1970 Chevelle SS restoration

[Too Many Projects]

I bought this car in 2016 and have been collecting parts for it and waiting to get started on a restoration. A move 3 years after purchase and a "mild" restoration of my Camaro that turned into a full blown, rotisserie resto kept putting it back.
Early pics of what it looked like when I bought it. It came with some crappy fitting repro fenders that I swapped out for an original pair from another '70 I had. No engine, trans or interior. My typical stripped, gutted basket case vehicle. It had a full set of factory SS wheels but the seller wanted too much for them and I have a set from the '70 I bought in '73, so the wheels were mine.

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Once home, I stripped the black '70 of all the parts I wanted fro the Blue car and then put the parts off the Blue car on the Black one and sold it.
The Black car was an automatic, but I had already purchased everything to change it to a 4 speed, but never got around to it, so the Blue one, being a factory 4 speed got all the goodies I had accumulated. Once I got into the assembly process and discovered the clutch pedal in the blue car had been cut off for an auto at some time, I had to drop the column and swap pedals with the stuff I had bought for the Black car. After I had it all together, I bought a new gas tank and sender, so the car would run and move under it's own power. Then it went to a friend's pole shed for a few years.

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The floor and trunk are complete toast, but with the front clip off, I looked over the usual areas of the upper and lower cowls and it is surprisingly good.

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I bought the buckets from the same guy I got the car from and about a year later, he called and asked if I was interested in a 1 piece floor for it. He buys abandoned projects and other assorted parts and the car the floor came with wasn't worth saving so he sold me the floor for about half what it cost back then. That price is about 1/3rd what it would cost now. About that time I met a guy who was an AMD dealer and he said he would sell me the trunk floor with a 20% discount if I would order it right away, to fill a truck load order to get free shipping. I said hell yes to that too, so they are both sitting here waiting for "someday".

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It seems like a customer ordered car, with 4 speed and buckets but no console. Standard 3.31 gear but with posi. No clue if the original gears are still in the diff. The ladder bars could indicate a gear change and some rambunctious usage...

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I had some "decent" front fenders I acquired over time and the Black car had a cowl hood I kept and swapped the power bulge hood from this car onto the Black one. I had ordered Goodmark full quarters in 2003 for the Black car and they supposedly had been stamped with the original tooling in Michigan before the dies were sent to china. They have been sitting here ever since too.
About 18 months ago, I came across an add on Hemmings for both NOS front fenders and a left quarter panel on Hilton Head in SC...NO SHIPPING. I called and explained I wouldn't be down that way until 4 months later, I mid February, but I would pay cash and pick them up. He agreed and when I arrived he insisted we remove the quarter panel for the first time ever to inspect and make certain they were to my liking. He explained that he had bought these parts in 1990 when he lived somewhere up near Virginia, but shortly after moved to AZ for nearly 30 years. He had his '70 SS restored down there and they didn't see any need to use the NOS parts, so he held onto them and even had them transported to SC. Soon after, he decided it was time to sell them instead of continuing to pay for storage since he had no room at his town home now. The quarter looks like the day it had the EDP applied and was put in the carton. The fenders have NEVER been out of their cartons and I can see the EDP is just as nice, with no surface rust visible anywhere !!
I could not believe I had fallen into this dream. That stuff happened to other people.

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And so, it begins. I have been waiting on my bodyman/painter to take the Camaro to his place for interior paint for 2 months now and today I kicked it into the back storage building and brought the Chevelle into the shop to start this project.
First order was to remove the seized calipers, so I can roll it around..LOL The pistons did push back into the bores, so they aren't rusted completely. Then I removed the seats to take them back to the storage shed and get them out of the way. I had procured a rear seat core over time too, but thought ahead and left that in the back shed before I drove the car to the shop building. Thought I took a pic of the interior without the seats, but that is on my phone and NO, I have a heck of a time getting pics from there to here. I'll take one with the camera tomorrow...
REALLY looking forward to get started on this tear down.

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About 10:30 this morning i was going to remove the hood, but decided to see what I could do with the little "bump" on the nose that listed slightly down. Yeah... that turned in 1.5 hours of Pandora's box. Oh well, I took it off at 12:40, after lunch and parked it in the back shed...

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I could see a fairly deep dent and got the DA out and sanded down to it. Found a WHOLE lot more dents and plenty of filler. As I was chasing the grey filler out, I came across something white and at first assumed it was a different filler. After I wiped dust off, I could see it better and it's the original White stripes. The filler was spread right over the old paint and leveled from there. This was quite typical of repairs in the later 70's, when these cars weren't worth much. The repair person didn't bother to even attempt to pull the dents up, just slathered filler in them and moved on... Once I realized the old stripes were under all the other paint, the straight lines of chipped/peeled paint made more sense, as it was the stripes.

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Afte that, I was more careful to preserve the original black and strips to see what was under the filler. Some of the dents were rather deep. The one with the straight edge is on the left side of the center ridge and stretched. That will need a stud gun to pull up. I chipped the filler out of the dent on the nose and dang, that is deep. I worked on it for an hour and reduced the amount of filler it will need to level off, but it's rather crude right now.