my 67 lemans resto

[Bobby326]

this is my 67 lemans that im restoring the way i want it. im 30 years old and bought the lemans when i was 18 back in 2001 right after high school. i alway loved old school car and wanted one of my own insted of a tuner that all my other friends have. there is nothing like the sound of an american musle car. its beautiful.. i had the car for about ten years and i bought it as a very nice driver doing minor upgrades as money allowed. well on april 21 2010 i was driving home from my sister house which is only a mile away when an 18 year old kid slammed into the back of me, pushed me off the road and ended up hitting a house. the car was toatled pretty much every panel on the car was smashed and the frame was bent. he said he wasnt paying attention cause he was reaching for his french fries, he actually wrote that on the police report. so that weekend i went on ebay and bought another 67 lemans from indiana. i live on long island in new york. my buddys and i took a weekend road trip with my friends truck and trailor and went to get the car. 14 hours there, two hours to look at the car and load up and 16 hours back. got to love friends. then the bebuild begins. toatally sripped the old car keeping everything from it except the shell and frame. then stripped the new one. lets say the car was alittle worse than advertised but arent they all.
I sandblasted the frame then i boxed out the frame and welded in a few gussets for strenght. primered, based black and cleared. the whole suspension was redone with cpp tubular front control arms, umi 1 3/8 front sway bar and lowering springs with kyb shocks. the rear has umi tubular rear arms, 1'' sway bar with kyb shocks and eibach lowering springs. brakes are the rite stuff 4 wheel discs with stainless lines.
the engine was changed fron the 326 to a 400 with edelbrock 72cc heads, rpm intake, comp cam foorged pistons, rollor rockers, msd dist and ignition and milidon pan. monster transmission 700r4 and 68 12bolt with detroit locker 3.73 gear and c=clip eliminator kit. wiring is new american autowire kit and fuel is new stainless steal wire lines and a/n fittings with holley pump and stainless fabricated tank. im also adding vintage air.
the body needed some work. from front to back, someone to put in ac in a non ac car so the hacked up the firewall so welded in a smooth panal, driver/ pass floor pan, small piece in thr rear, few pieces in the rockers, rear window channel, rear window panal, complete trunk kit, trunk dropp offs, driver wheel well and piece of pass wheel well, both lower quarters with a bunch of little patches here and there. this is my first resto so i pretty much learned as i went. fist time welding too. now all my buddys have me welding their cars up too. luckly one of my good friens is a body guy with his own shop so he doing the body work and paint for me. two coats of rust defender and one couat of primer. this is were the car is at now. he has to block sand it one more time then its ready for paint. going with mayan bronze metallic, its a late model acura color. leaning toward bravado americana wheels with gray centers 18x9 245/front 285rear . i want the car to look relitivly stock from the outside besides the color and wheels and stock interier with hidden radio, switches but all modern underneath. i will add more pics while prograss improves. any advice or criticism welcome

[gotyorgoat]

Wow! Sweet project man. I have a 67 Lemans myself and it looks nothing like that. I wish that I had a friend that owned a body shop. I like the color choice. Please keep us posted.

[Bobby326]

I just bedlined the untire underneath and inside of the car from fire wall to the tailpanel. I used raptor bedliner and are very happy with thw way it came out. Next im going to paint the fire wall and drop the body on the frame.

[66larkgs]

looking good. Your are going to have a real nice ride when done!!keep us posted

[Cutls67]

I just bedlined the untire underneath and inside of the car from fire wall to the tailpanel. I used raptor bedliner and are very happy with thw way it came out. Next im going to paint the fire wall and drop the body on the frame.

I did the same thing to my Cutlass and I like the turn out also. What did you do to your firewall to make it so smooth? Did you overlay?

[Bobby326]

Its a fire wall smooth panel that i traced out of a piece of 18 gauge sheetmetal. My buddy ordered it from abc performance. Then i welded it over my firwall and bodyworked it

[Bobby326]

Here is the fire wall painted. I really like this color. I think it will look very nice on the car

[Bobby326]

So here is some updates on the build. I had a little set back. I dropped the car off the lift when I was putting the body on the frame. It was my fault. One of the feet must not of been sheeted correctly. Luckily a friend of a friend had a quarter panel cut from a convertible in his garage so I bought it and fixed my boo boo. Then started the wiring from American auto wire and pretty muck got the dash buttoned up with the vintage air unit installed. Car is almost in final prime and should b ready for paint in a few weeks.

[bonecrrusher]

Holycrap - thats some scary crap there - considering I JUST put in in a 2 post lift...

[Bobby326]

It wasnt the lifts fault it was mine you should have nonproblem with your lift. Operator errer

[gordonr1973]

Very glad to see no one was hurt and you are back on your way with it!

[Bobby326]

Thanks gordon. Im trying to have it done by this summer but i dont want to rush it. Well se what happens. It all depends on when my friend can get it painted. You know how that goes

[KnightMare]

Wow. I would of been pissed and then get back at it installing another quarter. cant wait to see it painted

[Bobby326]

It's been a while n
Since my last post. Here is an update the car is still not painted yet. I had a little set back with my fenders. I kinda got ahead of myself and welded the lower panels on the fenders without matching them up with the doors because the doors weren't on the car yet. I thought if I made a template that would be good enough. I was wrong. The pass side just had to be bent out a little but the driver side had to be cut and re welded. I repaired the fenders and got them ready for body work. The wiring is about 90% done except for the headlight. I moved the battery to the trunk and have 0/ gauge wire running from the battery to a 250 amp breaker to a cut off switch that I made a housing for to the starter. Th fuel system is installed also and consists of a fabricated stainless steel tank( think its a ricks) to a filter,Holley electric pump then to the carb with a/n fittings and 3/8 stainless braided fuel line. I wanted to change up the front end a little I saw a pic of a Gto without marker light in the grilles and thought it looked nice and clean. I tried to find a pair but couldn't so I made my own. Bought a sheet of wire mesh, took my grilles apart and installed the new mesh. Came out really nice. Hopefully my next post will have a painted car in it.

[Bobby326]

Its been a while since ive done any work on the lemans. Been waiting for my friend to have time to finish it. Its finally back at the shop and started aligning the panels for final primer and block sanding. I bought a new hood from aimes a few years ago and finally took it out of the box last week. It needed alot more bodywork than i thought. Plus i would have to buy an new scoop to fit the aftermarket hood. So it would be $500 plus time to bodywork the hood. His weekend i was at the englishtown swap meet and found a beautifull lemans hood that i got for only $20. Yup $20. So im going to weld in a gto scoop from a hood i have thats a little beat up but the scoop part is fine. Came out pretty good. Coat of filler to get it straight and some primer. Cant beat that for $20

[Auto Rod Technologies]

Good luck to ya.. We are doing a convertible now as well.

[Bobby326]

So finally after 3 years of welding sanding and more sanding theres finally some paint on it. It came out reaaly nice. Looks amazing in the sun

[gotyorgoat]

Very nice. I went with a similar color on mine called lava red. It looks like dark cherry red in the direct sun and black everywhere else. Looking forward to seeing what comes next.

[Bobby326]

Gotyorgoat that was one of the other colors I was considering. It's a mustang/ ford color right. If you have a pic of it post it so I can see how it looks. Good luck with yours

[gotyorgoat]

Here is a few of the Lava Red, Ford code UZ which is a mustang and Harley F150 color. I was trying to achieve black cherry without the purple although I have since come to really like a deep metallic purple. I like your color since it is a little less likely to look completely black.