Watch Us Buy (Price Revealed) & Start Original Owner 1966 Chevelle SS 396, Sunk 35 years in Backyard

we started dating when the car was only what about eight months old i didn't care about cars so and i'll tell you this early on if you're gonna date a girl to love your car it is not me i am not the one how do great cars get stuck for so many years and finally sell so how long has it been here it's about we're going to see including the price paid how long has it been sitting john graham bought this car brand new la pointe chevrolet february 14 1966 2870 cash he just would not move on it and so it sat for years and years and years and now it's almost a rust ball i think it was last registered in 80 i don't know arrest what wow a rust ball a rust heap a heap of rust and now selling it's got an 88 but i don't think it was i didn't drive it then no date on this old photo but it's a black and white did people spy it and come up knock on the door they did and i would have sold it i said i will sell that car to you but you probably have to talk to my husband first so that's where it all ended well did you get a pretty good offer did they just no we never we never got that far yeah i told them up front it was not for sale and that was it that was the end of it i came out here one day and the windows were steamed up and i drilled holes in the floor to let the water out and then i said well i better cover it well i covered it because it's not in a garage and that's it stayed covered and i think that contributed a lot to the rust jonathan said this was one of the better ones he'd seen i don't know what that means what that means is you can call your own car junk but you don't want somebody else doing that real car people don't run down cars they like them they want them they like to gather records of the car's origins in history vintage family photos are great no way there's more somewhere but i haven't come across them yet the picture of the baby that was born that day she was she was pregnant with mommy 1971 marilyn with her twin sister and the chevelle why did john leave the car parked over three decades i was gonna fix it up like everybody else does put bigger brakes on it put you know things on it fix it and uh that just so many things got in the way so it never happened the sun has baked off that marina blue paint i bet that tree wasn't even a seed when this car was planted good golly i really hated the bucket seats i thought that was just dumb oh boy cause then i had to sit in the middle of the gear shield and that was not you know really comfortable all the time an original gear shift knob is in the trunk this is aftermarket and it's got the thing for reverse lockout crank it up where john and i spent a lot of our time in our courtship was in the car and it was hard to to really be romantic but here i sit as close to him as i can and then he told me that i should sit in my seat because it was a safety factor and then i decided there was another girl involved and you didn't know he was trying to see if he remembered how to do it it's been a while there it is 396. he was getting ready to break up but that that was not true um i was just having a little a little fantasy look your radiator's going it's in the trunk we i i took it out because when we we took the spark plugs out and squirted all in all the cylinders and to get to that nut down there to turn it over monty sends me this photo of his dad's 66 chevelle it's an ss 396 looking like it's been rotten away in his backyard for 50 years i got to do something and then you responded to him and then he responded to us and said to me do you think dad will talk to jerry he has some some articles in hot rod i went running in and got a hot rod magazine and opened it to your article that was the mustang that had ice on it and john just wasn't even interested he just kind of pushed it over well then you called him and when you called him he went running and got your article and started reading i told john i knew a guy that had a place down by the ararat river near mount airy about a hundred miles from john's house in charlotte these guys are gonna talk the same language so i got the dealer emblem for my car the twin to this one and jonathan knows just about everything there is to know about 66 yells that was two-wheel drive now it's two-wheel drive i can take you where we need to use four-wheel if you want to i mean he's restoring this 66 ss 396 the story was this car was a street racing legend around claudeville virginia in the 1970s and that's the way jonathan is putting it back together with the 427 and all those other mods to keep the local history intact all period correct which is exactly what jonathan had in mind for john chevelle yeah the car's rusty it's rough but a great story to tell all that paperwork there's a protective plate and exceptional people to tell it jonathan's second 66 chevelle is a 283 two barrel convertible with air perfect for cruising otherwise too many projects a pair of big block novas that i wrote up in my rare finds column in muscle car review and even a 69 super cobra jet mustang jonathan has completed the white nova that's him with his son christian on the left so he found a friend in the area who would buy and restore this chevelle i think it would be a good decision for someone to get the car that's going to fix it i think that is very important to you to me yeah in other words you just didn't want somebody to buy it and fix it to sell it or not no i want a car person to fix it it'll be repaired and restored it won't be parted out hopefully i'll get to see it i'm i'm 80 so i was wondering if we were ever going to see you again what i was going to say exactly i kept thinking they're not going to believe me [Laughter] jonathan brought his car trailer and a pocket full of money let's see how much i want you to count it out are you serious yeah then we're getting out of dodge put the car on the left inspect the underside see if that 396 will fire up there's a code among car collectors 40. the buyer has counted the money but the seller should count the money too as verification the total is correct the agreed price was six thousand five hundred dollars this stuff right here jerry i mean that's an original title to protect the plate those photos you got those all of these things in color but you can see february 24th we're just past that the first of march here we're the fifth march today um you know so it's a little over oh i have to do some math here that's worth a thousand dollars right 55 she was trying to get more money out of it last time we went over it with john about you know what it would cost to restore and he was aware of that too so you know we don't want anyone to think we're stealing it other than maryland because she's still not happy about it but you know that's the thing is he knows where the car is going he knows it's going to be a good home and if he ever wants to see it he's got an open invitation that's i think that's a very important right now is to know that it's not going to be parted out and know that somebody gets it that wants it and we're not trying to take advantage of him and make a quick buck by flipping it no man marilyn would not let that happen i'm gonna tell you that and i respect her for that because if it were my car i would say the same thing now if you're just gonna take and flip it i'll just let it sit there john kept everything that's this is this is gold yeah yes see that's worth at least 2 000. right there jerry so jerry what we're doing john and i have been talking and all these documents i'm going to make copies out of it and all these photos we're going to make copies of it john's going to have a book he can show monty so anybody who wants to all this documentation when we do the restoration uh we'll get the photos of that too and you can add them to this three four you know a lot of people are always going to say well you did this you did that but i think we're all in agreement about it and that's you know that's what makes a difference i don't want to take advantage of anybody this is a thing he knows that we're we're serious about it and we're gonna uh restore john john has reconciled i mean he's very happy with this yeah and that's what we want and so am i where's our buyer he is recovering i talked to him last night he was eating kale and onion salad his diets changed so yeah that fit i thought i might be embarrassed by not being able to back it in here yeah she's going up and down i think we're good okay here we go look at that oh that is cool i'm not saying i won't have maybe some tears when it when it goes up the driveway because there are there are a lot of years of memories what do you think i don't know with it but it's time it's time to move on i have a little anxiety and it will make life easier for our children not to have to deal with it that's right i think he'll tell you he didn't want just anyone to have it he wanted somebody that would appreciate it and i get it let's ride the mayberry y'all ready well mount airy backing into chip's shop hold up chip is jonathan's friend that took the drone shots 12 hours ago our day had begun but all hands on deck to push to unstick the brake drums from that hub so the wheel will turn get this thing unloaded kind of look it over real quick start it the next day sometimes you beat it with a hammer and it'll break it loose pull that wheel to get to the hub [Music] yeah it's moved a little bit i think all of us felt a real link to this car's past let me see that through marilyn and john and we were just so motivated what do you got there chip it's a pulley puller to get it restored and running more than with a car that we didn't know the history of yeah got some movement now so that hub took all that pounding it's still good huh detroit steel well jonathan said that he would invite us up for a drive when these no he was going to bring it down when they thought was he gonna bring it here okay okay yeah do you want to see the starter we're turning over we'll look under the car tonight come back in the morning to fire up that 396. transmission here musty see that it's not a filter it's a canister a lot of times those things got thrown away take that off set it on the shelf too back here okay what do you think of that front end manual steering box no power steering i mean it looks like it's been sitting for 30 years the antifreeze probably we shook it up coming up that rough i-77 road and beating them banging this rust right here yeah it's a little bit of rust kind of see what it was supposed the battery was over here over here it's not sure right your battery was here so oh the wheels had sunk into the ground and we had not been able to inspect the floor pans until now shaft still got a little paint on it 140 000 miles and those floor pans they still got the undercutting on yeah that's what saved them oh undercoating 100 that dealer made to undercoat them undercoat in 1966 cost 30 bucks that's great and john had said one day he noticed there was water in the floor so he drained it out and and drilled a little hole a tiny hole can you see where he drilled him yeah right here i saw him while i got right there oh thanks we do yeah right there yeah now what is this right here dirt dauber and it's the 331 mm-hmm 12 bolt got two bolts at the bottom you can't see the code over here rear end code we may have to clean it a little more but the original housing the original cover with the notch up at the top yeah the uh traction bar see they're hollow now everybody's making them solid so that they don't twist and those are factory those are factory everything under it the shocks i don't think they're not the spiral shocks and i think he said one time that they replaced them but everything else appears to be pretty stock except for uh look at this pipe right here we can see it now that's a ford drive shaft that he had a friend to make he wanted bologna sliced he said he had somebody that he knew i guess at ge where he worked or something that that made that but that's that's heavy duty radiator clamps and the gorilla weld there original springs it looks like ah they still got a tag on them can you see that oh really yeah that's cool is it paper yep the floor pin's not nearly as bad as you would think this hole rusted from the top down visible through a break in the undercoating as you can see from the top side and here's another rust hole on the passenger side front overall she's pretty sound i mean for sitting there from 86 87 is what we decided that's not too bad i'm not worried too much about that yeah new radiator support i have to put that in but chip's restoring a 65 corvette with a 396 he knows these engines inside and out okay first thing i think we need to do here is to pull the plugs out we're going to turn it over and see he's going to get a wrench out of those fingers those things are just loose huh yeah yeah they're just in there no i'm just strong [Music] they'd already turned that engine over back at john's house see right there so we can go ahead and crank that engine battery box is gone a lot of room in this old chevrolet just give it a little more support took it out of gear i'm getting ready the rest of this headliner here it's kind of aggravating me stuff's all gonna have to be replaced so we'll just take it down got a little bit of rust here but not bad just see if you can turn the headlights on oh so okay you got the headlights are working we just needs a flasher we've got power so borrow that electronic ignition off the corvette 396 not going to test those old points i never checked to see what they were burned up i used sent the points in my ford with my match flap right that's that simple way they were corroded installed new spark plugs and borrowed the wires from the 396 corvette engine that's one so there is eight okay and i had some racing fuel sitting around i think it's 110 octane ready see what she'll do chip come over here and hit the gas i'm squeezed in here the seats pushed our way up i can't get it to adjust running down that battery not gonna start fin chip remembered okay we're going to run the hot wire from the coil to the battery to bypass that resistor and get a full 12 volts make sure we're getting fire we're close real close yeah just not close enough real close to a nap and lunch in mayberry meanwhile chip's doing real work let's see what we can come up with here here let's see are you about ready to try it jonathan made some fart go ahead that did it okay we didn't even put any more gas in it all right i guess that means chip buys tonight the fanciest place in mayberry well what so what was our problem you think okay the the hot wire on the coil was not getting enough juice with that electronic ignition we had to get it a full 12 volts to make it work so we just didn't have enough voltage it wasn't sparking hot enough and it just wasn't running like the video and send john and monty and marilyn is this john graham we're going to crank it and let you hear it correct correct we're just going to run it for about oh 10 seconds or so hold on just one second you ready chipper okay so i'm sitting here turning the key on john and i'm gonna hold the i'm gonna hold the phone uh right near the hood how was that [Laughter] i'll hand the phone to jerry and we'll go behind it and let you hear it that way one time did you hear that john i couldn't i couldn't believe it but uh it's we got it running and it's not knocking or banging or anything oh boy that is something out of great cars get unstuck after decades you

Channel: Jerry Heasley

Views: 654,293

Rating: 4.8346672 out of 5

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Id: iyINFhqbHd4

Length: 22min 33sec (1353 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021