'69 Firebird Convertible Project.

[Josue]

Picked the body up from the 'blaster's last night, he did a pretty good job! Only charged $500 for the body itself, granted, it's a convertible, and the 1/4's were cut off, but I didn't think it was a bad price. The deck lid was $50, and the doors and fenders were $55 ea. We're pretty happy with his work!

Got the body and deck lid primed up tonight though....what a PITA crawling around on my back like that! hahaha Thank god for the PPS cups I used, or else I would've never been able to spray at all the different angles needed to get underneath the car without spilling paint all over myself and the floor!

Sprayed most of the underneath and realized..."HEY, I forgot to take pics of it in bare metal!" lol










Deck lid is pretty wavy, gonna take more mud than I thought!

[Josue]

Unfortunatly, as expected, the blasting revealed alot more problem areas than we initially thought. I already didn't like the work the previous owner did in installing the driverside floor pan, rear inner 1/4, and the fact that instead of installing the entire trunk pan he bought, he just cut a few pieces out and welded them in....terrible. I planned on redoing all this, but the rest of the floor pan has some questionable areas in it, so I might do an entire floor. Same with the trunk pan, it's not bad, but a new one is best. That's why these areas are bare metal still, I didn't want to waste the primer if I was just going to replace the panels...

So, it might be sitting for a while until my parents can come up with some money to get these parts. I already had to chip in $300 of my money to pay for the rest of the sandblasting, the DP90 and rest of the materials I had them buy was over $600, so they were a little short. haha Maybe I can slam out some side work in the mean time and get some cash flow coming in!!

[Code Red]

real nice Josh

yeah at some point I think the GTO needs to be taken all the way down since I know it has some questionable areas

[Josue]

Might be able to help ya out, if I'm still around! (FAA thingy...)

[Josue]

More small updates...

Spent about 6 hours this past saturday straightening the decklid out. Bondo wasn't drying too well, then it'd rock up out of nowhere, so it was a pain to sand. I usually like to start sanding when it's just getting tacky...it helps get the shape without busting your ass. I see these things on craigslist for cheap all day, and we probably could've found one in better shape, so I didn't have to mud it end to end, but after paying $50 to have it blasted, then spraying it with DP90, we already had some good money into it, so I just fixed it...



Respirator kids....this is dangerous stuff!



Fin...(for now lol)



Primed it tonight...



Did the glove box door too...

[Josue]

Here's a picture walk through of the rest of the car, and the problem area's I have to deal with...

Outer side cowl assemblies-

They're not too too bad, but there are some rust holes, and previous shady repairs, and mom wants this car done right, no matter what the cost, so I'm gonna put these in...




Center cowl repair-

The kid welded a new dash piece on the top there, and he cut the cowl area for whatever reason. New one is over $300, so I'm just gonna weld this back up...



Lower door post repair panel-

Self explanitory. lol Luckily they make a patch panel for this area, so that should make it easy...



New complete floor assembly-

More shady work from the previous owner, the floorpan he welded in is horrible. Check out this pic of the driver side toe board....WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WELD A NEW PANEL ON TOP OF ROTTED, CONTAMINATED METAL?!?!?!?!?!?!?



Under the rear seat doesn't look much better...



Passanger side, under the seat...pretty nasty.



Rear floorboard...



Front floorboard/toe board...again, questionable repair area.



Pricing these pieces out individually, it'll only be $15 more to do a complete floorpan assembly, plus less work, so we're going that route.

Complete wheelhouse panels-

Driver side...suprise suprise, hack job welding it in...



The inner is rusted too...



Passanger side...





Complete wheelhouse assemblies are cheap, so I'll put it in with one shot.

[Josue]

Trunk floor kit-

Aaaaaaand, once again, WTF was this kid thinking? Why, when you can CLEARLY see that the whole trunk pan is rusted, would you patch some pieces in!?




So, we're gonna do a whole kit, new floor, extensions, kick down looking pieces behind the quarter, and braces underneath. He managed to splice one of those in thinking that was the way to go...



Extensions...




New complete quarter panels-

We have new skins for it, but getting complete quarters will be a better, easier repair, so we're going that route. It will take care of the rust around this area...



And also these previous repairs in the door jamb area...




All in all, the bill from Classic Industries is around $2,000 for all these parts. My dad's trying to sell one of his antique pool tables (1912!), and once he does, we should have the money to keep rolling on this. Hopefully I can get some stuff done before long, it's already cold as hell around here!

In the mean time, I'm just gonna mud up the fenders and doors. I wanted to fit these to the car 1st, but I don't want to waste time while I'm waiting for them to come up with the money for these parts, so I'll just tweak them later if need be....

[Code Red]

wow Josh alot of work ahead of you man good luck

[GM_muscle]

i see lots of metal work comimg up.

[Josue]

I like metal work ALOT better than bondo work! haha I can't wait to start cutting and welding...

[Josue]

Dad sold that pool table today, so we're gonna get the ball rolling on some parts this week!! Got $2,800 for it, but he has to give my mom some money so they can get a website made for their house in Aruba they want to rent out. The rest will go to the car though...

Had an interesting offer made though. I guess someone at the dealer he takes the vehicles to, has a little muscle car collection. One of them is a '74 Nova that has a dent and/or tear/hole in the quarter panel. The guy said if I fixed it for him, he'd put our motor together and tune it when it was in. We're nowhere near ready for the motor though, and I don't want to do my part of the deal and then by the time we're ready for the motor, we've already lost contact with the guy for whatever reason, so I thought that maybe we'd get enough motor parts together so it can get assembled. That way, at least the motor would be together if we did lose touch with the guy...

If that's the case, we'll probably just get the floorpan, toe board extensions, and trunk kit so I can get those in, and get enough of the suspension together so I can make it a roller so it's easier to wheel around. I wanted to get the underneath painted, but it won't be a big deal to unbolt the subframe and axle, and do it in the spring.

[Josue]

Got some stuff done this summer, but not as much as I thought/wanted to. We hit a LOT of snags along the way, as always seems to happen. Little stupid stuff...thought we had all 4 door hinges, but only had 3, so had to wait a few weeks to get another one. Went to heat up a broken bolt out, ran out of Oxygen. Went to weld the floor up, ran out of welding gas. Went to weld up the pieces on the side of the cowl, ran out of wire. WTF!!! hahaha Not to mention the mental struggle for me to WANT to work on the car after doing this for 8 hours a day at work.

Only thing I didn't get done that I wanted to, was the trunk floor. I had a friend who wanted me to do the body work on his truck before winter though, and that's a paying job, so I got the Firebird out of there to get that in. lol

Pics!





Little hole in the inner rocker there, I patched it before welding the floor in.








Big pieces...lol



Smaller pieces so i could take them to work for the scrap guy.

[Josue]

Now, I deal with aftermarket parts almost on a daily basis at work (unfortunately) but I was NOT prepared to have to mess with these parts as much as I did to get them to fit....holy hell.

This is the 1st time I set the floor in...





The little driveshaft bumpstop bracket (I'm assuming that's what it is) was holding the floor up, so I had to drill it off.




Decided to go with Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator on the insides of these pieces for rust prevention/protection.







Toe boards welded in...

[Josue]

Prepping the floor with weld through primer...







Another snag, the car was bowing down in the middle. We got it with the braces welded in, but we're not sure if the previous owner did this before tearing the car apart so it wouldn't bend, or afterwards and the car was already screwed. Had to get it off the dolly and onto jack stands so it was sitting level. Also cut out his bracing and replaced it with my own.



Door gaps looked good enough...so let's go!









Little corner I have to patch up, cut out by the previous owner when he welded in a half floorpan.

[Josue]

Prepping the firewall extensions...





Sprayed some etch on the bare metal, and took it back up to my work to store for the winter. My wife and I are expecting our 1st child in June though, so we'll see what I can get done next year!

[Firebird-Geek]

I feel your pain with all the panel replacing... I curse the rust gods often! Great Job... it will be all worth it once you get behind the wheel for the first time! It's great to see some more Firebirds on here! Also, awesome to see a father-son build... that is something you will always remember, and makes the car that more special to the both of you!

[Josue]

Thanks!! It's definitely something we're excited to embark on, and eventually, complete. lol It's a little tougher for me though, because he's not exactly mechanically inclined. lol Where as I do this........








......for a living. hahaha So, it's pretty much all me on this build. Problem is, my wife and I welcomed our first child back in June, and I'm in the process of getting into a new career that will require us to move closer to the facility I'll be at, and likely to a temporary location until we can afford to buy a house and I can set up my garage again, so this project will hit a snag for a long time it seems.

While we're still here though, my goal is to get it rolling on it's wheels before winter, so we can move it around easier than with that dolly. We got some missing pieces we needed recently, so all I need to do is get it all sandblasted, choose a paint for it all, paint and assemble it all! Easy enough, right? haha

[Josue]

Inching towards my winter goal!

Tore all the parts down a while ago, but the sandblaster drug his feet for 2 months, so I just got the parts back this past weekend. Good timing though, cause it was likely the last nice weekend of the year, almost 70 degrees, perfect painting weather!






Eastwood Rust Encapsulator...



Eastwood Original Chassis Black...(it will dry more satin)







And all the overspray on the floor swept up too. haha

[LUV2XLR8]

good to see another f-body close by.. good job on the progress!

[T.K.]

Hard to tell from the pics but from what I can see that isnt enough bracing for a convertible before you cut the floor out. I would have braced that up a lot more and ideally welded it to a table for the work you are doing. For a proT car, now is the time to think about how you are going to proT it. With even a little more power these F-body convertibles flex a lot. THe verts have a bit more bracing stock but you should really look at subframe connectors at a minimum. Me personally, I like 2x4 front to back along the inside of the rockers welded to the subframe in the front and the rear. consider at least one cross member between the two. I like the full inner frame design as used by Art Morrison and some other sponsors but that requires significant chopping and customizing of the floor.

Its too late to prevent the bowing. eyeballing door jams alone really isnt enough. I know you already but the floor in but I recomend doing a bunch of diagnal measuremns to make sure its squared up now before you weld up quarters and more. Dont want to bow the body panels, have gap problems, or worse convertible top dont reach problems later.