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

10 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

Seam sealing party....

I started out cleaning the old seam sealer out of the joint where the firewall meets the upper cowl.

once clean i layed down the seam sealer in the joint.

I then wanted to get the long top seams covered under the quater skin on both sides. This was accomplished by me climbing inside the trunk putting the sealer on my hand and smearing it along the flanged weld seem as far in as i could possibly reach, then to finish i fished my arm through the B pillar vent hole and coated the remainder of the seem. This sounded easy but turned out to be quite the task. The results are not very pretty but cannot be seen unless your in the trunk. Any how both seems are sealed very well agianst the elements and should not develop rust on the inside. Its hard to see but i tried to take a pic of this work.

The rest of these pics are just the rest of the seems on the car sealed up, Mind you i worked on this Sat and Sun went through eight tubes of sealer and still have a few more seems to fill. I would have never guesed it would have taken so long to do this job.

2-6-2011

Needing to save a few bucks to buy more epoxy primer, Dash and subframe paint, and some steel to build a rotisserie.ButI still wanted to get something done on the car,So i began to clean up the fuel tank. The tank was then primed and painted.

Next up i began to strip my lower valance. Once i had this panel stripped bare it was coated with rust treatment to prevent it from rusting until i get more epoxy primer.

I also stripped a few under the dash supports, primed and painted them.

And i was able to begin to strip my rear deck lid filler panel. Man this piece must have had seven coats of prime and paint on it. Im still not finished stripping it still have a good hour to get it finished on both sides.

And for the first time i was able to put a few pieces back on my car rather than takeing parts off. That to me was a turning point in my project.

2-20-2011

Heres a little update...

Sorry for no updates last week end, The camaro fund was drying up and i needed some cash flow to keep this project rolling so one side job and i helped out a couple of buddies with a few things led me to no maro time. This weekend I met up with a member from here Jim (BishopsZ28) He came down to Florida for vacation and was nice enough to bring down a clean rear deck lid for me. Thanks agian Jim.... I had to drive about 2.5 hours one way to meet up with him so a good part of Sat was not for working on the car.
Once i returned home home from meeting Jim i bolted the new deck lid onto the car to make sure everything lined up good before i began to strip it down to bare metal. Heres the deck lid bolted onto the car.

Im glad i stripped it all the way down look at the surface rust i found under the paint.

The rest of these pics (Pretty Boring) are of a few other panels that were stipped and then treated with ospho (rust treatment) until i can get to the store and pick up more epoxy primer. Some of these panels were sanded down, and paint remover used on others then rinsed and sanded.

It sure dont look like much but that was a whole lot of stripping The only thing left to strip is one more wheelhouse It is not fun work but it needed to be done, Glad most of the stripping is over with. Thanks for stopping by to check out my project. Rob

2-27-2011

A little more welding.

With only about 5 hours of car time over the whole weekend this is what was done. With the rear deck lid stripped down to bare metal there were a few holes that needed to be welded up. The three holes on the pass side were from i belive a Camaro emblem from a deck lid with no spoiler, the two holes in the center by the rear lip of the trunk i have no idea what they were for. Ayhow these areas were cleaned welded and ground smooth.

The next few pics are of the drivers side fender, I will be deleting the LT mldgs from the car so i needed to fill the mldg stud holes.

Both of my fenders were pretty clean with the exception of this one area shown in the pic below. This area caused the paint to blister up on the old paint job.

So i cut out the rusty area. And i found more rust on the inner fender supt.  

From the underside of the fender this is a pic of the bad area removed from the fender.

Both of these pieces were removed from the donor fener and trimmed to fit.

The repair piece that was part of the support was then primed with weld through primer. The top piece was then welded and ground smooth on both sides of the fender then primed.

Once the primer was dry i began to weld the fender support patch in its place. Once fully welded it was the ground smooth.

Once i get to the store to pick up more epoxy primer i will pour a little paint in between these to repair pieces to coat them well and prevent any further rust in this area. Thanks for stopping bye Rob.