True Stories of The Muscle Car Fan 1970 Chevelle Restored

A 1970 Chevelle originally built with a 396 sat outdoors in Indiana for twenty years after a work injury stalled its first restoration attempt. In 2012, a grandfather and grandson struck a deal to finish the job, eventually digging the car’s original SS wheels out from six feet of dirt in a collapsed shed. Read on to find out what powers it now.

Some restorations get finished because a deadline forces the issue. This one got finished because a grandfather made a promise: put in the work, pay for the parts, and the car is yours. What followed was a two-year rebuild of a 1970 Chevelle that had already survived twenty years parked outdoors in Indiana weather, a car with three generations of family fingerprints on it and a set of original SS wheels that had to be dug out of six feet of dirt. The finished result carries more sentimental weight than most restorations ever will, and it very nearly never happened at all.

A Family Car Since the ’80s

This 1970 Chevelle started life as a genuine 396 car finished in Astro Blue with a three-speed column-shift automatic, a fairly typical mid-level configuration for the model year. The current owner’s grandfather brought it home from Arizona in the late 1980s, and his father bought it shortly after that purchase, beginning a restoration attempt that would end up spanning three full generations before it was finally, actually finished.

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An Injury That Stalled Everything

The father’s first restoration attempt didn’t get very far before life intervened. In 1991 he was injured at work and forced to sell the Chevelle back to his own father, ending that chapter of the project almost as soon as it began in earnest. The car then sat outdoors in northwest Indiana from 1991 all the way through 2012, exposed to two full decades of harsh weather with essentially no restoration work happening at all.

A Deal Between Grandfather and Grandson

In 2012, the current owner convinced his grandfather to help restore the car a second time, more than twenty years after the first attempt had stalled out. The terms were simple and direct: if the grandson put in the labor and covered the cost of parts himself, the grandfather would give him the Chevelle outright once it was finished, a deal that turned a long-stalled family project into a genuine second chance.

A New Drivetrain From an Unlikely Source

The original 396 had been sold off to another Chevelle owner years before this second restoration began, leaving the team without their original engine to work with. So they pulled a 350 small-block and a TH350 transmission out of a 1970s Suburban and dropped the combination straight into the Chevelle. After a few days of careful tuning, it ran great, and they converted the shifter setup to a B&M three-speed unit mounted on the floor.

Replacing Everything That Wears Out

Beyond the drivetrain swap, the restoration touched nearly every mechanical system on the car from front to back. The radiator, master cylinder, power brake booster, heater core, gauge cluster, dash pad, and headliner were all replaced during the process, a list that reflects just how much wear two decades of outdoor storage had inflicted on components most owners never think about until they actually fail.

Twenty Years of Rust Damage

After two decades exposed to Indiana weather without any real protection, the body was in genuinely rough shape, with considerable hail and rust damage spread across most of the sheet metal panels. The only original panels the team managed to save were the door skins, hood, roof, and trunk lid, and even those required extensive bodywork before they were usable again on the finished car.

A Cranberry Red Finish

The bodywork phase alone consumed the majority of the two-year restoration timeline, far outpacing every other stage of the project combined. Once the panels were finally straight and solid, the owner and his family painted the car themselves in period-correct Cranberry Red acrylic enamel, adding black racing stripes to match the original factory look from 1970.

Matching the Original GM Color Code

Getting that color exactly right mattered enough that they had the paint specially mixed to match the proper GM color code rather than settling for an approximate modern equivalent from a local shop. That attention to detail extended through the entire two-year process, reflecting just how much the finished car meant to everyone involved in getting it back on the road.

Digging Original Wheels Out of a Groundhog Burrow

In one of the stranger turns of the entire project, the owner tracked down the car’s original 1970 SS wheels from a man whose shed floor had caved in years earlier after groundhogs undermined the foundation underneath it. He had to dig the wheels out from six feet of dirt before sandblasting, repairing, and painting them himself, restoring a set of original wheels that easily could have been lost for good otherwise.

A Full Suspension and Exhaust Rebuild

The suspension also received a full rebuild during the restoration, with new A-arms, shocks, and big block-rated springs installed throughout the front and rear. A Magnaflow exhaust system and a 3.42-geared 12-bolt rear end rounded out the mechanical package, giving the Chevelle a genuinely usable drivetrain rather than just a cosmetically restored shell sitting on old, tired running gear.

What Comes Next for the Interior

With the exterior and drivetrain largely sorted after two years of steady work, the owner’s future plans center on the interior and a bigger engine down the road. He’s hoping to install reproduction paneling, bucket seats, a console, and a horseshoe-style shifter, followed eventually by swapping in a four-bolt-main 454 that still needs a full rebuild before it’s ready to install.

A Bigger Engine and New Wiring Ahead

Beyond the engine swap, he also plans a matching transmission upgrade and a full rewiring job using new harnesses to eliminate the car’s remaining electrical gremlins, the kind of nagging issues that tend to surface on any car this old regardless of how thorough the initial restoration was. For now, though, the Chevelle is a family build with genuine sentimental value that the owner says will stay in the family for as long as he can help it.

Three Generations, One Car

Three generations of hands have now touched this Chevelle in some form, from the grandfather who first brought it home from Arizona, to the father whose short-lived restoration attempt ended in a work injury, to the grandson who finally finished the job he’d inherited. That kind of continuity is rare enough on its own, long before you factor in wheels dug out of a collapsed shed.

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