Who would have thought with just a passing glance this car would be this rotten



A hint.... this is the First truck load of parts






Time to start cuttin

The first order will be to get the cowls in usable shape so
firts lets get the doors and doghouse out of the way and we'll start cuttin





this is what came out of the rockers when they were cut to remove the cowl section

the first rust cut out

and a patch welded in place

Holy sheep dip, that's going to keep you busy! Kind of reminds me of mine

This what some of the prior work was like.

with the sections of rocker panels removed from the cowl section it is time to slide some panels together to check for fit

OK everthing seems to fit so it's time for a jig



With the body on the jig and tack welded together it is time to take a look at the rear




Got a little ahaed of my self with the pics, the frame rails and trunk floor have to go

It has been in the shop for three weeks now

Talk about the prize in the box of Cracker Jacks!

To this point this was on of the hardest pieces to get out of the car in one piece




And this was not far behind


Not much left

Lets add the frame rails and trunk pan the the jig assembley
and the back seat brace


roof hoop and inner bracing


tail light pan assembley and wheel houses

And a test runn on the quarter panels

The biggest problems to date are, the drivers side rocker had a slight twist in it and it caused a few alignment issues and the inner fenders are two wide and had to be trimmed, the lip will have to be welded back in place as soon as the exact location of the quarter panels are determined

I started cutting on this car three weeks ago, a large part of the car is currently just screwed together for fitment purposes it should be all welded up and ready for the rotisserie in a week or so

Wow!

It's amazing what you can find under all that red paint.

My (supposed, "rust free") Ohio '67 was in similar condition, but not as bad forward of the back seats.

Good luck with the project, and please post further progress pictures.

WOW! somebody knows what there doing,great job.

Holy Hell!

That brings back a lot of bad memeories for me.

I was just pricing out some of the sheetmetal in the Classic catalog. I amagin you were not to far from the cost of a re-body.

Looks like your getting it done.

I'm guessing you've done this before. I agree on getting that rear seat brace out, I did that myself and it was no fun at all!

From those pictures wouldn't it have been much easier to start with one of the Dynacorn replacement bodies?

Curious what price range your original "project car" was? (care to share?)

I am amazed how people think something like that commands top dollar "because of what it could be", but then you realize its $20 to $30k more to bring it back to life.

My '67 was $5800, but I had 20k more into it, and I only consider it a 'nice driver'. Show quality would have been 10k more. (or more, of course)

We are a body shop; I found this site looking for measurements to reassemble the body.
The car has been in this guy’s family for many years (since 72) they have had many work on it and have not been happy, the car was a death trap.

As of tomorrow (Fri 9/4) we will have had the car 1 month. I have worked on the car 112 labor hours and spent $2950.00 in sheet metal. Today we have had to do some cutting on the quarters to make them fit. The car should be all welded up by Mon and ready to start the body work.

Mark Raef

We are at about 7500.00 and ready to start body and paint, so it is about 1/2 the cost of a new body and I like to tell them it is still thier car, some are sentimental that way.

I have never checked in to a whole body.

Hit a snag today; found 4 more convertible braces that will need to be eradicated from the wreckage that was the original car. Two are under the front body mounts and two are at the trunk drops under the vibration dampers. What’s up with those things, I have never noticed them in anything else, are they effective they sure are heavy.


I spent the day pulling parts back off and Have begain welding the trunk pan, frame rails, seat brace and inner fenders, I did not take any pics to day.

I have over 100 pics of this project so far, if there is somthing you would like to see the other side of, I bet I have a pic

While you are at this stage, I remember the top pinch welds of the inner and outer wheel wells have to be bent over to clear the folding top mechanism.

I remember my body man needing to bend them (with a sledge) after the fact when re-installing the top.

He then said "I was wondering why those were bent over on the original parts"....

Just a heads up.

We were looking at that, we have a full size Chrysler convertable on a rotissorie in the next room and the wheel houses in it are flat on top, since the owner is not worried about total stock, we were considering cutting the top of the wheel houses and making them flat just to clean up it up a bit

or ar least cutting the flanges off and butt welding the joint

I need some info on the rear springs, do they match? on this car the right has 1 more leaf than the left is this right?

Yes they should match.

I believe 4 leaf are correct OEM. There are a lot of 5 leaf replacements out there. (But technically incorrect for the car).

Thanks, I know the car did not sit right, but the car had a lot of issues, the springs don't match and the side with the 5 leaf spring sits lower than the side with the 4 leaf spring.....

and the list goes on.....

OK after a long weekend and a bad start on tue I got back to the firebird today. I started by finishing welding on the inner fenders, frame rails, trunk floor, inner and outer rear pan and tail light assembly

The easy part is over, from here on out it all shows

Very nice! I see you more than took care of those wheel well lips!

Keep up the good work, locks like the worst part is over.

The worst part of the car is gone, that's for sure but one of my least favorite things is stripping paint and this thing has been painted 3 times. aleast all that is left to strip is the doghouse and doors....................
Let the body work begein

I hate striping paint, 6 layers on pass door and trunk lid

I see some of the pics got moved around and are no longer showing up, here is the link to all the pics if you would like to see more of this mess

http://s892.photobucket.com/albums/ac125/rmherndon/

1968 firebird complete redo

Not much to post this week, been working on final paint on a 64 Impala SS, Striped the hood and top of the front fenders, Started hanging the Quarters for real today

OK I have another question the joint where the quartes meet the filler panel above the trunk lid. from the factory are they filled or do the show?

We have been tied up the last week or so on other projects so not much to see. I plan on getting very serious with this thing this week, more pics coming soon

Thanks all

Mark

No

That's a big no show on the quarter attach point.

I never gave it a thought till today while a large local car show I saw a convert and hard top next to one another and seen the differance

Thanks

Mark

The joint near the corners of the rear window are filled on a convertible, visible on a coupe.

Welded on the firebird for a couple hrs today repairing the tail light panel and installing quarters. lots of double checking at this point rear interior panels, trunk opening and such.

It seems we are missing 4 braces, 1. is the right and left brace at front body mount under the cowel section. 2.is the brace under the canisters in the trunk.

More pics soon
Mark

The firebird made the move from the building rack to the rotisserie ending the construction faze and entering body and paint, there are a few details to finish up on the bracing and the rear inner wheel houses, they had to be trimmed to get the quarters to line up properly, now the gap at the lip will have to be reconstructed to tie into the wheel wells

Had to part ways with dad and his shop for awhile. Had to go do some work at my real job(It pay my pension and health insurance)

The firebird is completely under primer with only a minimal amount of welding left to do I plan on doing some welding on the front fenders and the owner has decided to do away with the body lines at the taillight panel and rear pan so I will be filling those in as well I will get some more pics up by Mon 12/7/09
the color has been picked it will be a black with a slight red Pearl
Mark

Keep posting looks great. reminds me of me about 5 years ago. (see my pics) The fun was putting it back together!