1961 Bel Air family project
- Thread starter Shake-N-Bake
- Start date
Shake-N-Bake
Well Known Member
You guys are probably tired of seeing photos by now....but we worked on the trunk yesterday.
As you would expect, our dad modified the car from time to time over the years. Some were repairs....others were just because he wanted something to look or operate differently. One of those items was the deck lid tail lamp wiring. When this car was built, the brake and turn signal lights were only in the outer lamps (mounted in the body). The tail lamps in the decklid only had the running lights. Our dad wanted the decklid lamps to function as brake/turn so he ran extra wires and changed out the lamp holders. I went ahead and duplicated this modification to the new harness and then wrapped it up again so nobody can tell anything has changed. Only way to tell is to look at the lamp holders and you'll see two wires instead of one.
We will be giving the car back to him this weekend. Should be a good day. Our parents haven't seen the car since it came out of the paint booth. They are going to be quite surprised at how it came out. We've sent them a few photos here and there but seeing the car in person is going to be different than seeing it in photos. The weather should be nice this weekend so we plan to cruise this around as much as possible.
As you would expect, our dad modified the car from time to time over the years. Some were repairs....others were just because he wanted something to look or operate differently. One of those items was the deck lid tail lamp wiring. When this car was built, the brake and turn signal lights were only in the outer lamps (mounted in the body). The tail lamps in the decklid only had the running lights. Our dad wanted the decklid lamps to function as brake/turn so he ran extra wires and changed out the lamp holders. I went ahead and duplicated this modification to the new harness and then wrapped it up again so nobody can tell anything has changed. Only way to tell is to look at the lamp holders and you'll see two wires instead of one.
We will be giving the car back to him this weekend.
Should be a good day. Our parents haven't seen the car since it came out of the paint booth. They are going to be quite surprised at how it came out. We've sent them a few photos here and there but seeing the car in person is going to be different than seeing it in photos. The weather should be nice this weekend so we plan to cruise this around as much as possible. 
Going to be an exciting weekend for you guys!
Not by a long shot. You can keep posting pictures of it daily even after ya'll are finished and I'll enjoy them.
Even after your finished, learning tools for us,even better you can share how proud of the beautiful job your doing...
Mr harold knight
Active Member
Beautiful car.
Shake-N-Bake
Well Known Member
Thanks to everyone for the compliments. It's very much appreciated. We are getting excited for the weekend as well.
We came up with a design for T-Shirts but our dad isn't really a 't-shirt' type of guy...he prefers baseball caps. I wonder if we can have one made in time? The back of the cap needs to say "ORIGINAL OWNER".....that would be cool.
Here is what we have in mind....
We came up with a design for T-Shirts but our dad isn't really a 't-shirt' type of guy...he prefers baseball caps. I wonder if we can have one made in time? The back of the cap needs to say "ORIGINAL OWNER".....that would be cool.
Here is what we have in mind....
Even if he isn't a T-shirt wearing kinda guy, I bet he would still love to have a T shirt like that to display. Heck, I'd love to have one myself. Especially if you could change the white to black.
Shake-N-Bake
Well Known Member
I am sure we can make that happen...I'll send you a message and we'll discuss further.
Very nicely done on all counts. Sign me up too!!
That's am impressive project!! You have my respect for doing it in such a high class way!!! You and your family and your Dad will have a boat load of memories of this adventure. Wish I could see your Dad's face Sat.!!!
You blew me away with your t-shirt picture!!! Very professional!! Just a thought...if Cecil and Robert want one.......you'll have to air brush a bald spot in the back of the driver's head!!!!!!
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOU AND YOUR DAD'S JOURNEY!!!!
You blew me away with your t-shirt picture!!! Very professional!! Just a thought...if Cecil and Robert want one.......you'll have to air brush a bald spot in the back of the driver's head!!!!!!
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOU AND YOUR DAD'S JOURNEY!!!!
Shake-N-Bake
Well Known Member
Thanks for the kind words. My daughter has her video camera ready for when they see it for the first time. Should be a memorable moment. It looks like we are going to end up with a min-family reunion since word has gotten around and lots of folks are going to be here on Saturday to see the car at the street fair.
The T-Shirt idea was my wife's idea. She sketched what she wanted on some paper and I looked at it and figured I could make up something on the computer. I started with 3 different photos (car, rear emblem and quarter panel script) and then cropped around each of the images. I then placed them together on a page to resemble my wife's sketch and added the 348 and 1961 text. I used a graphic program similar to PhotoShop to crop the images. It took me a little while to figure out how to work the software but once I got the hang of it then it wasn't too difficult.
Ya know....I went back to the first page of this thread and can't believe it's been a year since we started this thing. I don't even recognize the car from those first pictures. It was in rough shape. Super glad we could save this one. Now the fun part is that we get to make some more memories for the next generations in our family.
What your family got done in a year is just incredible!!!! More details please. Were you working on this project full time? How much of the project was done with outside labor? That red interior really pops! BTW, did I mention INCREDIBLE!!!!
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Shake-N-Bake
Well Known Member
Thank you for the comments.
I have a full time job as a manager for a manufacturing and service company so I could only work on the car during my spare time which was mostly weekends. I didn't track my hours but I took photos after most days that I did something on the car (providing I made enough progress to justify taking photos). I have photo folders for 71 days so far.
My son came over every Sunday and helped so he has quite a bit of time in it as well. That has been great father/son time for me so I will have good memories there. I've also received help from my wife and daughter and our friend's son so I'm thankful for that as well. Any offer to help was gladly accepted and I quickly found something they could assist with.
The only outside labor I used was the media blaster and Ciadella Interiors. I removed the seats and door panels and dropped them off at Ciadella's and they covered them for me...I then reinstalled everything myself (including the headliner). I was lucky enough to have use of the warehouse at work during the summer which was nice because we also had a spray booth available. I did the welding, body work and paint myself. I also installed the glass and brightwork myself. Good notes, better photos and the assembly and shop manuals were quite helpful. Mostly the photos....I referenced those quite a bit.
I wasn't able to convince our dad to let me overhaul the engine but it had good compression (which is king) so I just broke it down to the short block and installed new seals and gaskets. For having 93k miles, the cylinders walls appeared to be in remarkably good condition. It runs pretty good actually, does smoke a bit at idle but that seems to go away once it warms up. My guess is the valve guides are a little worn and some oil is seeping by. Hopefully our dad can have a few years of fun with the car and then we'll pull the engine and send it off for machine work to be rebuilt. I'll probably do that work myself.
So far my fondest memory of the experience was back in October. I had some vacation coming up so I took a week off and used that to prep the car for paint. I think I painted the car on a Monday or Tuesday evening....(cooler at night) and my wife and daughter were at the shop with me. They stayed there with me until 2:00 am when we finally finished the last coat of clear and got stuff cleaned up. The three of us then went to IHOP for an early breakfast/very late dinner and talked about how great the paint job came out. It wasn't all perfect though....we had some issues as well but we all were so tired that we could only laugh at ourselves by that point. That was a great evening/morning....I was glad my girls were there with me for that stage of the build.
Shake-N-Bake
Well Known Member
I've never been to one of those things, are they fun? Are you taking a car there to show? I'll look up the info online....maybe we'll go to that one as well. Thanks for the head up!
