1973 Vega project Black and Blue

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1973 Vega project Black and Blue

Postby avewhtboy » Wed Jul 08, 2015 12:39 pm

So I had a thread going about possibly finding my first car I bought when I turned 16 while attending High School, a 1973 Light/Powder/baby blue hatchback.

I think I may have found it so this will be about my discovery of what I have bought and is this my old car. I purchased it used in 1980 most likely seems like it was near spring.

It was blue as I mentioned, had chrome "wagon wheels" was 4 speed had air conditioning and the original non sleeved motor with about 72,000 miles on it. I blew the motor up and installed a sleeved short block and had the head shaved and valve work done. I broke the spider gears out of the rear axle doing burnouts etc. I had I think B50-13 tires on the back and traction bars and air shocks so it had the hot rod look but was really slow. I had a hush thrush muffler on it with a pipe coming out the passenger side so it was relatively loud.

In the winter of 1981 I believe it was, I wrecked the car in a snow storm about 1/4 mile from my house. I scrounged the junk yard for some used body pieces to replace the
damaged ones and took them to a friend of mine to paint the car. Of course the baby blue had to go so I settled on Midnight Blue with metal flake and it came out really nice.

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The thing that got me thinking it was my car were the blue dots in the tail lights. I was pretty sure I had done that to my car when I was 16 and sure enough
I found two pictures of my car that you can see the blue dot in the lenses. So I began trying to find out what else this car had in common with my old car.

When I had my car painted we didnt do the door jams they were left light blue and it turns out this car was baby blue and a four speed car and I suspect it had
air conditioning as well. So I bought it and will be fixing it up here and there.

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Last edited by avewhtboy on Sat Aug 19, 2017 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby megavega » Wed Jul 08, 2015 5:28 pm

your orginal car had the pop out rear windows and the stadard no belt line trim, the one you just bought has the deluxe beltline trim and no pop out rear windows. You can see if it originally had the pop out windows(maybe somebody added the trim and standard windows) by observing the post there will be 2 little slots in the back side where the window hinges go into the pillar and also the rear latch was just screwed to the inside of the rear side window channel.

even if its not it, its certainly its brother and the memory will still take you back to those days, nice car! :th:
1972 hatchback, 28,000 orig miles, 427BBC/twin T4 turbo's/T56 six speed/big wheels, lowered down pro touring style-work in progress....

1973 vega wagon-under the blue flame knife.
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1972 Chevrolet Vega Hatchback

Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Wed Jul 08, 2015 7:21 pm

megavega wrote:your orginal car had the pop out rear windows and the stadard no belt line trim, the one you just bought has the deluxe beltline trim and no pop out rear windows. You can see if it originally had the pop out windows(maybe somebody added the trim and standard windows) by observing the post there will be 2 little slots in the back side where the window hinges go into the pillar and also the rear latch was just screwed to the inside of the rear side window channel.

even if its not it, its certainly its brother and the memory will still take you back to those days, nice car! :th:


Yes my car had pop out windows and this one does not, however the interior trim panels have the cut out for the handle for the pop out windows.

As far as the belt line trim? I am unsure what your talking about? I do know the car had a big block in it at one time I suspect they car twisted
is the reason for the rear window change? but it's just a guess.

May not be my car like you said, but it's dam close if it isn't it. When i take apart the interior panels I will look for those hinges and holes.

Thanks for the message I can't believe I own a "drag car" now
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Sun Jul 12, 2015 2:20 pm

So I took my car by my friend from high school who painted my car back in 1981 and he is convinced that it's my old car with some of his old
paint job remaining. It appears the roof and quarters still have the original Imron paint. We removed the tail lights and head lights and some
trim pieces and it all adds up.

The interior on my car was light blue to match the outside and I notice the "black" headliner has light blue showing through where its been
scratched so possible still has the original headliner.

The alternator took a dive on me while I was out so I didn't get to take it to the car show I was hoping to attend.

Maybe next month
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Mon Jul 13, 2015 1:26 pm

Short video walk around of the car as it sits now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmSk-6grC2Y
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby waybad » Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:15 pm

sweet find!!! :dance: :dance: :dance:
Tinker
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Tue Jul 14, 2015 2:12 pm

waybad wrote:sweet find!!! :dance: :dance: :dance:



Thanks man, I am really having fun messing around with it, brings back a lot of memories
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:08 am

So I have been working on Rerun, man oh man the things you find when you buy someone elses project.

Front brake pad on passenger side was metal on metal, I could hear it when i drove it around the block. I was afraid to use
the brakes, made for a very short maiden voyage.

I had a set of almost new pads that I had removed from my Astre project so I was able to fix that quickly and go for another drive.

I failed to mention when I was unloading it off the trailer there were streams of brake fluid dripping down both rear tires.

When I was on the way back from showing the car to my friend that painted it, the alternator took a crap. It had a one wire alternator
so not much troubleshooting to do. I was concerned about getting home due to the really noisy electric fan and the fact the motor is
running an electric water pump, I had about 30 miles to go but it was day time and no rain so I made it home fine.

Spoke with the fella I purchased the car from and he stated the rear brakes were brand new and suspected the brake lines were the problem.

Sure enough the brake line flares were single rather than double, no way they were going to seal up. So I bought a cheap flare tool from
Autozone and some brake line to re do those.

With that done I went to bleed all the brakes but the front bleeders were frozen in the calipers. After removing the calipers and taking them
to a friends shop, using copious amount of heat and extraction tools we were able to get them removed. After purchasing new bleed screws I
was hopeful to get a decent brake pedal. Not a lot of fun bleeding brakes alone but I managed to get most of the air out of the system.

So for now I have brakes good enough to drive in traffic situations but they are lacking compared to the "go power" so they will need an upgrade or two.

I have the power brake system removed from the Astre so I will probably switch to power brakes and do the S10 Spindle swap and maybe some disc
brakes in the back we will see where this goes.

I got a new One wire alternator from Autozone and fried it quickly. When I returned it I found it was only rated for 45 amps, I am sure my fans and water pump
killed it. They took it back though and I found another non 1 wire alternator rated at 80 amps and have been using that for now. I will get the one wire rebuilt
and put it back on eventually.

I found the headliner used to be light blue,I suspect someone painted all the interior trim panels black.



Front brake pad

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New exhaust tail pipes over the rear axle instead of under.

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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:52 am

And more pictures of it as it sits


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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Fri Jul 24, 2015 1:40 pm

I posted a new short video on youtube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmde-rR91yU
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:50 pm

So a few updates on project Rerun. As far as this possibly being my old car, I found the following two clues.

First,I was looking up the other day to see how much headroom clearance I had for a helmet and I noticed it
appears the headliner in this car was light blue and has been painted/dyed black. My car was light blue interior
and exterior.

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The second clue was the lower valance appears to have originally been painted red which would match the red
upper valance from the pictures before it was painted.

Image
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Wed Sep 23, 2015 7:51 pm

So I have been tinkering with the new/old project. My goal with this for now has just been to make it more driveable on the street. The biggest problem being the brakes and suspension.

I went ahead and installed the power booster and brake pedal from the Astre which really made the brakes feel better. When installing the S10 Blazer brakes I could not get the master cylinder to push the pistons out on the driver side of the car. I ended up replaced the master cylinder with one from a 1980 Malibu.

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I didn't really care for the ultra skinny front drag tires and wheels and they were original four lug setup which is less than idea for buying new wheels. I was planning to
do the A body spindles with some disk brakes but I found a set of S10 Blazer front brakes with the dual piston calipers that were one bolt from being removed a car
in the salvage yard so I grabbed them for $55 not know for sure if I would use them.

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Next was to order some ball joint weld in sleeves, Summit had those, so I was able to get them delivered quickly. Went to the local auto parts place and purchased upper
and lower ball joints for a 1998 S10 Blazer.

I had the upper and lower control arms from the Astre project that I will not be using so I used those to mount the new S10 ball joints and swapped all those parts out to
the Vega.

When I pulled the coil springs they were both bent so I knew those would not get put back in. What to do? I wanted to do Coil overs and have a set of ridetech shocks I am using on the Astre project so got me to thinking what would it take to put those shocks on this car. I called Ridetech but they didn't have the correct style spring needed so I ordered a set
of QA1 springs from Summit.

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So I have those installed and now wanted to figure out what wheels to put on the car. I have some Corvette Z06 wheels from the Astre project that I really like so I figured I
would see what it would take to install those. The front wheels are 17x9.5 and rears are 18x10.5. I purchased a pair of three inch spacers to test fit these wheels. but found these will not really fit front or rear.

The non Z06 C5 Corvette wheels are 17x8.5 front and 18x9.5 rear so I picked up a used set that size just to see if they will fit. I ordered a set of two inch spacers to use up front and think it all "fits" more or less for now.

I would like to lower the car about 2 inches which may cause further issues.

Ok so heres some pictures. This is with 17x8.5 front wheel with 235/45/17 tires and rear is 18x 9.5 with 275/35/18 tires.

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and a short video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmde-rR91yU
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby dindin » Thu Sep 24, 2015 9:47 am

Nice car, but to much wheel in my opinion, the eyes goes right to the wheel and overpowers everything else it in my opinion, other than that its a nice car.

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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Thu Sep 24, 2015 10:29 am

I hope once I get it sitting lower it won't look so much like a Hot Wheels car.
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Re: 1973 Vega project Rerun

Postby avewhtboy » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:32 pm

So I bit the bullet and spent $300 on some Blazer drop spindles. Lowered the front 2 inches and the rear 2 inches( Removed spring spacers).

Altitude in the front much better, but my rear tires are too wide so I had to air up the rear shocks for now. I have new rims coming then will get some smaller rear tires.

These are 17x8.5 215/35/17 front with 2" spacer
18x9.5 275/35/18 rear with 3" spacer

Image

Image
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