My brother found this 76 luv in this old guys back yard and went knocking on his door. He wasn't a vary friendly old guy and when he asked him about selling the old chevy luv the old guy said that his ex-wife's name was on the title and that old bat won't sign off. My brother told him well if you can get her to sign off he would like to buy it. The guy said he had tried before and she won't do it.
About a year went by and my brother went back. Nothing had changed so my brother told him to give her a call and tell her if she would come and sign off on the title that he would give them $500 each. She said she would be there that Saturday.
The dry climate here in Central Oregon is great for finding rust free little gems like this 76 luv.
It has 72350 miles on it and was taken pretty well care of.
There is only 3 dings in the entire body, the rest is perfectly straight.
The interior is unbelievable accept for where the sun hit the top of the dash, the visors and the steering wheel was pretty messed up.
The original paint was sun baked and down to the sheet metal in spots, mostly the top and the hood.
It had been sitting for a long time, but still ran and didn't need much work to get it back on the road.
First we cleaned it up, changed out all the fluids and put in a new battery and fuel filter.
Drove it around for a bit and it started cutting out like it wasn't getting fuel.
Checked the new fuel filter and sure enough it was full of crap.
Pulled the gas tank and flushed it out, there really wasn't that much in there and decided that the tank was rust free enough to still be usable.
Put the gas tank back in with a another new filter and decided to replace the fuel line and pump as well.
After driving it around for a bit and no other problems showing up, we decided the steering wheel had to go next.
There was a old chevy steering wheel still on the tilt column in the junk pile, I think it was out of a van, and we thought it would be cool to have a tilt wheel.
In hind sight it probably wasn't worth it, that column was a real bitch to get in there, but we got it in and it doesn't look to bad, we joked that it's probably the only luv with a tilt wheel.
We decided we didn't want to paint it yet but should get some paint on the bare spots. I took the top and hood down to bare metal and my brother sprayed them with black primer and mixed up some orange to touch up some other spots.
This was the last car we worked on together before my brother passed away last year.
I drove the luv around a little bit last summer not doing anything more to it accept changing out the fuel filter again, it's still getting crap in it but was still running great, it idles real low without skipping a beat.
I parked it for the winter not knowing what I was going to do with it.
The weather is starting to get nice here now and last week I decided I should replace the exhausts manifold gasket on my jeep that started leaking last winter. I figured I would use my wife's jeep incase something went wrong and didn't get it back together right away.
Sure enough I had 2 broken bolts on the manifold and my wife was gone with her car and I was going to have to wait for her to get back before I could go to the auto parts.
Then I thought well I have 3 other cars here maybe I'll drive one of those. I checked the tags on each one and the chevy luv was the only one with current tags. I found the keys, jumped in, it started right up after sitting all winter and off to the napa I went.
I got the jeep fixed and then all I could think about is that chevy luv and how I think I would like to finish what me and my brother started.
Yesterday I decided to drive the luv to work. When I got off work I noticed an oil leak. It must of just happened because it wasn't there the day before after driving it.
I was hoping it would be something simple, but it looks like it's coming from the head gasket right under the intake.
And so it begins.
I luv this website and this is going to make working on my luv a lot of fun I think.