My 1967 Belvedere Convertible Plans and Restoration (aka - Mad Scientist Build)

[kiwigtx]

Been there, done that....turned my garage upside down and wasted half a day to find something that was in 'plain sight'.

The project is looking good Larry.....keep it up.

 

[Cranky]

And Happy New Year to you too!! Right now I'm on the look out for a small but very bright flash light that I use to see into small places and even drawers and tool boxes. When you get old, ya need more light. I also like it because it turns on every time and then turns off with one push of the button. I have another bigger one but it takes one push to turn it on, another for dimmer and then rapid flash. Screw that crap plus it uses a rechargeable battery and it doesn't last long and it gives out quickly once it's done. I quit looking for it so maybe it'll turn up. And not even going to talk about looking for parts or nuts and bolts. One time I looked for a week for a part and it hit me to look in the wash vat.....there it was. If I'm not working on someone else's junk, I'm looking for stuff for mine!

 

[Ghostrider 67]

I lost a 35ft tape measure once. Looked for weeks and off and on for half a year. When I went to do some nailing up wood i put my carpenter belt on and there it was, in one of the deep pockets. I had checked the tape measure pocket a couple of times. lol.

 

[Cranky]

A couple of months ago I was in my bedroom closet (but I came out!) looking in an ammo drawer and left a different flash light in it. I was 'lost' for about a month.....

 

[747mopar]

I wish I had all of the hours back I've wasted looking for parts, so frustrating!

 

[blue69runner]

We all have had those moment's. If you have ordered part's twice for the same thing then your not alone.

 

[monroegtx]

I get like that with small tools. I dunno how many little spanners and sockets that i have two of now.

 

[kiwigtx]

I usually find the lost items shortly after arriving home with the replacement I just bought.

 

[Ghostrider 67]

I usually find the lost items shortly after arriving home with the replacement I just bought.

OR...I suddenly remember where the hell I left it.

 

[Cranky]

Found my flash light.....almost right in from of my face but isn't that usually the case? It's been sitting in this spot for a full week. There's a straw pointing at it and the can goods are waiting to be donated. Maybe I need to clean up my wreckage.

 

[conv67bdere]

Had a good day looking for parts today . . . and I'm pumped up about my potentials . . .

First of all - the wiper motor, decided to take a trip to the local Tear-a-Part (that's literally how they remove the parts at these places - wow)
and I stumbled on a 2001 Dodge Pickup Truck
( but I've been doing some research and I liked the way the whole "assembly" was done on the truck . . .

So . . . I picked the thing up . . . and BOY was I surprised ! ! !
Here it is set beside the one that comes out of the Belvedere . . .

DANG . . the motor is 1/4 the size and it can operate the wiper on a pickup truck, it'll do just FINE on my Belvedere ! !
AND . . . my plan is to "tuck" it up under the dash, so the smaller motor is a BIG plus . . . and I like the "assembly" idea and might try and incorporate that into my fabrication too.

Got some fabrication work to get done in my near future . . . things are looking UP for me . . .

Then, while I was down at the yard, I decided to look around for wheels and tires (only to make my car a roller), but to find out HOW much tire I'll be able to pack up into my wheel wells now that they've been mini-tubbed and de-humped . . . and I stumbled on these bad boys . . . so . . . I had to fight with wheel locks . . . but I got one off and decided to bring it home . . .

Now . . . I know you're going to say that they're 6 bolt pattern rims . . . SO WHAT . . .
These are only EVER going to be for making this a roller ( and for fitment of how much tire I can put up in there )
So I might be doing the fabrication by hand drilling these and making them capable of being bolted on . . .

And the best part of all . . . tire and wheel - $37.00 . . . no CHIT ! !
Now I have to go back and get the 2nd one ( for the other rear tire )

Now . . . are you wondering how much tire I've got here . . . I'll show you . . .
( yes, probably should have cleaned these things up before putting up here . . . oh well )

Diameter is 31" . . . and I think I've got 32" MAX on the opening ( yes, I did additional mods to the wheel openings too )
I'm excited to see if I can make this thing fit and HOW IT LOOKS . . .
( no, I don't like the thin tires, but If I go smaller rims and thinker tire . . . I might be in the ball park with what I really want )


Got some things that I'll be working on here ( keeping me out of trouble )

 

[conv67bdere]

picked up the 2nd tire today from Tear-a-Part . . . and the name was fitting for me today, 2 hours trying to get the darn wheel lock off this time, where yesterday the thing came off in about 2 minutes . . .

Guess that's paybacks . . . then when I went to pay for it the same lady charged me $27.00 for this one ? ? I didn't say a word, just paid the bill and high tailed it out of there as fast as I possibly could so that she didn't have time to re-think her billing . . . LOL

Now to get them cleaned up, and get the proper holes drilled into them so that I can get them on the car ( if I can make them fit )
Basically - I think I can fit a 335 on this car so that should give me 1/2" on both sides for clearance, and my modifications to the front of the wheel well gives me as much room as I can possibly muster in that direction, and if my quick measurements were accurate, I should have 1/2 - 1" clearance at the front of the wheel wells . . . I think it should look awesome (size wise only)

Do NOT plan on putting a 22" rim under this car . . . it's the only tire this size I could fine and it's 31" in diameter . . . so - this is ALL about fitment.

 

[Cranky]

Maybe the 37 bucks was 10 too much the first time around lol

 

[conv67bdere]

To get the holes lined up very close to where they needed to be, I needed to mark the holes on the rims . . . didn't want to "guess" and I wanted it to be real close . . .

So this is what I did - made a wood block that fit in the wheel snugly and into my wheel gauge snugly . .

When they're put together, it lines them up on the rim very nicely - marked them and hand drilled them . . .

Well . . . I'm so close . . . and I've got an idea . . .

 

[QOTHL]

Collection spots for dirt . . . what got into me ? ! ? ! ?

The weatherman said ( we know we can always believe them ) that the humidity today was going to increase - uh, how can it increase when it feels like it's already 100% humidity ? So I got out to the shop early and wanted to take pictures of an interesting thing I noticed on the passenger side, and forgot to take pictures. Places where the dirt can collect.

Both my passenger and driver side looked like this when I started:

View attachment 139588

The only way to compare it is to see what it "should" look like . . . this is after the cleanup . . .

View attachment 139587

There are (2) spots that i noticed collect dirt - noted by the arrows below . . .

View attachment 139594

Here's what got cleaned out of those spots . . . and I started to scrape the undercoating too . . .

View attachment 139590

Don't know what got into me . . . got in the zone and started scraping ( had a fan blowing on me to keep me cool, and music blaring in the background . . . ) I didn't think about it . . . just let it happen . . . Next thing I knew, this part was all cleaned up . . . Notice bucket 3 is starting to fill up ! ! !

View attachment 139592

I must have really been in the zone . . . here it is, before lunchtime, and the driver side is all cleaned up ( I know, this is NOT helping you with your plan to get the K-member dropped ) but removing undercoating is so much fun, when the mood strikes, you let it go ! ! !

Notice the collection on the floor . . .

View attachment 139596

Quite a difference from the picture above with all the ugh-dercoating all over the place . . .

View attachment 139591

In case you thought I was kidding, here's (2) bags full of (2) buckets full of junk that has been removed form the car . . . at the end, I'm going to weigh them and find out the grand total of junk removed . . . should be interesting.

View attachment 139593

Okay, now if I'm going to get the K-member out, I better get to work on it now ! ! ! Stop scraping ugh-dercoating ! ! !

- - - Updated - - -



Go take a look at the one that is offered by XV Motorsports . . . it's right along the same lines too . . . but, are they only for cars that are meant for the track ? ? ?

Just a suggestion, don't throw anything out until you're done.

 

[conv67bdere]

So . . . the plan for the wheel spacer ( and now conversion ) . . . is as follows . . . Wing It ! ! !

Needed some 1/4" flat stock, and all that I had this past weekend in my shop was this . . . oh well, it's a start . . .
Split it, cut off the tabs . . . and it's "almost " flat-ish ( kinda sorta

maybe )

Sure didn't like the idea of turning this in the lathe with that "horrible" interrupted cut . . . looked like trouble to me . . .

So . . . over to the bandsaw and cut off some corner and get it closer to "looking" round-ish . . .

Then to remove the bad stuff . . . clamped them together in pairs to try and make it easier . . .

Get the outside edges cleaned up and saw that the middle needed a bit more . . .

This will never go on the car on the street - only to make my a car a roller in the shop . . . so now I get to hand drill them . . .

Not too shabby . . . they fit ( first try too ) that shocked the hell outa me . . .

Then take the 5 lug flat, add the 2 1/2" spacers in a star-ish pattern . . . 2 1/2 + (2) 1/4" flats = 3" . . .
Isn't it funny that it's the same 3" that Devin and I cut out of the axle to narrow it ! ! ! WOW ! ! !

Then add the top of the sandwich . . . and I add a spacer to check fitment, and convert a 5 lug into a 6 lug, and make my car a roller . . .
With some pretty impressive big arse meaty tires to boot . . . and not too pricey either . . .

Now for the fun part . . . trying to make this all happen and keep them all lined up so the tire can spin "fairly" true . . .

 

[conv67bdere]

Finally got the first one knocked out . . .

Here's the top plate with the 6 bolt pattern . . .

And the entire thing all welded up . . . thought I cleaned all the galvanize stuff off the metal, but boy was I wrong

And the resulting tire placement in the wheel well . . .

So . . . my thoughts . . .

Do not think much of the rim styling . . . I wanted the deep dish look ( which will happen when I get the proper back spacing on my rims )
Not really keen on the skinny tire, but remember these are 22" rims - if I drop to 20 or 18, I'll add 1" or 2" additional tire
Really need to see the car on the ground, on the tires, and see how it looks . . .

But I do know that I can fit a 31" tall tire into these wheel wells (do to all my fabrication efforts) and that's what I needed to know . . .

And now I'll have to start looking for tires and wheels for this thing . . .

 

[conv67bdere]

Got the other side adapter welded up and got the wheel installed on the car . . . so the rears are DONE . . .

Now, to focus my attention on the fronts . . . think I recall that a 15" wheel will NOT work with these parts . . .
Sooo . . . . I'm off to Tear-A-Part (Pull-A-Part as it's better known) to try and find me some wheels to make this a "roller" . . .

Had no idea what would work, nor where to look - so I just started wandering and looking . . .

And found these . . .

Good size tire, and they were 17" tires . . . so I thought I'd give them a "go" . . .

First thing I noticed ( actually forgot ) when I got back and "thought" about testing the tires for fit . . .

The center hub on the new front end . . . Ruh Roh . . . . Go back and look at the center hole on the top picture . . .

Easily resolved . . . these are "only" top make the car a roller and test fitments of tires . . .
So I pulled out the "bug gun", the tap magic, and a 2 3/4" hole saw . . . and begun my journey . . .

A little while later, I had the "slug" drilled out and ready to go - after some deburring on the edges and a lot of metal shaving to clean up

And the result . . .is a "much" bigger hole to allow the center hub to pass through . . . Uh, I hope . . .

Can "anything" go right on the first "try" . . . Nope . . . was wondering why the wheel was not wanting to spin . . .
Nothing looked like it was rubbing . . . till I looked behind and saw this . . . Argh . . .

Simple fix for this . . . flipped the bolt over and now I've got "plenty" of clearance ! ! !

And this is how the front of the tire looks with center hub through the center . . .

And how the tire looks on the front of the Belvedere . . . It's a nice wide tire, but I think I'll need a taller tire . . .

Next on the list of things to do . . . the A/C and wiper motor fabrication, move, and new "installation" . . .

You'll have to wait and see what I've got up my sleeves for the wiper motor . . . I think it's going to work out Awesome ! !

( uh, I hope . . . )

 

[conv67bdere]

Finally got some time in the shop to finish up the Wiper Motor mods . . . and I'm really happy with the results . . .

If you haven't been under your dash to see what the wiper connections look like, this is how they looked in 1967 . . .
And they are NOT fun to try and remove . . . ( ok, they're not that bad )

This is how the connections look on the newer cars - okay, this is actually from a 2007 (?) Dodge truck - a ball and cup . . .

And the snap on the ball - and they can be greased - and they're a plastic so no metal on metal sounds . . . Quiet !

and the connections are night and day different too . . .

Plus they have a rubber piece on them that "should" help keep the grease in the cup . . .

So . . . I removed the connection parts from the Dodge truck assemblies . . .

So that they can be put on the 67 Belvedere . . .

And the final results are as follows . . . it's ALL tucked up under the dash and I will no longer have it on the firewall . . .

2 connecting brackets were welded to the top - ALL of the rubber sounds dampeners were utilized . . .
( yes, I've got 1 more bracket that need to be made to hold that bottom bracket - but the motor is Stock, no mods, and can be easily replaced if needed )

This connecter needed to be adapted, shortened, and one side had to be flipped 180 degrees . . .
The other side is the stock connector . . .

I hooked it up to a 12 volt power supply ( uh, battery charger ) and the thig works GREAT - very quiet ! ! !

I'm really happy with the results. . .

 

[conv67bdere]

This DID make a HUGE difference in working in the shop this weekend . . .

Last week, this is what I had in my shop to work in . . .

Compared to what I had in the shop today to work in . . . What a difference a couple days makes . . .

Which means . . . that this will be getting some attention . . . and get cleaned up ! !