The Money Pit

[jlwdvm]

I made the mistake of cruising around on Craigslist one day at the clinic and this is what I found. I had noticed it about a month before and the seller had dropped his price significantly, so I figured there was blood in the water and had to take a look. After a week of negotiating and 2 truck loads of parts and a car trailer later it ended up in my garage! It had a coat of epoxy primer on it that needed to be stripped and resprayed, a few small patch panels needed to be welded in to the rockers, but other than that I thought it was solid. But as I dove into it, I began to find that a lot of the work that had been previously done wasn't up to my standards. I had originally thought I would do a 69 Trans Am clone, but that soon changed! I bought the project in August of 2009 and thought I would be done in 2 years...yeh right!

[jlwdvm]

I decided to section off the 3rd stall in my garage to keep dust, over spray, flying debris, sparks, etc confined.

[jlwdvm]

The top of the dash was held in by 2 screws and the welds for the front of the dash had been removed, so after about 2 weeks of asking around on Camaros.net I was able to get some measurements and pictures of the location for the dash front. I test fit the windshield, measured 2-3 more times, and started welding.

[jlwdvm]

Stripped the old epoxy primer off to find some shoddy body work. There was 3/8" of rubbery filler in the center of the rear valence, a severely pitted roof and lower filler panel from a previous vinyl top, and a few other issues. I pulled the dent out of the rear valence using a come-a-long and my truck as an anchor, and then had to do some heat shrinking to tighten the metal back up. I removed and replaced the roof and filler panel. Keep in mind I have no experience with body work, painting, and taught myself how to weld!

[jlwdvm]

new roof

[jlwdvm]

And now some Pro-Touring mods:

[85coupe50]

Great work. Love the paint booth... Boy would the neighbors be pissed if I did something like that here.

[jlwdvm]

I have close neighbors too. I try to paint at night when the wind direction is favorable and people have their windows closed. I haven't had any complaints yet. I have a friend that is a professional car restorer with a large paint booth that is going to apply the white top coat with blue stripes if I ever get to that point!

[BLACKLIST]

nice job on the body work. I wanted to setup half my garage like that as well. what color you planning on paint it?

[jlwdvm]

It will eventually be white with Blue stripes like the original 69 TA's.

[jlwdvm]

DSE Subframe connectors and 6-point roll bar installed. THe wheel tubs and roll bar kit came from Chris Alston Chassis.

[jlwdvm]

To Be Continued...