[jims69camaro]

ok. this will be as detailed as i can offer. i will take pics upon request. i am far from an expert as this is my first restoration/modification. i have swapped engines, trans, body panels and i went to school for body work + worked for a time for a body shop, so i thought i had seen/done enough to finally start this project. the following accounting has happened over the several past weeks that the strip-down has taken place.

one of the very first things i found was that the plate that the t-tops fit into in the middle was severely rusted. i hoped that the rust was only skin deep. when i got the plate off i was relieved that it was the only thing of the roof that was rusted. big sigh of relief.

the passenger side fender and door are not original to the car. the re-paint was only so deep, and it took barely no effort to find out what was underneath. both fenders have been stripped to bare metal (as many as 4 layers of paint) and rattle-can self-etching primered. self-etching really wasn't necessary, because i used 400 grit sandpaper to remove the paint, and the metal certainly has enough bite to it for any quality primer/paint system to grab ahold of.

ok, so the car had been in an accident. think of the worst case scenario. take a minute to firmly visualize it. because the next bit is going to knock your socks off.

we removed the seats, console, etc., in preparation to remove the carpet. now, i tried to talk my daughter into not having a back seat, but she is firm on the point that she wants one. in case you didn't know, she is my partner in crime on this project. i talked her into helping me and when we're done i will sign the title over to her. ok, so we get the carpet out. i am on the driver's side and she is on the passenger side. i start poking around with the pointed end of one of my body hammers, looking for holes. i look over at her side and see the floor under the seat was buckled. anyway, i found a hole by the dead pedal, which i could have foreseen. what i did not foresee is what i found when i made it over to her side. she said the floor had a hole in it. boy, was she right. the damage from the accident had buckled the floor. whoever did the work cut a 16" gash in the floor. what was surprising was that they did not weld the gash shut. not only that, but they didn't even dress it out! no sanding, no primer, no paint. and they did it twice, once under the front seat before the supporting cross-member and once after it. the second gash isn't as big, but they are both rusty as you can imagine. i wondered why it smelled of exhaust so much, and my wonder has been answered. the exhaust leak under the passenger seat was allowed to enter the driving compartment by the huge gash in the floor. of course, the carpet covered their tracks, so only an underside inspection or pulling the carpet would reveal what they'd done.

ok, so we know the car has been in an accident, with enough damage done to it that it buckled the floor. i can work that buckle out, and i can repair the damage done with the plasma torch. i just don't understand why anyone would do such a thing.

outside of small rust holes in the floor and the huge and smaller gashes, there appears to be zero rust on this car. i am actually very surprised/relieved. the t-top plate will have to be sourced from i don't know where yet. i have sheet metal to fix the holes.

on to the doors. the driver's side has very little surface rust that can easily be ground down and epoxy filled smooth. the passenger side has rusted through the bottom lip of the door skin through to the metal beneath. it's approximately 2" X 18", and although it has a lip that continues to the interior side of the door, i still think cutting it out and replacing it with new sheet metal will be the easy fix. since it's from another car, though, i don't know if i should replace the door with one from a junk yard. i really have to watch getting too involved with cutting and replacing metal as that will eat time away from our goal, which is february 2011. that's when she will get her provisional driver's license. i've been teaching her to drive, so i am not worried about her skills. she has reflexes like mine so i am sure she will be able to avoid accidents like i do.

we're moving onto the engine compartment. i told her that no matter what we do, either build an engine or get a crate motor, we'll have to pull the motor that's in there. also, i talked her out of A/C, so that hole on the firewall will have to be filled. i am thinking about junking the wire harness and sourcing one from Painless, since there are many wire in the harness that are no longer used (it was a tpi car to begin with) and trying to lay out what we need and using what's there is going to be a nightmare. i think i will avoid the whole affair and pay Painless to run what we need in the harness - i think they have a stock type harness and can add custom stuff to it, if necessary. since we won't be using much of what's there and we'll be adding fog lamps, stereo system, etc., i might be better off leaving that to the experts.

she'll be here today to continue to pull the stuff from the engine compartment. once all of the peripheral stuff is cleared, i have to figure out someway to use the tree in the backyard that hang over the car to help me pull the motor. an engine hoist on soft ground is not a good idea.

questions/comments welcome. also, if you want to see pictorial proof, just ask. my cell phone takes pretty good pics.