Specs, Mods, Photos
- YEAR
- 1971
- MAKE
- Chevrolet
- MODEL/TRIM
- SS
- COLOR
- Cranberry Red / Black Stripes
- ENGINE
- 454
- TRANSMISSION
- Automatic
- HISTORY / COMMENTS
-
Completed in 1996
Before & After
This father and sons 1971 Chevelle SS454 build started in the fall of 1994 and was a two-year frame off restoration. It was built as a show car and my son still takes it out once in a while but doesn’t have the time to attend the car shows as much these days.
We purchased it knowing it needed both rear quarters replaced and an engine / transmission rebuild. In addition, the engine compartment had suffered a wiring harness short and melted about half of it. In 1994 you couldn’t purchase all of the parts needed to build the car which left us hunting in salvage yards quite often. Getting tired of that I purchased four more Chevelle’s and we were able to build two cars out of the lot (plus the parts we could buy) a 1970 and a 1971. My neighbors and my wife thought I was starting a salvage yard for myself.
On this car we wanted to use as little body filler as possible and a friend of ours showed us how to metal finish the panels. In one of the pics the areas that have been metal worked are circled in black. The dark spots are dents that were worked out and eventually the entire door was metal finished with no filler added. It’s a lot of extra work but it payed off.
I could fill up several pages talking about this car but I’ll just end it by saying it was some of the best times ever working with my sons on our projects.
A few more pics of the Chevelle in this journal posted here:
https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2109354#post2109354
