LeeRoy wrote:

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

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 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. 

4SPEED427 wrote:

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

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 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

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.

4SPEED427 wrote:

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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!

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 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