Turning Root Beer Into Lemonade

[71_bronze_gtx]

The attachment GTX arrives home 002 reduced.jpg is no longer available

After 20 months of body work in my garage, and a month or so in the community college body shop, my formerly Autumn Bronze '71 GTX has morphed into Lemon Twist. It's a numbers matching, 440 with auto, but without fender tag or broadcast sheets, and was hacked on a bit by the previous owner. So, I took the liberty of changing the color. Not that I didn't like the bronze. I wanted something bright and loud. You know - high impact.

Of course it need more sheet metal work that I had expected. I wound up putting on new quarters, a new driver side rear wheel housing, lower-rear-fender patch pieces, plus numerous home-made patches for the doors, cowl, inner fenders, headlight buckets, and fenders, and a made-from-scratch passenger side outer rocker.

I did all the mudding and sanding. In May, I took it to my county's community college to be painted in their summer project class. One of the class techs helped me clean up some sanding in a couple places. I, another student, and the class tech did the painting-mostly the tech. Cost me tuition and the cost of the paint and supplies-about $3,000. Then I paid a former student to do the cut-and-buff.

This was my first attempt at auto body restoration. I'm very pleased with how it came out.

[71_bronze_gtx]

Not sure why the "before" pic got left behind.

March 2013

GTX arrives home 002 smaller.jpg (156.05 KiB) Viewed 41867 times

[steved]

I was partial to the bronze...but that's just my opinion.

Looks like it turned out great!

sjd

[rradar71]

Nice job. I like the yellow (like the bronze also). Think I would have preferred black stripes though. Now you have to change your name.

[71_bronze_gtx]

Probably easier to get another bronze car or repaint mine again...........

[71Beeper]

I love the color!
White stripe is fine by me....
Congrats!

[71_bronze_gtx]

Been a busy boy since my last post. Lots of time spent replacing head gaskets in my winter-beater 3.0 L Mazda Tribute. Man, that job kicked my a$$.

Got the 440 out of the GTX, Started prepping the engine bay for lemonade. Tore the engine down to just crank, camshaft, and chain.

No shortages of surprises with this car. The heads turned out to be 915s (closed chamber from 1967). The valve stem guides and seals were shot, as expected. Took them to the machine shop. They told me they measured chamber volume of about 80cc. Data on the web says they should be 73.5cc. I asked them to check again. They came back with 77cc on one and 80cc on the other. Huh? Had them recondition them and mill the 80cc head to get it down to 77cc. All new valves, guides and seals.

Found out the pistons had been replaced with TRW low compression pistons - right around 8:1. Huh? Took out the pistons. All the rod bearings were lightly scored, and were .020 undersize. New pistons for about 10:1 compression forthcoming. Probably new bearings without machining the crank.

Took off the #4 main bearing cap. No scoring, but maybe uneven oil clearance. Or possibly started without oil. Also .020 undersize. I'll be looking at the other bearings over the next 3 weeks. The engine is going to the local community college mid-January where I will reaasemble it. Same place it got painted last summer. What a great resource.

Way too much work to get the brake booster out, so I'm going to figure a way to paint around it. Undecided about the wiper motor at this point.

[mclean03]

Old thread but I'm curious about the paint code of the new color.

[71_bronze_gtx]

Y2 (PPG 2211) Lemon Twist

[71_bronze_gtx]

It seems to change hues depending on the lighting. It's not metallic. Best in bright sunlight.

[71440 gtx]

[71440 gtx]

hi in 1967 915 have too heads 440 4bbl and 440 4bbl hp the 440 hp has 208 174 and 440 208 160 not hp