The on-going saga of the Purple Impala

Hey all -

So I'm planning to document the trails and tribulations of re-fitting and reviving my 1968 Impala Custom Coupe in this thread. She was sitting on the side of the road for 10 years, about 15 miles from the house. She'd been there so long, and is such a vivid Purple, that she was being used as a landmark for directions. In fact, when I called the tow company to move her from her resting place, the tow driver knew exactly the car I was referring to, w/o detailed directions. Besides just being a hellava project, we started this adventure in July 2020 - my kid was supposed to take Autoshop in the Fall. I had a feeling that just wasn't going to happen due to COVID. So I figured, either we'll have a good old time tearing her down for an in person show and tell, or we'd get lucky and their would be some good bones for him to start learning the basics on underneath that purple paint.



Originally a 327, but when I found the previous owner, he’d dropped a 350 in her. "We got it to turn over once." There was a 3 speed TH350 attached to it - however that won't be going back in, I'll use it as a core swap on a 700R4. The plan is to build her up as a reliable, large but modern-ish daily driver. Nothing is sacred, very much the opposite intent as the pure-restoration crowd - I'm just looking to keep her wrapper as true (sans color) as I can.

The interior is gunna need a total make-over - however the bones are good, and the seat frames are good, just gunna need to strip them down and rebuild them.



Once we got her to the house, we started to tear her down bolt by bolt, with the intention of doing a frame up re-build. I didn't want to drop an enormous amount of cash, only to find frame repair welds and rusted frame supports.

A few things came to light as we stripped her down. First, the engine was fully seized, and whomever tried to get it in... well they had some interesting ideas about about how to do it. I knew the engine was highly suspect when it wouldn't hand turn at the crank, and when I saw the (no joke) speaker wire running along side the ignition wiring I pretty much wrote the engine off right there. Indeed it was seized, with rods bent, and a suspicious crack in the case once we yanked it out - however it was a great lesson for the kid about how it works and what NOT to do to an engine.



We did find out that its got a set of Hooker mid's on it, and that there has been some kind of work done on the rear-end (new shiny cover) - but the details for that needed to wait until we get the body off the frame, and replace the front end.



We ripped out that dead 350 (turned out to be from an early 70's Vet, and terribly, terribly abused) and tore it down for sport, from there we set to getting the frame yanked out for a deep inspection. That meant dissecting the poor beast bit by bit. The good news is that you can get a whole new wiring kit for the 68's - so along with the included diagram and the shop manual, I just ripped up all the questionable life choices that had been foisted upon this poor car in the past. I'm used to working on motorcycles, so the fact I could literally work inside the engine bay of the car was a total trip for me.

Once she'd been prepped the big day came: The splitting. I'll post the stop action video later - it was a wild experience.

From here, we inspected the frame and body. ZERO issues on the frame, and "normal" issues on the body for a 50 year old car. That meant that we were free to start ordering parts, and tearing down the very worn out front end.



The lower control arms were chewed up by a RightStuff brake bracket install that was doomed to grind down the bolt to a prison shank. The upper arms were mostly okay, but had a couple of speed holes in them that didn't give me a warm a fuzzy feeling. The steering linkage was pretty rusted out, and it looked like steering arm had been caught on something or used to pull stumps in a prior life.

{Part two coming...}