The art of restoration: A behind-the-scenes look at reviving a classic car

As we set out to revive this beloved corvair, it's clear that every detail will be meticulously considered. First and foremost, the defroster needs attention. We'll mount it with care, ensuring everything is properly aligned and functioning as intended. This may seem like a small task, but trust us, it's crucial in bringing our car back to life.

Next up, we need to tackle those seat tracks. A quick clean and inspection will reveal their true condition, allowing us to make the necessary repairs before installing new upholstery. We'll take our time, ensuring every detail is just so – after all, this is a classic car we're working on. If you don't want to get your hands dirty, that's perfectly fine; we can simply stack them away for now and focus on other areas of the vehicle.

Now, let's move on to the transmission shifter installation. We'll need to organize this wire in a way that makes sense, ensuring everything is secure and functional. If you're not comfortable with the seat tracks, feel free to set them aside – we can deal with those later. Our priority here is the transmission.

As we continue our restoration journey, we find ourselves facing a bit of a challenge. A missing emblem has left us searching high and low for a replacement. Luckily, after some digging, we've managed to track down an original OEM part. We're thrilled to see that this wagon part is in surprisingly good condition – a rare gem indeed!

We spend some time tweaking the shift cable, making adjustments as needed to ensure a smooth ride. It's all about precision here; every small detail matters when it comes to reviving a classic car like our corvair.

Our attention turns to the grill, and we're excited to see that this one has undergone a transformation of its own – from mediocre to magnificent. A clever modification involving a thinner gauge metal has greatly reduced heat buildup, making this weld job a true success story.

As we near completion, it's time to revisit those seat tracks once more. With our new upholstery in place, we're eager to see how everything will come together. We'll take a moment to appreciate the simplicity and elegance of this design – after all, that's what makes classic cars so beloved.

We make one final check on our work, making sure every line is straight and every joint is secure. It's almost time for the finishing touches – a wire brush to smooth out any rough edges, perhaps, or a bit more grinding to blend in with the surrounding metal. The welds will be carefully inspected before being sealed in place.

Our corvair is coming along swimmingly, but we do need one final tweak: a modification to the exhaust system. A bit of re-routing and adjustment will ensure that everything fits snugly together, providing us with a smooth ride and optimal performance.

As we work on this last stage of our restoration, it's clear that we're not just reviving a car – we're creating something truly special. With every piece falling into place, the excitement builds. We take a moment to appreciate the 3D design of this corvair grill; it's a real showstopper.

We pause for a moment to admire our handiwork, taking pride in knowing that each and every detail has been carefully considered. Our car is coming along beautifully – not just visually but also mechanically. We're making great strides here, folks.

With one final tweak, we've solved the issue with the neutral drive mechanism. It's now secure and functional, ensuring a seamless driving experience for all who get behind the wheel. The corvair is really starting to come together – and it looks absolutely stunning as a result.

We move on to tackle another challenge: modifying the jam that holds our exhaust system in place. Turns out, it was just a matter of finding the right threading to secure everything properly. Ah, the joys of restoration!

As we near the end of our journey, we take one last look around at all the hard work we've put into this corvair. From the defroster to the transmission shifter installation, every detail has been meticulously considered. We're almost there – just a few more tweaks and adjustments, and our baby will be back on the road.

The final stage of our restoration involves tweaking those fenders – carefully welding them in place to create a seamless finish. It's not an easy task, but the end result is well worth it. And let's be honest – it looks pretty darn cool too.

We're now at the point where we can start thinking about the finishing touches: adding some accessories and making any final adjustments before our corvair hits the road once more. We'll take a moment to appreciate the sleek design of this car, knowing that every detail has been carefully considered in its revival.

As we near completion, it's time to think about how we can make our corvair stand out from the crowd. Maybe some clever accessories or a bit of flair? Whatever we choose, rest assured that every aspect of this vehicle will be done with precision and attention to detail.

Finally, after all the hard work, it's time to hit the road! Our beloved corvair is now restored to its former glory – and ready for whatever adventures come its way. We take a moment to appreciate everything we've accomplished, knowing that each and every detail has been meticulously considered in its revival.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso we're taking a break from working on the wagon this morning the first time in a year that we've been able to push this outside of the shop with a steering wheel instead of kicking these front tires where do you want to the side of that other one um we'll take it clear down as close as you can to the garbage but buy them cardboard boxes down there what do you think of this thing ed it's nice like an armored car so we're here at fabric's shop where's paul hello hello hello oh look and ladies here too here paul what would that be that's a matt's recovery rope signature series yankem rope yankem quality matt's signature nice yellow so that makes them better right yep so look at this let me let me show you what you're in what's in store for you wow so i know i'm not planning on doing this exhaust but if everything goes good we'll at least start it okay so this is what i was thinking we'll unload it get start pulling the motor and then i will pull out the pieces that we need in the order we need them so we don't just put a whole bunch of stuff in there and then we can't find it can't remember whether it's in the truck or where we put it in your shop so i'm going to try to keep this truck as a organization if you want to watch the rest of this build while we're here for the weekend you can go watch this happen on fabret's channel we'll go over in depth what we're doing more so go check them out so we're here on day two at fab rat shop getting stuff done so we've been getting all the underside of this done and the firewall done everything inside here we got these nice covers in place another nice cover there so we're in a hurry to get everything done the engine and transmission was keeping us from getting to while that's been happening we've kind of been ignoring paul over here he rebuilt the transmission painted green just a thumb in my eye and there's my transfer case i'm pretty sure that's never going to be the same again now it's going to be better definitely here making sure it's getting done jamie thinks we're goofing off so she had we got these awesome brackets right here these were made for papadar's jeep right there but uh i hijacked them how do you want these welded on you want them straight tip i think straight and pretty close to this end will be just fine we are getting the shock towers i guess these are technically struts yeah they're orange stripes and i think ori pronounces their company ori but man that's a lot of work i don't care if you put these straight up and down or if you follow the angle of this i don't think it's going to make one bit of difference our cameraman today calling all right so we're rebuilding the transfer case for the old corvair with twins it's going to be twin stick so you can run too low or front wheel dig if you need to we're about to get all the parts cleaned up and try to piece it back together perfect take that jack up the more it cools the closer it gets we actually did more than we planned just different stuff really they'll get it finished hope the training works me too we're back to work here on the wagon project well let me get back to work we've never we've never stopped so we went to fab wraps this weekend and uh we did a couple things we pulled the motor transmission and transfer case and we had paul rebuild the transmission and transfer case and while we were there we also got to put our strut mounts in so while paul was rebuilding the engine and transmission rudy was just under this finishing the firewall and finishing the transmission tunnel so that's a hundred percent welded now yeah today uh rudy's gonna finish up the back fenders and we've got trevor coming back you guys a lot of you know who trevor is he's going to come back and start helping us on this today so we're going to put him on various things under the dash the shifter um just working on that kind of stuff and john good morning whoa those are temporary shots because the oris are coming in today wow so does that happen up at fab rats yeah so let me show you what i'm thinking here a little bit darker gray and a little bit more wind or yellow what if we did that yeah what if we did that to your trucks too you know that looks slick good morning trevor good morning okay forever let's catch you up to speed okay i need you to pull a jeep seat out of whatever jeep is out there that tangerine one just the passenger seat okay then i've got a bunch of under dash stuff so and those cans have all the fasteners that came from this so i need you to dig through them and find the ones that go in here and mount the defroster you'll mount the wiper stuff brew these cars here as a reference okay those seat tracks over there just need to be cleaned up and inspected and ready for the upholstery when we come back and then i need this shifter installed on the transmission so this wire goes in here to organize this however you like if you don't want to mess with the seat tracks you're free to stack them out of the way those can just go clear back in the corner with the other right work the last one out of 20 pieces and then you just gotta spot weld all those holes and then for the rest of my life is that the right angle there you go whoa what is in there they went from the best emblem to the worst emblem hang on hold on i found the trail this was i told you we moved dude this was fruitful who moved it you did i think i was here too i moved it like i'm okay go put this out there where it could get lost and stolen that does not sound right that sounds like we definitely need these too bad oh those liners okay what were we looking for emblems a grill emblem yes there's a wagon part rudy oh that one's actually in good shape yeah here's a oem power glide shift cable okay let's go look somewhere else i should have all of i've got every grill well i found one another 61 yep why i do the start stop zaps is because it's a thinner gauge metal and doing that greatly reduces the heat put into it and since metal warps with heat i don't want that so doing that cuts down on the heat of it and since this is a final process it's just easier to control the joints in between so let me yeah let me go get a wire brush and i'll grind going like that just blends it a little bit better and so but when i do finally stop when this weld reaches that weld there'll be one on top and i place them underneath every other rivet intentionally looking good our seats are off at a poultry upholstery i'm trying to figure out that's just not so i'm gonna have to use my imagination we've got tons of room here though that's all we needed to know i don't know if that's right well you didn't make this line there i didn't need to because i marked off the edge so gonzo why'd you cut that out rudy because the corvair was not a front engine car and was not designed to have air go through a solid sheet of metal so we had to cut it out to put something else in to let air this drill will go in there and it'll uh i'll cut it to match that both sides and hopefully it looks alright more work to do now so lizzy eats salt and vinegar chips when she's not eating nachos she eats salt and vinegar chips anybody who would eat salt and vinegar chips would drink their own bath water and howl at the moon those are my favorite too like i said like i was saying that'll go in there just like look at that i like it ruby good morning good pack doing a good job so i i can't uh kick him around thanks everybody we're gonna want the bolt through the other way if it will go maybe it won't neutral drive does it work as far as corvair grills go this one looks okay it's got a cadillac look to it because the cadillac's had that back yeah okay hold that in place let me get something else for you well it's supposed to go right there and i think we should we'll just modify the length of it put it in there that looks good and we want it higher than lower anyway because the winch is going to kind of take up some space here front ends coming together good job rudy you have doubts oh we got some slapper sloppy sloppy sloppy there i don't think that's time up because i knew we were taking it off um where's the jam that's on those we need to put it on one hand you're on there oh they're just not threaded all the way awesome it's coming together yeah we knew all right so come in here and check this out so we've got the twin stick shifter in and the transmission shifter uh we did a little bit of uh re we're changing the brackets a little bit to make the exhaust fit better and give us a little bit better geometry on the four link not big changes just little tweaks and then rudy worked on the fenders he's got these welded up and then he was working on the grill am i the only one that thinks this looks so cool that corvair grill on there 3d man like that it's gonna be good it's gonna be good probably up there like that we'll figure it out it's gonna look goodso we're taking a break from working on the wagon this morning the first time in a year that we've been able to push this outside of the shop with a steering wheel instead of kicking these front tires where do you want to the side of that other one um we'll take it clear down as close as you can to the garbage but buy them cardboard boxes down there what do you think of this thing ed it's nice like an armored car so we're here at fabric's shop where's paul hello hello hello oh look and ladies here too here paul what would that be that's a matt's recovery rope signature series yankem rope yankem quality matt's signature nice yellow so that makes them better right yep so look at this let me let me show you what you're in what's in store for you wow so i know i'm not planning on doing this exhaust but if everything goes good we'll at least start it okay so this is what i was thinking we'll unload it get start pulling the motor and then i will pull out the pieces that we need in the order we need them so we don't just put a whole bunch of stuff in there and then we can't find it can't remember whether it's in the truck or where we put it in your shop so i'm going to try to keep this truck as a organization if you want to watch the rest of this build while we're here for the weekend you can go watch this happen on fabret's channel we'll go over in depth what we're doing more so go check them out so we're here on day two at fab rat shop getting stuff done so we've been getting all the underside of this done and the firewall done everything inside here we got these nice covers in place another nice cover there so we're in a hurry to get everything done the engine and transmission was keeping us from getting to while that's been happening we've kind of been ignoring paul over here he rebuilt the transmission painted green just a thumb in my eye and there's my transfer case i'm pretty sure that's never going to be the same again now it's going to be better definitely here making sure it's getting done jamie thinks we're goofing off so she had we got these awesome brackets right here these were made for papadar's jeep right there but uh i hijacked them how do you want these welded on you want them straight tip i think straight and pretty close to this end will be just fine we are getting the shock towers i guess these are technically struts yeah they're orange stripes and i think ori pronounces their company ori but man that's a lot of work i don't care if you put these straight up and down or if you follow the angle of this i don't think it's going to make one bit of difference our cameraman today calling all right so we're rebuilding the transfer case for the old corvair with twins it's going to be twin stick so you can run too low or front wheel dig if you need to we're about to get all the parts cleaned up and try to piece it back together perfect take that jack up the more it cools the closer it gets we actually did more than we planned just different stuff really they'll get it finished hope the training works me too we're back to work here on the wagon project well let me get back to work we've never we've never stopped so we went to fab wraps this weekend and uh we did a couple things we pulled the motor transmission and transfer case and we had paul rebuild the transmission and transfer case and while we were there we also got to put our strut mounts in so while paul was rebuilding the engine and transmission rudy was just under this finishing the firewall and finishing the transmission tunnel so that's a hundred percent welded now yeah today uh rudy's gonna finish up the back fenders and we've got trevor coming back you guys a lot of you know who trevor is he's going to come back and start helping us on this today so we're going to put him on various things under the dash the shifter um just working on that kind of stuff and john good morning whoa those are temporary shots because the oris are coming in today wow so does that happen up at fab rats yeah so let me show you what i'm thinking here a little bit darker gray and a little bit more wind or yellow what if we did that yeah what if we did that to your trucks too you know that looks slick good morning trevor good morning okay forever let's catch you up to speed okay i need you to pull a jeep seat out of whatever jeep is out there that tangerine one just the passenger seat okay then i've got a bunch of under dash stuff so and those cans have all the fasteners that came from this so i need you to dig through them and find the ones that go in here and mount the defroster you'll mount the wiper stuff brew these cars here as a reference okay those seat tracks over there just need to be cleaned up and inspected and ready for the upholstery when we come back and then i need this shifter installed on the transmission so this wire goes in here to organize this however you like if you don't want to mess with the seat tracks you're free to stack them out of the way those can just go clear back in the corner with the other right work the last one out of 20 pieces and then you just gotta spot weld all those holes and then for the rest of my life is that the right angle there you go whoa what is in there they went from the best emblem to the worst emblem hang on hold on i found the trail this was i told you we moved dude this was fruitful who moved it you did i think i was here too i moved it like i'm okay go put this out there where it could get lost and stolen that does not sound right that sounds like we definitely need these too bad oh those liners okay what were we looking for emblems a grill emblem yes there's a wagon part rudy oh that one's actually in good shape yeah here's a oem power glide shift cable okay let's go look somewhere else i should have all of i've got every grill well i found one another 61 yep why i do the start stop zaps is because it's a thinner gauge metal and doing that greatly reduces the heat put into it and since metal warps with heat i don't want that so doing that cuts down on the heat of it and since this is a final process it's just easier to control the joints in between so let me yeah let me go get a wire brush and i'll grind going like that just blends it a little bit better and so but when i do finally stop when this weld reaches that weld there'll be one on top and i place them underneath every other rivet intentionally looking good our seats are off at a poultry upholstery i'm trying to figure out that's just not so i'm gonna have to use my imagination we've got tons of room here though that's all we needed to know i don't know if that's right well you didn't make this line there i didn't need to because i marked off the edge so gonzo why'd you cut that out rudy because the corvair was not a front engine car and was not designed to have air go through a solid sheet of metal so we had to cut it out to put something else in to let air this drill will go in there and it'll uh i'll cut it to match that both sides and hopefully it looks alright more work to do now so lizzy eats salt and vinegar chips when she's not eating nachos she eats salt and vinegar chips anybody who would eat salt and vinegar chips would drink their own bath water and howl at the moon those are my favorite too like i said like i was saying that'll go in there just like look at that i like it ruby good morning good pack doing a good job so i i can't uh kick him around thanks everybody we're gonna want the bolt through the other way if it will go maybe it won't neutral drive does it work as far as corvair grills go this one looks okay it's got a cadillac look to it because the cadillac's had that back yeah okay hold that in place let me get something else for you well it's supposed to go right there and i think we should we'll just modify the length of it put it in there that looks good and we want it higher than lower anyway because the winch is going to kind of take up some space here front ends coming together good job rudy you have doubts oh we got some slapper sloppy sloppy sloppy there i don't think that's time up because i knew we were taking it off um where's the jam that's on those we need to put it on one hand you're on there oh they're just not threaded all the way awesome it's coming together yeah we knew all right so come in here and check this out so we've got the twin stick shifter in and the transmission shifter uh we did a little bit of uh re we're changing the brackets a little bit to make the exhaust fit better and give us a little bit better geometry on the four link not big changes just little tweaks and then rudy worked on the fenders he's got these welded up and then he was working on the grill am i the only one that thinks this looks so cool that corvair grill on there 3d man like that it's gonna be good it's gonna be good probably up there like that we'll figure it out it's gonna look good\n"