'74 Chevrolet Malibu Classic STW

We have been operating our Stock Eliminator Drag Race team together with my dad, racing with our '74 Malibu Classic 2D Coupe. Now I bought myself this '74 Malibu Classic STW that I found with a reasonable price a bit less than 100 Miles away from my home. Originally sold new in Finland and used as a Hearse for a couple of decades before "retirement" and moving to regular traffic. Here in Finland, several US made Wagons were used as Hearses back in the day. Just throw out the backseat and install everything needed to carry the coffin inside.

The good thing with these old Hearses is that they have often pretty low mileage, which means they usually are in better condition than the regular Wagons that were sold to private use. Finnish winters are rough and a lot of road salt is used, so often these are really rusty. The mileage on my Wagon is only around 60,300 Miles. It has a few rust spots, mainly in rear fenders, but that's not a problem - that's what the welding machine is made for!

It has 350 SBC with Rochester 2 bbl carburetor. Not a race car, but I think it'll do just fine as a daily driver. Luckily the engine is really close to stock, with most of the smog-equipment still in use (and functioning). It runs very nicely so I'm not planning on doing anything else but regular maintenance for it.

Interior is in really good condition. Dash is completely stock. Dash pad is not cracked, there are no extra holes drilled for anything, there is even no radio installed. I will have to install one so that I can listen to Rockabilly music while driving, but I don't want to destroy the dash either, so the radio will be installed under the dash...

What has to be done then? Well, here are the most critical things that need attention.
-Exhaust pipes. The car has now literally straight exhaust pipes and no mufflers. Loud is fine, but 145 hp small block doesn't sound very good with no mufflers...
-Lights. Headlights, high beams and tail lights, reverse lights and brake lights work fine, but turn signals and parking lights barely light up. I'm guessing it's a ground issue, so I need to check the wiring. After these two, I think I might be able to pass the mandatory tech inspection to make it legal to drive.
-Rust repairs. Rear fenders need some attention and there are some other smaller rust spots as well. Those will need to be fixed before winter, so they don't get worse.
-New wheels and tires. I want to go with 15" steel wheels, Dog Dish hubcaps and tires with narrow whitewalls.
-General maintenance, oil changes, new spark plugs, wires, distributor cap etc etc. Also lots of cleanup here and there, washing, waxing etc.

And as usual when driving an old car every day, everything will come up when you least expect it. So this "project" will keep going as long as I have the car. Hopefully some of you find it interesting and understand my English which is not my native language.

Here are a few pics of the car that I took when I picked it up. The drive to home went really smoothly. It's a pleasure to drive for sure.

That's a really nice project, and it looks to be in far better shape than I would have expected for a car that saw winter use for all those years.

I wonder why they would just do straight pipes with no mufflers, though?  That would be a bit distracting at a funeral service, I would think...

nice project you have Welcome aboard

Thanks for interest, Guys!

thatfnthing wrote:That's a really nice project, and it looks to be in far better shape than I would have expected for a car that saw winter use for all those years.

I wonder why they would just do straight pipes with no mufflers, though?  That would be a bit distracting at a funeral service, I would think...

There is some rust on the chassis and wheel wells, but otherwise it's definitely better than what these usually are. The pretty low mileage helps a lot, and usually the Funeral Service companies took a really good care of their vehicles, too.

The straight pipes were done by one of the past owners after the car retired from the funeral service. Personally I don't understand why someone built only straight pipes with no mufflers, with a few hours of extra work he would have done a proper exhaust system to the car.


At the moment I've started working on it, and I've done several smaller things on it. Also, driver's side exhaust pipe is done. But more on that when I get the passenger side pipe done as well, so stay tuned...

Very cool wagon and looks like a great project car. From the pics it looks to be a really solid survivor.

Thanks Guys, the car is in a decent shape. Definitely not perfect, but better than the average when talking about these 3rd Gen GM A-Bodies that are over here in this country.

I've done a bit of work to the car. Nothing special, I changed engine oil and filter, new air filter, changed the rock hard and leaking valve cover gaskets and cleaned up the engine bay a little. I also started figuring out what's wrong with turn signals and parking lights as they barely light up. The contact areas where the bulbs are mounted are good to go and correct amount of power comes in there. Maybe it's a ground issue.

I finished the exhaust pipes as well. They were pretty easy to do, I re-used the old straight pipes for the most part, but had to do a couple of bends on them to clear the transmission crossmember properly. I also made proper hangers and added one Dynomax muffler on each side. Now the exhaust ends right before the rear axle which should be pretty good. At least the sound is exactly what I wanted - not too loud but not too quiet either, everyone can hear that it has a V8 under the hood, but the neighbors don't get mad...



It's a shame there's no more time to work on this thing during the day. As I am at work from 8AM to 4PM, there's not much time to work on it in the evening. Anyway, I'm going to go to the tech inspection on Tuesday. I might not pass right away, but when it's on Tuesday, I have still a couple of days to fix it before a local Cruise Night on Friday and a big American Car PickNick event on Sunday which is close to where I bought this thing from, and I promised the seller that the car will be there.

StockEliminator wrote:I also started figuring out what's wrong with turn signals and parking lights as they barely light up. The contact areas where the bulbs are mounted are good to go and correct amount of power comes in there. Maybe it's a ground issue.

It's almost always a ground issue, and our cars suffer from them a lot. Find every place a wire hits the sheet metal (there will be a lot of them), disconnect it, hit everything with sandpaper until you see bare metal, then put it back. If I recall correctly, the headlight/turn signals ground to the radiator brace near each light.

Thanks, you're correct, it was a ground issue. I checked all wires and connections and cleaned up the ground mounting points, but that didn't fix the problem. With new ground wires mounted directly to the light bulb the parking lights started working. So the plastic part where the bulb and wires connect, seems to be broken. Can't find a source for them right now, but when I do, I can undo my "repair" and return the wirings back to normal.

Today I also changed sway bar bushings and welded a couple of rust spots as well. They were the most critical ones, I still have some more rust to deal with, but I think I'll do them after the tech inspection.

Today we worked with the tires and wheels together with my friend who has the machines. I took the steel wheels and hubcaps from my 1st Gen Chevy S10 which is my current daily driver (but which will be sold once the Malibu passes tech inspection). Tires are old 235/75/15 whitewalls from my friend's garage that I traded for a couple of beer cases.

The S10 got wheels from the Malibu, with the same tires it had before.

I also added new windshield washer system. It's not original, but it's all I could find at this time frame. I also added some grease to all front suspension bushings / ball joints and did a little cleanup to the interior and changed the headlight assemblies. Tomorrow it's time for tech inspection. I don't believe that it's going to pass right away, but hopefully I don't get huge amount of things I need to fix...

It sure looks better with the new tires and wheels.

Best of luck with the inspection!

Thanks! The tech inspection went really well. I thought there will be some things that are not going to pass, but surprisingly the car passed easily. The inspector found nothing wrong with it so now it's legal to drive.

I've driven a few hundred miles with it and everything seems to work really well. Today with my good friend we washed and waxed the car. Sure was a big improvement:

Im running the same hubcaps on my 85 S-10, which is really a GMC S-15 so a little cognitive dissonance for anyone who notices.

LOL. It's clean in a good picture, but I still love that little truck for some reason. Haven't done the tilt column yet. Things ground to a halt here due to family illnesses pretty much this whole year so far. I haven't been able to get over to Houston at all, and it's only 3 hours. But you never know when a window will open up.

That's a great looking S15! Those Pickups are neat to drive as well. I had this S10 as my daily driver for over four years. Very reliable car that was a pleasure to drive. Unfortunately now as I have this Malibu Wagon, I'll need to sell the S10. But all good things must come to an end I guess.





The Malibu has been working very well. There has been zero problems at all, and I've driven around 1600 Miles with it since I passed the tech inspection. I've visited in several Cruising Nights, and it seems that surprisingly many people come to check out this old Hearse a little closer. Well, I have to admit that these are pretty rare nowadays - most of them have rusted away...

A Couple of weeks ago I went to see one '74 Malibu Wagon that was left sitting outside at someone's yard. I drove mine over there and went to knock on the door to see the owner, hoping he would sell parts from it. Unfortunately no one was home, so I wrote my greetings to a piece of paper and put it in the mailbox. The Wagon was pretty rusty, but it had some good parts, so I was really happy when the owner called me the next week, telling that all parts are for sale and he invited me to come over and take a look what I need.

Last Saturday I drove back to the same place with tools in the trunk. The owner was a super nice guy and he was very happy to see these parts going in a good use. He said he has better doors and bumpers stored in another place, so I'll need to go back and make a deal on them later (my doors and bumpers are not very good...). But I took bunch of parts that I needed (most importantly tail lights, rear door panels and side markers (even though the other side marker requires a drill to get it off, so I'll take care of it next time), and pair of window cranks), but also I took bunch of other parts "just in case", as if I ever happen to need them, then they are going to be very tricky to find.

The best part on this deal was, the owner was so happy to see these parts going in a good use, when I asked him what do these cost, he said that you can have them for free. I said it multiple times already, and he is probably not reading this, but Thank You once again.

This is the "parts car".



And this is what I got. Some of the parts were not possible to get off with the tools I had (driver's side sill plates, other side marker and other rear door opening linkage) so I'll need to go back there next time with some heavier equipment.



He said he is going to clean up the yard next year and then everything will go to the trash. I was just wondering if I should take more stuff off from the Malibu. Body parts are pretty rusty, but there would still be some decent parts... For example, many of the chassis parts (springs, A-Arms etc), front inner fenders and some dash parts could be pretty good. I have to think about it, but I have limited space...

Take some pics when you go back and maybe members here might put in an order. I collect parts whenever I can find them--and yes, one starts to run out of space after a while.

crice63 wrote:Take some pics when you go back and maybe members here might put in an order. I collect parts whenever I can find them--and yes, one starts to run out of space after a while.

That's exactly what I planned on doing. The only problem is my location, as I'm here in Finland (in Europe) so shipping to USA is might be expensive. But I was planning to ask the local car guys over here if anyone needs anything.
And of course, if someone here at G3GM needs something, I can check if the car has those parts on place. I can tell you that larger parts are not a good idea to ship across the world, but if someone needs some smaller parts that might be hard to find, I can ship them anywhere if someone pays the shipping (smaller packages are obviously not that expensive). The car is pretty complete, and I'm going to go back there for another visit sooner or later anyway.


Today I got both tail lights that I took off from the yellow Wagon restored. First I cleaned them up carefully and then repainted them with silver and black. They're not perfect (and the brush strokes are showing much better in picture than in real life), but definitely a whole lot better than the ones I have in the car! Hopefully tomorrow I can install them on place before heading to a "not-so-local" Cruising Night here in Finland.



Now I feel like I need a beer so cheers everyone.

Based on my experience of owning a 1975 station wagon, I would remove all of the plastic interior parts (assuming they are not crumbling to dust) from the cargo area as well as those inside the liftgate. Take all of the interior door panels and chrome exterior door trim and the chrome trim from around the liftgate glass and cargo area glass. Take the glass too, because no one is making new parts. Better idea: take ALL the glass while you're at it. Very few new pieces are being made for sedans/wagons.