76 Caprice Estate from Florida to California or bust!

Mike that's a great looking wagon. One of the best in a long time. I could live with this one. And it's RED!

 

Hi Mike,

Has the Chevrolet '76 Caprice Estate station wagon made it back to Australia?

John

 

Hey John, no still in California, the paint shop is taking longer than what I expected, but I am also thinking about getting the bumpers re-chromed and still there are other things that I am looking at doing as well. I will just have to wait and see what I run out of first, patience or money!

Cheers Mike.

 

Searched, Favorited and you also have a Llama Badge now.

 

Hi Mike,

What's the latest on that beautiful '76 Caprice wagon of yours? Still stateside in California?

JWD

 

Hi John, no still in California. Things have taken much more time than I would had initially thought but it has been worth while so far. I have been incredibly busy over the past three or for months as well for some reason so I have been slow to put up anything as well.

I will try to bring everyone up to date as I get the time. First, this is what I started with. As you can see under the doors were very clean, this is underneath the l/h front door


and underneath the l/h rear door


and inside the doors which were also pretty clean


and inside the rear wheel arch and rear door area


and also the main part of doors were pretty solid as well


These are representative of the overall original condition of the inside and around the door areas.

 

Ok this is what the big rear windows looked like.

The passenger side looked very good from here



and this is the drivers side, you can see a small patch of rust near the edge before the tail gate, but it was very minor.


actually it was very clean on both sides of the car. What you can see here was the worst of it.


And there was nothing around the roof racks either


and inside the passenger wheel arch was very clean as well

 

So as you can see, a pretty good starting point so far.

Ok now for the ugly!

This the bottom of the passenger side front fender


And here in the drivers side dog leg which was the worst of the rusty places overall


This really needed to be attended to straight away, and was one of the main reasons why I considered repairing before shipping


however this area behind the drivers side rear wheel looks worse than what it was, and was probably the easiest part to repair!


and of coarse the last place that there was any significant rust was in the rear spare wheel well as usual.


While most of this is contained and not too bad, I was still hoping it was not as bad as it was when I picked it up though. So as you can see, it needed appropriate attention pretty much straight away.

When I get the chance I will update some more.

Cheers Mike.

 

And more warts!

This the patch of rust under the drivers side rear window


This took me a while to work out funnily enough! The header panel had a small repair on the drivers side at some point in its life and as result, they just filled it with bondo, yuk!

You can see the two different shades of white from the repair.

And the end result was this! They just pulled the hood further back towards the windscreen to allow for the now larger bondo filled header panel

luckily for me I manged to find a perfect header panel and headlight corner to replace the ill fitting damaged parts while I was in California. Once the new bits are installed then the hood can be pulled forward into its original position.

Now for the last parts that had rust that I was unaware of when I bought it, and another reason why I decided to treat this before shipping.


and here


Having said all of this, and considering these are all close up pics, it was still very clean and straight and more importantly nearly 100% original.

 

The last reason I decided to repaint the car before leaving the US is the wood. While it was all original (except for the drivers side front fender), it was toast, especially on the rest of drivers side




However the passenger side was a little better, but it still was not worth salvaging though.


However the front passenger fender wood was still pretty good though


That is just about the worst of it!

 

Too bad about the rust spots, did you already check the frame and section where the tailgate goes into the body? Do you want to paint her white again or a different colour and wood delete?

 

Actually it is not as bad as it looks. The worst couple of rust spots are generally no bigger than quarter size while the rest are more pin hole sized (except for the spare wheel well which has more). As I mentioned a little more than I had hoped for but not too bad really, especially when you factor in how clean it is inside all if the doors etc and even the tailgate itself, and also considering some of the clam shells I have seen with terminal rust inside the channels of those big windows as well.

As for the frame and floor, they are fine with only some slight surface rust spread around but still solid and in tacked. Here is the floor


And here is under the engine and K frame. As I said pretty solid without any extra surprises


As I mentioned, the worst of the floor is still here under the spare wheel


Here you can see under the hood it is completely in tacked and original. I think it is a genuine 137,000 mile car though


but having said that the interior is also perhaps 8.5 out of 10, especially the front bench seat where you would expect to see the first real evidence of wear and tear.


So as you can see it still is a pretty clean car, but yes it does have some warts!

 

As for the colour, still white especially with the blue trim because I think it is a classic and even timeless combination now! White is also the the same colour as the Estate in the 76 GM brochure which looks really cool. Also I am a believer that it has the potential to devalue an original car in the future if you change it from its original colour as well. While I do like the look of the Impala clams shell without wood, this one is an Estate so I am keeping the wood look no matter what, and as of today I have had some very good news about the wood replacement, but more about that later

Ok this was at the start of the job. Funny how wagons also make good parts storage during a rebuild. Notice my rust instructions scribbled on the windows, I didn't want any spot missed!


Here you can see that the drivers side wood was not salvageable at all. Also this is not just a mask up job either as everything was being removed for a complete paint job



the wood was well and truly removed back to bare steel in these pics




with the hood and damaged header panel removed while the corner bezel was being removed, you can see that at least there was no damage to the the radiator support panel and head light bezel thankfully.


My new replacement new header panel is the one sitting on the top

 

She is definitely coming along. She is a beauty well deserved of a make over. If I may, I'd suggest taking the entire wagon down to bare metal.

My painter did not do that to my wagon and now you can see where the original paint has bled through and is showing cracks that weren't there when originally painted.

You may be planning to take her down to bare metal already, but if you weren't, you may regret it like me later on down the road.

Keep the pics coming!

 

dagn, and I thought I had to go through a lot with mine, but only mechanically-good for you to get this all done-it will be a beaut!