The Minty Malibu

[Chevyfanaddict]

Good Lord painting an overall on an old car is getting expensive, yikes. Nothing against what you spent to get it looking that fantastic, and it is worth it, but guess I have been out of touch with current labor/material costs. Looks very very nice though, money well spent 🙂

Haha yes its quite expensive to do these days but this one was done right with quality, durability, and longevity being my #1 priority on this car which doesnt leave much room for value. But this paint job will last the life of the car estimated especially since it won't be daily driven and only driven in nice weather

 

[Chevyfanaddict]

So i recieved the sample material from SMS Fabrics today and was very pleased with it. It is the NOS OEM vinyl that was used on these cars in 1978. The color was what i was most concerned about but it is spot on perfect; however this is NOT the correct grain pattern that my car was equipped with. I called them to see if they had the correct one and they do have the correct grain pattern in the color i need so i went ahead and placed my order for a new fully stitched top. The old one looked like hell, was faded, and dried out and cracking and was definitely bringing the car down as far as quality goes so it had to go.

Heres the sample of the material, I think its going to make the new paint pop even more





And heres the condition of the original factory top

 

[DRIVEN]

Update?

 

[mikester]

I hope they do a good job on your top. My experience with SMS wasn't that good. My 81 is also a green similar to yours. Dark Jadestone. I have a Medium Jadestone cloth custom interior. It was done that way when I bought the car. I sent them a sample of the cloths that I needed and the yardage. They sent me a couple of samples on a sheet like they sent you. Colors matched 100%. I ordered the cloth. When the two rolls came they were completely different dye lots and didn't match the original samples that they sent me. This turned into a very long drawn out fiasco. They sent me more rolls. One shipment had two rolls of the same pattern but both from different lots so the shades were different.

It almost became a joke after a while. The woman that was helping me with the problem was useless. They finally put a guy from the shipping area in charge of getting the order together. He sent me a sheet with 12 samples stapled to it marked with numbers. I picked the number closest to what I needed and sent the sheet back. He had pulled all 12 rolls and kept them aside so he matched the roll to the sample picked.
The first time that I called was in March. By the time I finally had the material in my hands it was the end of November. I had lost some money shipping the wrong stuff back. After doing that once I told them to sent me a p/u ticket. I was also pissed because the upholstery shop had set a block of time aside for me and by the time I got the material that was long gone so I had to wait until they had another opening.
In the end I was very pleased with their work so I guess it was worth the aggravation.

 

[Chevyfanaddict]

I have some minor updates on the car but I've been busy with other stuff in the last few weeks and it's also been so damn hot out that I don't feel like working on it.

Mikester I have heard from a few people and read a few reviews on SMS that sound very similar to your story. I can honestly say that I didn't have any issues with SMS save for one which really isn't something I can be mad about. It took me quite a few weeks to receive my order and when I got it, it wasn't what I had expected. It was the correct grain, the color was spot on as per the sample I received, and it was stitched very nice. The only thing that was off was that I had ordered a top for a Landau car which has the 1/4 top and when I pulled it out of the box I discovered that they had sent me a full vinyl top to cover the entire roof! The only thing I questioned was can it be safely cut down with damaging it, and also how much less would I have had to pay for the lesser amount of material? But I called and the gal on the phone assured me that it was perfectly safe to cut it down and when I asked about why they sent a full top she said that was the only pattern they had available to them and that she had never seen the 1/4 top pattern.

So I have the roof completely sanded down to bare metal now and have treated the surface rust that I couldn't remove with the DA with rust mort which kills the rust and converts it into a black primer like surface. Now I just need to get a little body filler on the rough spots and primer and the top will be ready for the upholstery shop to install.



Here's the surface rust that I was not able to remove with the DA
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Here's the brand new vinyl top that I received from SMS. I am completely happy with the final product.

 

[Chevyfanaddict]

I also got the replacement grill for the car which is a reproduction but I guess it will work for now until maybe one day I will stumble upon a nice original grill bit so far my efforts have been fruitless. But... I did manage to score an NOS grill emblem for a 1978 which is a one year only deal. It is very nice and in my opinion it's these little details that really make a car nice and set it apart from the rest.





I bought an NOS emblem for a 79-81 mistakenly thinking they were all the same. Oh well, I'll find something to do with it. If anyone is interested in it I'll sell it!

 

[mikester]

You might want to try a 3M roloc disc on that rust. Ive used them for quite a few things and they do a little better than sandpaper on a DA. Im assuming none of those little spots shown in the photo are actually holes ?

BTW, your car looks great ! Very nice paint job and I really like the two tone !

 

[Chevyfanaddict]

Thanks I'm hoping it will turn out really well. I wanted to have it done for our Goodguys show but that's only 3 weeks away and I'm farrrrrrrrrrr from even being close so hopefully next year

 

[Chevyfanaddict]

So heres a current update on my project. Truthfully ive had some other speed bumps in life and the car has been on the back burner for the last few months but hopefully ill be getting back to business on it very soon.

BUT.... I did pick up one very important piece of hardware last weekend, Merry Christmas to the Malibu! I scored an 80K mile L76 6.0L out of a '08 Pontiac G8 for $1200! For you guys that dont know what that is, its basically an Australian Holden version of an aluminum block 6.0L LS2 but it came stock with LS3 cylinder heads and intake! Same bore, stroke, and rotating assembly as normal LS2 and has 10.5:1 compression stock, but i think im going to have the heads milled to bring it up to 11:1. So now i finally have my LS swap that i was planning which adds a whole nother tier to this project! Ill be adding a big cam and shooting for 550 crank horsepower and maybe some nitrous... We'll see.





You can see the car in the background here in its current untouched state that its bern sitting in






Highly efficient square intake ports similar to the Corvette LS7 427 heads. These heads flow sn incredible amount of air as cast.


High flow "D" shaped exhaust ports also like the LS7 heads

 

[Chevyfanaddict]

Im also having a slight problem with the guys I had sent all my trim to get re-anodized. The problem is they "lost" all my stuff!!!! And they quit answering my phone calls. I DO NOT recommend that anyone use J.V Polish out of Lynnwood, CA. They are dishonest and frankly in my opinion they are thieves. I think they sold all my stuff to one of their hommies. So im still trying to figure out how to get either my parts or my money back! Very aggravating to say the least.