Shake-N-Bake
Well Known Member
Creating a thread showing some of the steps and milestones as we go through our family owned 1961 Bel Air Sport Coupe (348 manual trans). My wife's father purchased the car new while working for a local Chevrolet dealership back in '61. He spotted it while still tied down to the train car and went into the sales manager and claimed the car before it ever hit the showroom floor. I've known the car for the last 22 years or so....the last ten while parked in the back yard collecting dust and deteriorating away. Time to do something about that so here we go....
First step is to get the car to my house and assess it's condition. I decided to verify the engine was in good condition so I cleaned the tank and fuel lines, replaced all the engine fluids, rebuilt the carb and fired it up. To my surprise the engine ran perfectly, purred like a kitten and no smoke out the exhaust. It does have some vapors coming from the road draft tube but it seems within normal range. Compression was around 175 psi across the board so the engine is OK for now. I suspect we'll need to rebuild it someday but for now I just plan on replacing the seals and gaskets and hope to get a few more years of driving out of it.
We know we need a complete new interior, paint and wiring harnesses and we have a fair amount of rust to deal with....way more than should be found on an Arizona car. Oh well, enough talking. Here are the day one pics.
First step is to get the car to my house and assess it's condition. I decided to verify the engine was in good condition so I cleaned the tank and fuel lines, replaced all the engine fluids, rebuilt the carb and fired it up. To my surprise the engine ran perfectly, purred like a kitten and no smoke out the exhaust. It does have some vapors coming from the road draft tube but it seems within normal range. Compression was around 175 psi across the board so the engine is OK for now. I suspect we'll need to rebuild it someday but for now I just plan on replacing the seals and gaskets and hope to get a few more years of driving out of it.
We know we need a complete new interior, paint and wiring harnesses and we have a fair amount of rust to deal with....way more than should be found on an Arizona car. Oh well, enough talking. Here are the day one pics.