69 Impala 2 door hardtop with 1245 original miles. Guttenbug, IA

Canadian Poncho · A Poncho Legend!

69 Impala 2 door hardtop with 1245 original miles. Guttenbug, IA

LeeRoy · Guru

Appears to have manual brakes? Wonder if it was customer or dealer ordered that way?

ABC123 · Uber Guru

I saved that engine shot for future reference.

4SPEED427 · A Poncho Legend!

It sure looks like the engine has had some restoration which is too bad. But what an amazing car for reference.

4SPEED427 · A Poncho Legend!

LeeRoy wrote:
Appears to have manual brakes? Wonder if it was customer or dealer ordered that way?

My favourite wrecking yard has loads of 60's GM B bodies. I'm amazed at how many of the Chevrolets there have manual brakes. I never would have guessed the percentage of manual brake cars would be so high.

Prefectca · Poncho Master!

I remember lots of cars in the 60s and 70s with manual brakes and power steering. It all came down to what you could afford. If you couldnt afford to have power steering and power brakes most people went for power steering. I remember a biscayne with a powerglide and manual steering and brakes. The owner said the automatic transmission was an expensive option and his wife wanted the automatic and that was the priority.

Paul

ABC123 · Uber Guru

My 2+2 427 in an original Manual brake car as well as my 69 Convertible !

4SPEED427 · A Poncho Legend!

Manual drum brakes on a 427 4 speed car. Who would be crazy enough to drive that.....

Canadian Poncho · A Poncho Legend!

If you click through the link it looks like the car saw some damp storage. A fair bit of surface rust underneath.
It reminded me of that 30k 4 speed 427 2+2 I looked at years ago that was pretty rusty underneath.

Howmac · Guru

Yes ... a little crusty underneath. Likely due to "less than ideal" storage . I'm also curious ..why so much road tar on the inner splash shields ? ( for only 1200 miles). Beautiful example though .

Prefectca · Poncho Master!

4SPEED427 wrote:
Manual drum brakes on a 427 4 speed car. Who would be crazy enough to drive that.....

A friend of mine ordered a 1967 Chevelle SS396 with manual drum brakes (sintered iron brake linings) and manual steering. The only options were a rear window defroster and an am radio. It was also a three speed manual on the floor (Borg Warner transmission). The car still exists, he sold it to a friend thirty or more years ago and he still says that hes going to restore it.

Paul

4SPEED427 · A Poncho Legend!

My nephew also owns a 67 SD396 that was built with no power steering and manual metallic brakes. Clearly drag racing in mind when that one was ordered and when I had it apart for restoration I found some mystery holes in the floor. After a bit of thinking it all made sense, a 3 point roll cage and a driveshaft loop had been installed. I can understand the lack of power steering but the manual drum brakes on a drag car seemed "different".

Certainly not the case with this 69 Impala, it's not spec'd out for racing!

CdnGMfan · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

Re: Drum Brakes

The full-size Chevrolet / Canadian Pontiac came standard with self-energizing manual 11" drum brakes. They require low line pressure and are self energizing due to the leading shoe trailing shoe design. They don't take a lot of force to apply and don't demand power assist. Drum brakes with asbestos linings work well for the 1st & 2nd stop but start to go away dramatically when they heat up and lead to heat distortion in extremes.

I would even venture to say the majority of 1969 big Chevies were built with drum brakes (most seem to have come with 14" wheels therefore drums). Yes, even 427 cars, just not an SS. I remember a Champagne '69 Impala convertible online in Texas that was being sold as an SS427. As it turned out it was a regular Impala convertible with the original 427 335-horse LS-1 sold new at Alex Irvine Chev-Olds in the Wexford part of Scarborough. It was factory equipped with power steering, power drum brakes, fender skirts originally, buckets / console, power windows, 14" wheels & P01 wheel covers.

Cost was a factory, but also there was a certain prevailing wariness (wive's tale) that disk brakes were new and had problems. That was sort of true concerning 67/68 disk brakes with 4-pistons, but by '69 the disk brakes were now cheaper & more tolerant of runout (single piston, floating caliper). Also racers were looking for any advantage. Drums were cheaper, lighter, and they didn't have any drag (disks always slightly dragged their pads across the rotor to keep them clean, ready & at operating temp, ready to apply now).

In 1969 all big Chevrolets came standard with drum brakes. Only the SS427 came standard with power front disks. For 1970 power front disks became standard on the Caprice series and the Impala Custom Coupe. Even big wagons came with drums standard, only the Kingswood Estate came standard with disks. (70 Pontiac 2+2 & Safari Estate wagons came with disks standard; not so in '69)

The Survivor:

Wow! Think of all the parking lot injustice that had been avoid by parking the car for 52 years. Quarters are available aftermarket for these cars, but they lack the "pontoon bulge" contour of the factory quarters, bearing witness to the cheaping-out on body dies by the aftermarket. Real details come from progressive successive strikes of body dies in series, all which cost a ton to set up. A factory fender might require 7 dies to form a fender, whereas an cheap aftermarket fender might be knocked off with only 4 dies. Aftermarket doesn't have 1 million cars to amortize the tooling and the body dies are expensive.

As far as the slight barnacles underneath, even a car sitting in a garage can have moisture come up through the cement floor. Some form of barrier, perhaps epoxy coating, would have sealed the garage floor. As they say, rust never sleeps.

People are often surprised when they see how cheaply people ordered their Big Chevies. I saw a '69 Custom Coupe in Pickering, almost the same car but dark green and it had a Powerglide. A Powerglide... Hey, get in and drive for cheap, drop it into drive, it has power steering... So was the prevailing attitude back then.

MC · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

4SPEED427 wrote:
LeeRoy wrote:
Appears to have manual brakes? Wonder if it was customer or dealer ordered that way?
My favourite wrecking yard has loads of 60's GM B bodies. I'm amazed at how many of the Chevrolets there have manual brakes. I never would have guessed the percentage of manual brake cars would be so high.

Of all the sixties and seventies cars I had over the years (I forget the exact amount, but it was around 30), almost all of them had manual brakes. They weren't "muscle cars", but just bread and butter everyday old cars. I actually preferred the pedal feel of manual brakes and had to be careful to not put people through the windshield when I hopped in something with power brakes.

Prefectca · Poncho Master!

4SPEED427 wrote:
My nephew also owns a 67 SD396 that was built with no power steering and manual metallic brakes. Clearly drag racing in mind when that one was ordered and when I had it apart for restoration I found some mystery holes in the floor. After a bit of thinking it all made sense, a 3 point roll cage and a driveshaft loop had been installed. I can understand the lack of power steering but the manual drum brakes on a drag car seemed "different".

Certainly not the case with this 69 Impala, it's not spec'd out for racing!

Those metallic linings were scary until the brakes warmed up a bit. I couldnt imagine trying to stop after a run down the drag strip with cold brakes. My friend used to ride the brakes first thing to heat them up, they stopped great after they warmed up. After nearly a hundred thousand miles he did the brakes. They werent anywhere near worn out but he was sceptical on how much longer the bonding would last. It got standard brake linings afterwards.

Paul

gtodrive · Guru

My 2+2 came with power drum brakes on all four corners. I wouldnt think of changing them. Pontiac excitement, baby! biggrin

CdnGMfan · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

The metallic drum brakes act opposite to conventional asbestos (or organic) linings. With asbestos linings the brakes are ready now but will fade dramatically when they get hot, which doesn't take long at speed. The metallics on the other hand are heart-in-mouth for 1st application, not really there at first (they recommended power assist). Once metallic shoes heat up they grip. The heat when it builds on the shoes will distort conventional bonded linings, reducing and concentrating contact area, while simultaneously the overheated friction material is losing it's grip. The brakes go away. Metallics are welded segmented patches of steel that when really hot & thermal expansion occurs, the segments grow closer together rather than go out of round, maintaining contact area. Factory metallic brake cars also came with special heat-treated return springs & hardware to help maintain spec when things turn glowing orange.

Testers of the day didn't really criticize the drum brakes on B-body Impalas of this era. 11" drums are key; the A-body line used wimpy 9.5" drums. If you like drum brakes, check out a LeSabre or better in the '65 - '70 Buicks. With trailer towing package you'd get massive 13" finned aluminum drum brakes that out-performed disks of the day. Even without the towing package they were still 12" drums that also rivalled discs. Meanwhile the GS400 in the A-body line offered finned aluminum drums, though only 9.5" I think. Disk brakes were in their infancy in the mid sixties at GM and they had teething problems. The simplified design of 1969 made it a moot point, and they were cheaper to make and equally as effective.