over a lot of dust and wrenching, next was pulling the engine and trans. My dad always talked about how he wanted to put a big block in the car growing up, so I inherited the big-displacement itch. The numbers-matching 350 and TH350 will be staying in storage in case I want to put things back to stock someday.

 

 

Next was more wrenching, and some quality time with a DA and this toad that showed up before it got picked up for body work and paint. The body guy picked up the the car in May of '22- and thanks to some olympic gold level procrastination on their part, I'm hoping to get it back in a week or two. (That's a whole other story, for another time...) 

 

 

I stayed fairly busy in the meantime. We located a 454 bored .30 over, with a moderate cam and moderately high compression- complete overkill for my needs, but hey, is there such a thing as too much horsepower? The engine was just past break-in after its build, but someone did a terrible job with the engine paint, so I decided to repaint it. 

 

 

The next snowball was the intake manifold. Someone had painted the cast aluminum silver and I didn't like it, so I decided to strip it- and after realizing that it looked even worse after doing so, I spent WAY too much time polishing it. Was it worth my time versus just buying a pre-polished one for $600? Definitely not. I will say it ended up looking pretty slick with the valve covers and the carb on it, though. 

 

 

 

After that, more odds and ends- dash restoration, SS cluster, checking harness wires, painting parts, and currently, polishing trim. Pretty much anything you can do without a car. And now, getting married! The goal is to have the car ready for my wedding in July to make another milestone, just like it did with my dad. The body shop continuing to miss every deadline out there isn't going to make it easy, but the parts are all labeled and organized ready to throw together once it arrives. That gets y'all up to date- I'm sure there will be MANY more questions to come, and there's no way I would've made it this far into the process without what I've learned from the MC braintrust that is this forum. I'll hopefully get a few updates on here as progress rolls along, and post the finished (for now) product soon. 

[jft69z]

First, let me thank you for becoming a full dues-paying member yesterday, Ed. We all appreciate it!

Great post, story, and progress report as well. As you already know, all you have to do is ask, and someone here will likely have the answer to just about any questions you may have.

As far as pictures, the forum does not play well with some of the pics you loaded in the 'HEIC' format, so I took the liberty of converting all 10 of them, and reposting them back in the exact location of your post. The standard formats of  .jpg, .jpeg, .png work best, but I can convert them down the road if needed.

Thanks again!

Joe T

[Dtret]

Great story. We all know too well about the “ snow ball “ effect. But with everyone’s help we seem to get them back on the pavement. Another one saved. And as Joe said, thanks for becoming a full member. When you’re done with the car you can pass on all your knowledge and wisdom to the future members and more of these Monte’s can be saved. Thanks 

[cny first gen 71]

Welcome to the club, great story behind the car. Hopefully you get it out of body shop soon. We used my car for my daughters wedding and I almost got a date with photographer she really liked the car but I guess not me 😅 good luck I surely hope it's done in time.

[Rob Peters]

Great story Ed.  Also great pictures, thanks for sharing.  

Welcome aboard as our newest dues paying member.

rob

 

[714024SPEED]

Welcome. Great story and great job on all the work that you have done already. 

[willie]

Welcome Ed!!!   Looks like the snowball caught you also, as it seems to catch us all!!!!!  You did a ton of work on her and She is starting to show how great She will look when done! Great Job!!!!   Cant wait to see her when She is done!!!

[stangeba]

Great story! 

 

[Marks71]

Nice little documentary on the car Ed. Looking forward to additional follow ups. Thanks for joining up. 

[Canuck]

Great story!

[Montemedic]

Ed, Thank you for becoming a full dues paying member and joining the best place to be for the First Generation Monte Carlo. That’s a great story with memories of your Monte Carlo too. Plenty more to be made once you’re done “refreshing “your Monte. As a full dues paying member, you can attend any of our Club Meets, Eastern, Western, GM Nationals (Carlisle PA) or Syracuse Nationals (Syracuse, NY)  Mini Meets with or without your Monte. The Western Meet is nearby you this year. 
‘Looking forward to seeing your progress along the way. Any questions, ask away. We love photos too. Enjoy the First Generation Monte Carlo Club and all that it has to offer. 

[Vaughn]

Thanks for sharing your journey with the Monte Ed. 

[Chris shipley]

Great story. And nice pictures. Thanks for sharing them. Welcome aboard!!

[72 Monte Carlo]

Welcome to FGMCC Ed!

[Tonka Man]

What a great car and a great story!  That car is the exact car that I have - '71 Cottonwood Green with dark green vinyl and the '70's green interior.  You may have seen my posts on the Pickle!  We will have to PM and compare notes.

Did you go back 100% original for colors?

That 8-track mouse nest is priceless.  You need to print and frame that!  I don't think I've ever seen one like that.  I've seen a lot of mouse nests in cars I've worked on but no 8-track nests.  Must have been a musical mouse!😀

[Scott S.]

Behind every restored car is a GREAT story.... 

Thanks for sharing yours.  

[FeSo4man]

Thanks for all the responses everyone! Work has continued on anything I can do! Recently that's going through the engine-side harness. All the old tape off and harness opened up, wires traced/ labeled, and deleted all the TCS junk. At this point I'm going to test fit the harness/function check everything and add the SS gauge changes in then wrap afterwards. I did end up testing and wrapping the rear-end harness. 

Also checked in on the car Friday and it's itching to break out of body shop jail- final prime is done and the car's looking smooth. I did get a surprise today when I got the last picture from the body guy... I had them replacing the body bushings and they had to cut in to get a couple off as the tacked nut was loose. He says with only 15 more minutes to take the body off the frame he decided to just do it- he's going to blast it and get a coat of paint on, supposedly free of charge- I guess it's a frame-off now! 

They're still about 2 weeks behind when they initially tell me they'll have a step done but hopefully undercoat and putting the engine and trans in happens this week so they're spraying paint next week. Found the PPG code for Cottonwood Green on here and they were told by PPG that they no longer make the toners for that specific code, but got one that was a "guaranteed visual match" from a Ford code from the 90s-sprayed test panels and it looked pretty close but seemed pretty pale compared to the original parts that are left. We tried a couple different panels with a darker final prime and I'm partial to the darkest, but going to run it by dad and see which one he thinks looks closest. The pictures don't do the flop justice.

Hopefully this thing makes its way back to my garage soon, there's a lot of work to do between now and July 12th!

[jft69z]

That looks great Ed, a lot of work for sure.

Just a thought, did you check with Axalta (formerly DuPont) for a color? They were still able to mix up Mohave Gold (code 63) a while back. If your shop doesn't use that paint line though, it could get pretty expensive if you have to buy everything from scratch.

[stangeba]

Very nice!!

[Scott S.]

Photos never do..... 

Glad you found something that's close enough to do the job.   

[Leghome]

19 hours ago, jft69z said:

That looks great Ed, a lot of work for sure.

Just a thought, did you check with Axalta (formerly DuPont) for a color? They were still able to mix up Mohave Gold (code 63) a while back. If your shop doesn't use that paint line though, it could get pretty expensive if you have to buy everything from scratch.

Dupont is what was used on Ole Red when we repainted in 2013. Checked Akzo Nobel last year and could not find my code 190 Ferrari Red checked with Axalta and there it was just like Dupont. Duopont lab has a lot of cross overs from the old stuff to the newer colors that are pretty dead on in matching

[Rob Peters]

Progress is always good.  I know your dad is proud of what you are doing, what dad wouldn't be.

rob

[Glen]

I’m way late to this party, but welcome aboard Ed.  Great story for sure, so keep the pix and the narrative flowing. Can’t wait to see the finished product. 

[FeSo4man]

BIG update… The car is HOME! We had to tweak the color code to get it right but I’m very happy with the result. Problem is, we are T-50 days until wedding and all I have to do is rebuild a whole car… I really don’t know how I will get it all done, but I’m gonna try and hopefully my mechanically inclined friends will be willing to help. 

First major issue ran into: are SB and BB firewalls different for factory AC? I was planning to rebuild the factory system but I don’t see how the EVAP could possibly fit in here. (SBC factory AC car, 454 in it now) I really didn’t want to go vintage air route but might be forced to. 

[jft69z]

Looks great Ed.

To answer your BB/SB firewall question, there is no difference. You can try to mock it up with the empty case (the one half would be fine right now for this test). Those tall valve covers may present a bit of an issue though, possibly with the brake booster too?.