1969 Firebird progress

[JLM]

Took some time this afternoon to go down to the body shop and take a look at the progress on my 1969 Firebird.

The car just got out of the soda blast last week, so it's my first glimpse at the virgin metal on the car aside from the steel I put in to the car myself.

So far pretty much everything is in line with what we thought the car would look like. The rear window lower seal has some pitting and corrosion where the molding goes, so they'll patch that area. There's also a bit of corrosion under the top windshield seal that will need some attention.

Everything else is solid. I had feared that the rockers might need work, but aside from a bit of surface rust that you can see in the pictures, they are solid.

The decided not to remove the filler I sued to cover the seams on the 1/4 panels from the new sheet metal.

There's currently two cars ahead of mine that need to be finished up before I'll start to see some color on my bird. The blue torino that you see next to my car in some of the pics just came out of paint last week, and still requires color sanding, and final assembly. A frame-off challenger was in the paint booth being sprayed while I was there. So it's looking like it's gonna be a couple more months!!!

[dropit69]

not to bad for something that old..is that the exhaust sticking out from under the doors?

[JLM]

When I purchased the car, the previous owner was turning it in to a strip car. Those are 4" cutouts from directly aft of the collectors. As you can see they are capped for "street use."

After paint there is still a TON to do to this car. Not withstanding putting a street legal exhaust system on the car. A set of Tri-Y's with a magnaflow X pipe and over axle pipes should do the trick.