1966 L79 Chevy II w/ 4365 miles

[Jamess113]

Hi, I've been member here for a while and have made a few posts here and there, mostly in the for sale section. I've enjoyed the site over the years as there are lots of great cars and loads of great info here. I own a small restoration shop in NH and we just recently purchased an Aztec Bronze 1966 L79 Chevy II Super Sport with 4365 original miles with two very interesting options, K66 TI ignition and K16 A.I.R. and thought this would be a great place to share it. We purchased the car from the 3rd owner who bought it just over 34 years ago at the Pomona Swap Meet in California.

At the time of purchase the car was quite dirty from just sitting. We determined from the 3rd owners service notes that the car hasn't been started since 2016 and still hasn't been started as of yet as we're cleaning the inside of the gas tank now. So for the last couple of weeks we've been just carefully cleaning up the interior and inside of the trunk compartment. We've been photo documenting as we go along and I have to say it's cleaning up very nicely. From what I understand, the original owner of the Chevy II was somewhat of a hoarder and at the time of its first sale it was pretty much being used as a storage container in a garage that was packed full. Clark, the 3rd owner who we purchased it from was able to meet the original owner James Kirkwood when he bought the car from the 2nd owner, Mike Miller in 1988 as the 2 didn't live far apart from each other. For the most part, not a whole lot has ever been apart on this car with the exception of a few things. The car wears most of its original paint, I would say 80% or so is original and it has its complete original born with drive train. From what we can tell, been told, and know, the passenger fender has been replaced and repainted and the right door and the right side of the hood were blended along with the top right side of the cowl. We were told the original owner hit a deer shortly after buying the car and parked it after the accident. We're not quite sure who replaced the right fender as it could have been the first owner or the second owner but, we do know it was never painted until the the 3rd owner bought the car in 1988 at the Pomona CA swap meet. Clark paid 20k for it in 1988 which seems to be a lot of money for that car at the time, at least that's my opinion. For the last 34 plus years the car has sat in a private collection and to be honest I don't think it's seen much love over the course of those years. Any parts that have been changed over the course of the last 34 plus years have all been saved. Wheel cylinders and brake hoses have been replaced but the originals were all saved. We plan on rebuilding them and reinstalling them. Both heater hoses have been replaced and we still have both originals but are obviously not saveable or reusable. The Smog pump has been gutted but all the internal parts have been saved. The carburetor was rebuilt in 2016 and from what we can tell it has not seen any gas since then. We looked inside the float sites with a borescope and it's spotless inside. The car has most of its original exhaust, front pipes, mufflers and resonators are all original but the tail pipes were replaced by the 3rd owner Clark. We were told they were very rusty and he had a local muffler shop duplicate the factory ones. Something that's pretty cool is the tires that are on the car currently were installed shortly after the car was purchased new by James Kirkwoood. I haven't figured out how to decipher the date code on the tires but from my research, Uniroyal only offered that style tire for a couple of years. 66 -67 maybe 68 but not 100% sure about that. If anyone can help with that please let me know.

Our goal is to keep the car as it is with the exception of just cleaning and detailing it very well. We have no intentions of painting or restoring anything that hasn't been touched before. We are just looking to preserve this one as is and sharing it with anyone that's interested. The right fender and the right side of the hood both have a big scratch in them and we are considering repairing both as both have been painted and blended already. Haven't decided on that yet though.

Other options according to the cowl tag are, Tinted Windshield, 4spd, Rear Speaker & Custom Seat Belts

We would like to attend MCACN this year with the Chevy II. So we're hoping we can make that happen. I've always wanted to go so maybe we'll be able to make it work.

Here are some pictures. I have lots so if you'd like to see more I'll post them.