1971 El Camino

[GMJohnny]

it took me a couple of days to get this posted up. The transaction and flurry of activity went down on Thursday the ninth.

After I had a verbal agreement on the 442 sale, I grounded the car and started my search for another project car. I was thinking convertible, Oldsmobile, C6 Corvette, or maybe an El Camino. I think that I’ve looked at 4000 cars online trying to understand what I’m looking at. As I studied the vehicles, pretty quickly I was turned off on mid-60’s Oldsmobile’s because I’ve had a bunch of them. A C6 Corvette is still something I’d love to have, but GMAmy reminded me that a car that’s not a project bores me and there would be not enough there to keep my interest over time. I’d been studying the El Camino’s and happened upon a couple of them locally, so, with a fistful of dollars burning a hole in my pocket, we set out to find a car. BP and I checked out a cool ‘65 that I decided needed too much work to get it back to what I wanted. So, I happened upon a redone ‘71 at a local car lot in Amherst. I found the ad on FB Marketplace. With some serious help & Chevelle wisdom from Tony, and a half of a day behind the wheel (Tony really took a bullet on this - all for a hot dog meal!) we had an El Camino at home in the barn. I’m just now starting to figure out what I got myself into, but the one thing I can say is this car is CLEAN! Paint and undercarriage are the cleanest I’ve worked on. I’ll post up more pics and such as I move through the project, but I feel as though I’ve found a really nice start to a project. More to come….

GM

[GMJohnny]

This weekend, I took to assessing what I have and working on easy and required fixes. The first was the glove box door. It seems like a minimal issue, but you had to slam the glovebox door to get it closed. The latch mechanism was loose on the door. About an hour later the door works. I had to remove the door all the way and get the lock barrel out to accomplish the task. YouTube was my friend for this. I also repaired the hood latch. Literally, you couldn’t get into the engine compartment without using a screwdriver to jimmy the latch to open it. Turns out a couple of screws were stripped out and the bracket was bent keeping the latch from being able to fully engage the lever to open the hood. All fixed up… I also did a bit of exhaust work. The chrome tips were sticking out about 4” past the end of the bumper. I have them now tucked up tight to the bumper and only 3/4” sticking out past the bumper. I also washed off about an inch of dust off the car and test fit my car cover. Plenty to still do and I’m starting to make a laundry list of the things required before we hit the road in the spring.

GM

[Basement Paul]

You could already turn a profit. Looks great!

-BP

[wxo]

Looks like a really nice find! How about some important details like engine, trans, mileage, etc.

[GMJohnny]

OK… From what I know now ( sometime in the future I get more detailed )
the El Camino has the original 350 motor and turbo 350 trans. It has a 12 bolt,
non-posi rear axle ( unknown gear ratio, but assumed highway gears based on
the mph achieved on the ride home ), power steering, power brakes ( discs on front ),
functional A/C, clutch fan & quadra-jet carb. The car is largely stock, which is what
I wanted. It has a better than stock cam ( spec sheet came with the car ) and roller
rockers, but goes through cast manifolds for stock look. From the initial ride home,
I know it can easily smoke the right rear, but I also know the car isn’t achieving
WOT, so that needs to be fixed. I’m still in the “assessing what I have” stage,
and I’ve gone around the car three or four times searching for issues to fix and
I’m starting to make a to do list. The good thing is, the majority of what the car
needs is detail work and smaller projects so there shouldn’t be any huge projects
on the horizon for it. We’ll see if this holds true!

GM

[Blue_69_malibu]

That Camino sure looks good sitting in the sun after a fresh wash!!

When you guys see the car in person, you'll really like it. The paint and body panels are super solid/good.

It's kind of the perfect project car for John - a fair amount of little stuff that he likes to fix....and is really good at. Zero body work or paint issues.

In the glovebox was a Comp Cam card - flat tappet, 224/230 duration at fiddy. Motor should have some pep, me thinks. \

I'll dig up my 72 AM/FM Pontiac radio which should be a direct fit.

BTW - I had three hotdogs and a Pepsi for lunch. 45 minutes later, I was pretty sure the Pepsi was a good idea..............

[GMJohnny]

BTW - I had three hotdogs and a Pepsi for lunch. 45 minutes later, I was pretty sure the Pepsi was a good idea..............


That was an exhausting day! So much mental stimulation coupled with driving 200 miles,
I slept real well that night….. but I didn’t have hot dogs!

GM

[TireSmoker]

That thing looks super nice, cant wait to see it in person! I loved the '72 I had in the pre-Tiresmoke era.

[GMJohnny]

That thing looks super nice, cant wait to see it in person! I loved the '72 I had in the pre-Tiresmoke era.

I remember your El Camino making a run back from Carlisle in the days when the speed limit was
55 mph on the turnpike. We were in a train of cars going 70. I’m pretty sure we were all loaded
down with crap we had found! I always thought yours was cool.

GM

[GMJohnny]

Over the weekend, I had a bit of time to work on the El Camino. Being on vacation this week will afford me some time to work on it at length. Here’s a list of stuff I’ve repaired so far:
1) add hazard button to steering column, test hazards
2) reaffix arm rest pad on driver side door — used screw inside the arm rest
3) add rubber pad to emergency brake pedal
4) repair passenger seat belt retractor
5) vacuum and blow sand blasting sand from behind dash area (it’ll need to be done again)
6) remove seat for dash work
7) remove speedometer cluster and repair with used speedo cluster found on FB Marketplace. ( issue with speedo was loose change has found it’s way into the cluster — no idea how this could’ve happened - change jammed mechanism up and stripped the odometer gears )
reset odometer to current mileage ( less 35 miles )

Tomorrow I plan on changing the a/c vent louvres and more behind the das clean up. ( work in this post was 6.5 hrs )

GM

[Basement Paul]

It was sometime after 1983...

-BP

[Blue_69_malibu]

Very impressive work, John.....in a very short amount of time!

With the dash out, are you going to upgrade to new speakers?

Kudos to Paul for the good math. That may have been during or shortly fifth grade for us. That's almost enough change for a movie at Loweman's plazza on a Tuesday.............

[GMJohnny]

With the dash out, are you going to upgrade to new speakers?

Kudos to Paul for the good math. That may have been during or shortly fifth grade for us. That's almost enough change for a movie at Loweman's plazza on a Tuesday.............
[/quote]

Tony…

The speakers are super easy to access from the top with the dash pad off. I think
the plan is to try to hook them up to the radio and hear how they sound. If they’re
horrible, I’ll upgrade before final assembly….. or next summer.

GM

[GMJohnny]

I felt pretty positive about yesterday’s work. I started the day by blowing out and vacuuming more sand from behind the dash. This finished it off and I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. There might be some sand left behind the dash, but very little. ( I’m thinking of naming this car “Sandy”) With the dust settling, I got to changing the vent louvres on the left and right of the dash. That job was pretty painless. The only hiccup came with the re-pop vents. There’s a small felt disc on the end of them that fits in the vent housing and keeps them centered. The new ones were too small and allowed the vents to wobble in the housing. The old vents had good felts on them, so I superglued them to the new assemblies and I was on my way. I then took to finding the annoying vacuum leak and no heat situation. To make an extremely long story short (about 2 hours of chasing vacuum hoses), the previous owner had plugged a vacuum supply line and left it on the motor. This line was to go to the vacuum canister on the firewall. The heater control valve hose was plugged into the vacuum canister and the heater control valve had a vacuum hose coming directly off of the carb. Basically, someone didn’t label the hoses and reassembled them incorrectly. Being in the garage with the door closed, I didn’t run the car to get it to feel heat, but I was able to watch the a/c vent door move as I moved the lever and the leak sound is gone. I moved forward after this. I got the speedo back in and, reassembled the duct work. All of the duct work was blown out with the air hose and wiped with rags as far in as my hand could go. All dash lights now work correctly and all go the switches were lightly lubed and blown out as well. ( 6 hours worked ) For reference, here is the schematic I found on the internet to help me diagnose my issues: http://thepartguy.com/diagrams_chevelle.htm

And the link to the 1971: http://thepartguy.com/diagrams/chevelle ... agrams.pdf

GM

[Blue_69_malibu]

Very impressive!!!!