73 on a slow road to recovery... by Done Yet?

10 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

Major Surgery on the camaro today...

I started out checking how far the rust progressed into the edges of the quater panel at the trunk opening. Not knowing i was i gonna have to get into the quaters to remove all of the rust, I would have bought complete quaters. But i didnt and bought quater skins, I will do my best with what i have for now, if it doesnt turn out as good as the rest of the rust repair i will hang complete quaters. After determining where i needed to cut i made two templates out of cardboard. Then marked the 73 and the donor and began to cut.

I did leave a little extra metal incase i did need to flange the edge for welding, all depends on how good the fit is.

I then went to the donor and cut the tulip (hinge) panel out, i cut it quite big, it will need a little hair cut in order for it to fit into the 73. LOL.. I have the replacement panel stored inside my shed and out the elements until im ready to install it. 

I figured while i had a rather large trunk opening now would be a great time to replace my trunk floor and began to cut.

I figured it would make life a little easier if i seemed the trunk pan on the lip of the frame rail and the crossmember going across the front of the trunk just behind the back seat and trimmed to those edges. Also put a little rust treatment on the frame rails until i get to clean and prime them.

6-27-2010

Sunday work...

A little progress for a few hours work... Only having a limited amount of time to work on the car i continued to remove the existing trunk pan where it is welded to the tail pan. With many layers of seemsealer, paint, and what seems like bedliner it is a very slow process finding all of the welds to remove the remainder of my trunk pan. After a few hours of work in the trunk i took a ride over to a friends garage and picked up my new trunk pan here are a few pics. Thanks for checking out my work Rob

7-3-2010

Workin in the trunk area..

I began still trying to remove the existing piece of trunk pan attached to the tail pan. What a PITA with all of the seam sealer and undercoat that the previous owner had put in there, it seemed like it took half of the day to remove this metal. The trunk latch also had to be cut free on the bottom side to get to the old trunk pan behind it.

I had one rust spot in the tail pan and a few spots on the inner tail pan support to cut out and patch here are a few pics of those areas cut out.

Once all of the repair patches were cut and ground to fit i fired up the welder. My wife snapped a few pics of me welding in the patches.

Once all of the welding was finished i gave the grinder a work-out lol heres a few pics of some of my patches ground down. I guess tommorow i will try to get the frame rails and the rest of the paint off of the tail pan and treat the metal. Maybe if im having a good day start to fit the new trunk pan. Thanks for checking out my thread. Rob

Just noticed i ground thru my weld on that last pic i will reweld it tommorow it was a little dark ontop of that trunk drop off.

7-4-2010

Real Bad Day.....

Just as you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You take five monster steps backwards. While working on cleaning up the inside of my tail pan and innner support for my new trunk pan i found another spot on the drivers side quater panel that needed to be cut out. As i began to remove the paint this is what i encountered.

The rust repair i can deal with..... Its the 1" thick bondo and the fit between the quater and the tail pan the worries me both seem to be original metal or else someone did one hell of a job changing the tail panel.

There is a big difference between the quater and the lower tail panel as seen in the pics below. My question is how can the top of the tail panel fit so good and the bottom be off so far? Like i said both of these panels appear to be original. The only thing that leads me to believe the tail panel might have been changed is on the inside lower section it is in a black primer like an edp coating. But i cant find any evidence that this panel has been changed. And i find it hard to believe that there is that much gap between original factory panels. I did lay my quater skin ontop and it seemed to line up pretty good to the tail pan but remember it is ontop of the existing quater.

Needless to say my quater skins will not work.... Trying to keep the budget down on this project i thought i had all of the metal needed to do the rust repair, Not any more...Buy the time i buy quaters and have them shipped will be another 900.00 And alot more work... From feeling like im heading down the home streatch to starting the race all over agian I am about to cut my losses and walk away from this car. Im seriously thinking about selling it the way it sits im so pissed off. Sorry had to vent...... Rob