1964 Chevelle 2 Door Hardtop

This posting is the result of our friends Connie and Manuel of San Antonio, TX.

Last winter we became acquainted when we meet them through a group at Quartsite, AZ. Since meeting them we have been following their Blog. On one of their last posts I noticed a car under a tarp in Manuel's workshop, so I asked them what it was and that we had a 64 Chevelle. It turned out it was their son's 1968 Pontiac GTO that he is restoring and they asked to see some pictures of our car. Connie, this is what you get for asking.

Sandy and I flew into Portland, OR on September 7th, 2002 and picked up the car on the 8th. Seeing as our 30th wedding anniversary was coming up, 9-9-2002, we made this our anniversary present to each other.

Here we are picking up the car in Albany, OR. We spent 5 days driving back home.

Since the car was free of rust and had just a few minor imperfections, our plan was to give it a fair paint job, clean up the interior some and enjoy the car. In October 2002, my friend Jerry and I pulled the interior and engine out of the car and delivered the car to Lynn's Autobody and Restoration in Lakeville for the start of the body work and painting. We were able to get in because someone else put their car on hold to accumulate more funds.

October 2002

November 2002. At this stage the guy with the other car decided to go ahead and finish his car. This meant that ours was put on hold.

While the car was on hold I decided to take the frame to our shop and work on it there. That's when our budget went to hell. I sent the frame out and had it powder coated. While this was being done I figured it would be nice to put on front and rear disc brakes. So here are the results.

February 2003.

Then I thought that I should put in a Chevrolet crate engine. So here is the 350 CI 330 HP crate engine installed with a rebuilt turbo hydromatic transmission.

In May 2003 I sprayed undercoating on the underside of the bare body.

In June 2003 we took the car back to Lynn's. He said that he would work on our's when he had a chance.

July 2003. Primed, painted, clear coated and sanded.

August 2003. Randy is starting the buffing process.

I finally got the car home in the fall of 2003 and spent the winter putting on the bumpers, chrome, interior and finishing off the engine compartment.

April 2004 the car is starting to come together.

We had the car finished by the 3rd weekend of June when "Back To The 50's" is held. This is the MSRA (Minnesota Street Rod Association) gathering where approximate 8,000 to 10,000 cars, 1964 and older, show up at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.

July 2004

Thanks to Randy at Lynn's Autobody we have received several trophies. At one show we received a "Best Paint" trophy and at another we received a "Best of Show". We did not start out with this much of a restoration in mind, but it was nice to see the results get noticed. We are enjoying the car even though the budget went out the window early in the process.

Now that we have a home again, we will keep the car in the garage, so we can use and enjoy it more.

And a big thanks to our good friend, Jerry, for all his help and guidance with working on the car.

Until next time,

Dave and Sandy

Back to the mundane, and a SURPRISE!!!

On April 23rd Terry and I went crappie fishing on Prior Lake. We spent all morning looking for crappie, but all we could catch were bass and sunfish with just one crappie, so it was time to hit some other spots and see if we could get into the crappies. After spending a couple of hours checking out other spots we found a bay where they were biting and ended up catching over 50 crappies in an hour and a half. We ended the day catching 103 crappie, sunfish and bass. (Sandy here---only an obsessed fisherman would count every single fish!)

This was one of several Smooth Softshell Turtles along the shore. From the size, this was a female as the maximum size of males is about 9 inches in diameter and this one looked to be over 12 inches in diameter.

Here is Terry landing a "Terry" size crappie, you have to look real hard to see this fish. The next time out I will have to take a picture of a "Dave" size crappie. We did catch several in the 10.5 to 11 inch range.

We have been thinking about replacing Sandy's car with a SUV of some sort. After looking around we settled on a Buick Enclave. It can be towed 4 wheels down so if we decide not to haul a boat in the pickup we could take the Enclave instead.

Something that has been in the back of Sandy's and my mind the last few months is to start looking for a small townhouse back in the Lakeville/Apple Valley area. On Friday (May Day) we contacted Chuck Ryan, a realtor/developer, who built and sold our last home. We went over our criteria and the areas we wanted to live in. He said he would get some information for us and that there were three homes in our old neighborhood. So Sandy and I drove over to look around. We called Chuck to say we would like to look at the two that were vacant. The first house was of no interest to us, but as we were walking back to our car a friend and former neighbor of ours, Brad, drove by and then stopped and visited with us. He mentioned that his house was still for sale.Then, after looking at the second house we came out and ran into Jack, a friend and former next door neighbor, who was walking by and also visited with us for a while. There went the hope that we could house hunt unnoticed. This home was very nice, but at the very top of our price range.

The next morning we got up and called Chuck and said we would like to look at Brad and Connie's home. As Chuck had a baseball thing that was going on all day with his son, we had to get a 9:30 AM appointment, sorry about that Brad. The size, 1562 main floor, is what we were looking for. Total finished area of 2464 square feet and, as everything Brad and Connie have, it's immaculately kept and maintained.

In the evening we went out for supper and then to the Vince Gill concert at Mystic Lake with Jerry and Donna. The concert was great. Too bad I forgot my camera.

One of the bad things about being at Mystic Lake is that it is 16 miles from our storage garage in Burnsville, so today we moved from Mystic Lake to the Lebanon Hills Campground in Apple Valley, which is 5 miles from the garage. But Lebanon Hills has a two week limit out of thirty days, so we do a lot of moving back and forth.

On Monday morning we went back to look at Brad and Connie’s home again. Well, we made an offer on the house this afternoon around 3:00 and we heard back at 4:42 that it was accepted. It looks like the closing will be on June 12^th. This means we are moving back into the same townhome association we left 2 years ago to start this adventure we are on. Brad and Connie, we hope you don’t get too much heat for letting “Trailer Trash” back into the neighborhood.

That picture will scare the neighborhood.

While sitting here and composing, no more like stumbling my way through this Blog, I looked up and saw this young Turkey outside our window. I wonder if this is from the brood we saw last year?

On Thursday the 7^th Terry and I went fishing and he finally caught a "Dave" size fish. Well, maybe it’s not the first time. We both caught a 13 inch crappie. We also caught five 11 inch crappies and the rest of the 20 fish limit was over 10 inches, so it was a pretty good day.

On Friday night we went out to supper with Jerry, Donna, John and Pat and then went over to Pat and John's to play cards.

Here are some “Spring has sprung in Minnesota” pictures. These beautiful maples and flowering crab trees are actually in a Burnsville cemetery, but we couldn't resist stopping by to take a few photos.

The time between post will be longer now that we are back in our home base.

Until next time.
Dave and Sandy