Member: Todd Doberstein

Car: 1968 Chevelle Malibu

Pictured here is my 1968 Chevelle Malibu. My adventure started in 1980 when a friend of the family sold my dad the car for $25.00.My dad then (gifted) the car to my brother, which he drove for a year. My brother then sold it to me for $1.00. I drove it for a while and then parked it behind the chicken barn.

I was offered $1,000.00 for it and as a kid of sixteen that was a lot of money, but I refused to sell it.

My wife came along and I showed her the car and she said, someday we’re going to get that car going. We moved to Oakbank, Manitoba and met some people by the name of Jeff & Tracy Jozsi. In the spring of 2002, Jeff said let’s tug it home and get it going. So that’s what we did. Jeff is a mechanic by trade and he had restored cars in the past so he knew what steps to take and which ones to do first.

Twenty years went by and the car sat in the same place through winters and summers.

We did the brakes first. We then yanked the motor and I cleaned up the engine bay. The 230, 6 cylinder was very tired and finished. I wanted a muscle car so the 230 6 cylinder was not going to be rebuilt and put back in.

I purchased a 1976 Pontiac with a 350 from my uncle. I knew the motor was good. The car had been parked for ten years and still sparked up. When I sparked it up and did a compression test, all the cylinders were 170 – 175. I pulled the motor and hauled away the rest. I took the motor apart in my garage and saw the cylinders were all nice and clean. My uncle changed the oil so often it didn’t have time to get dirty.

I cleaned the block and repainted it Chevy orange. I then bought 202 Chevy heads and put a 350 - 327 performance cam in it and also a 4-barrel performance Eldebrock intake manifold on. Sitting on that is a 600 Eldebrock Carburetor.

I then put the engine in the car and hooked it up to the 2-speed power glide transmission. I then hauled it to my good friends at Thruway Muffler in Winnipeg, Manitoba. There Gil Maynard, the owner installed the Flow Tec headers and some mufflers so I could get the car going and then come back and choose the mufflers of my choice.

When it was time to start the car, Jeff and I had flames and backfires going on but soon had it running smooth. The cars’ heart was pumping and so was Jeff’s, my wife’s as well as mine.

We then took it back to Thruway Muffler to get the rest of the exhaust system. I thought the sound of the car was good but my wife didn’t think the same. She said, “If you’re doing the car up, do it the way you want it. Do it properly.” So I put a 2-½ Dewell exhaust on all the way to drop out just below the back bumper. I also put on flow pro mufflers. What a good choice, the car sounds great and has a deep lumpy (throat) sound. We then dropped the oil out of transmission and changed the filter. After sitting all those years, the transmission shifted and moved the car.

We drove the car for the summer of 2004 and have taken in car shows all over Winnipeg. I didn’t want to go to the car shows because the car wasn’t finished and that is all you see there. My friend Jeff said that people want to see a car in progress. He was right. People were asking me questions about the car and I could answer them because I had it for so long. I had offers to buy the car but always refused.

Hopefully in the fall of 2005we will be able to get the body done and then the interior. We enjoy the car the way it is now and it will only get better as time goes on.

Special thanks to Jeff Jozsi for getting me started. Without him, it would still be sitting in the field. Also, thanks to my wife Louise because she is just as crazy about the car as I am. She is pushing me to get the car finished. She loves cars the way I do and can’t wait for those summers drives.

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