72 Camaro Z28/RS

rustover

Member
I've owned the car for 10 years. I'm a hobbyist and have not been able to work on the car as much as I would have liked. I have made a lot of newbie mistakes. First of all, I purchased this car as a project. I was missing a lot of parts. The title was in the original owner's name, so I was able to call him and get a lot of parts that I needed. I have restored just about every part to the car except body and paint. That's another mistake. Now I have a room full of totes of restored parts. On the next one, it will be body and paint first, then as parts are restored they will be installed on the car.

Here is a pic of when I first purchased it:

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I have replace the complete front clip with gm nos sheet metal over the years. Sometimes nos stuff is great and sometimes there is a reason that stuff is still in the box. When I purchased the car, the fellow I got it from who does resto work, told me it was ready for paint. As I have learned about paint and body work, people have different meanings of the phrase "ready for paint". The body of this car is like an onion, the more you peel it, the worst it stinks.

Over the past 3 years I have been working on a new addition to the garage. I finally was able to get started back on the Camaro. I stripped the quarters and what I found was ugly. Somebody had placed new metal over the rusted out quarters and brazed it in. In some places the rust has already eaten through the new metal.

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On the trunk drop off, looking through the hole you can see the original one still in place. There is actually 4 pieces of metal in the lower quarter.

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I never could get the drivers door to align with the fender. The hinges have been rebuilt, but the edge of the door was off. I stripped it down and here is what I found:

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As of right now I have both doors stripped and they have been media blasted and ready for epoxy.

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The tail pan, was no different, it had some major damage along the bottom, and was rotted out around the taillight openings. Since I'm replacing the quarters, I'm also going to put a new one on. I have already removed the old one.

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The good news is that the inner structure is good. There is a patch that I will have to back to the left side, but not too bad.

The goal here is to finish the doors, get them installed and then cut the quarters off. I hope to have the inner structure blasted, epoxied and the panels installed before spring. In the spring I hope to be priming and have the shell painted by summer. Stay tuned. Thanks for checking it out.
 
That is picture proof of why I strongly encourage everyone to strip to bare metal before starting a quality paint job. You just never know what you will find on a 40 year old car, no matter how good it looks on the outside. Looks like you are going to have a nice car when you get it finished. Nice work so far.

Kelly
 
I have been working on the doors. The drivers side was in bad shape when I got it back from media blasting. I put a patch in the bottom and in the upper corner. I'm starting to get some confidence using the welder. I have also learned that the grinding is as important as welding, taking extra time to not heat the metal up. I'm also paying more attention to the area that I'm grinding, using an assortment of bits, roloc disc of various grits and stones.

The bottom of the door frame, the metal was very thin here. Previous owner just slapped some duraglass over it:











 
Here are some pics of the upper corner repair. I almost got into trouble when cutting the patch down to size. I almost had too wide of a gap. I had to start the weld on the door frame and the bridge across to the patch. If I tried to just start in the center it would blow a hole.

















Pretty happy with the way the frame turned out. Now I need to get it prepped for epoxy so that the skin can go on. Then I can get it aligned with the existing quarters prior to removal.
 
clay's70;33990 said:
Hey Russ!! Glad to see ya here!!

Thanks Clay. Same to you. I know you are like I am, in that your planning to use all SPI on your camaro.

There is some great advice here, that will help us along the road to restoration.
 
rustover;32433 said:

Boxed areas like that rear panel hold dust which holds moisture which causes rust, you can epoxy prime the inside before installing the replacement part but there will still be some hot spots where the welding was done. I usually find a way to flood the seam with epoxy primer but another good product is cavity wax. Transtar Amber coat works good and they sell a cheap wand for reaching in these areas with a 360* spray head. It's like $12 for the spray wand and it'll reach in 6 feet if needed. 3M's rustfighter, Amsoil HD-MP also works well, also cosmoline.
 
Looks like it's coming out great. Keep up the good work. Very nice metal finishing work.
 
I really want to get these doors done, but the weather will not cooperate. Seems like on all my days off its spitting rain or below zero. I have decide to shift gears and work on another area of the car. Hopefully March will be better. Anyway the trunk pan is the same old song and dance as the rest of the car. Its very pitted and filled with bondo. I'm planning on putting a full pan in since the tail panel is off the car. Actually I think the full pan will be less work as far as finishing goes. Most of it is just spot welds, where if I put in a partial pan, I will have to seam it up near the back.

I do not have the replacement panel on hand at the moment. Hopefully soon. I'm reluctant to cut anything until I get my hands on the new panel.

Here is a pic of the new panel:




Anyway I have a question. When it comes to working the new panel at the back seat area, it looks like it will be a real pain. I already know its a real pain because I have been trying to scrape out the old seam sealer up there. Would I be crazy to drill out the spot welds on the bottom of the package tray and then make some cuts along the top to gain better access?



I'm not really wanting to create work, but this may be better in the long run. What do you guys think?
 
Over the last couple weeks, I have not been able to get motivated. Been to cold. I did get some small stuff done in regards to the passenger side door skin. I needed to make provisions for the bullet mirror. The driver side skin is already set, but it must have been an option for the passenger side. Anyway I just did it the same as the factory did on the driver side.

I cut the bracket from the old driver side skin that I cut off. I will weld it on before I skin it.:



made a template:



Cut the holes:







I have also restored the door locks, and some other small parts:





I have been going through all the parts to the doors trying to see what I am missing.



I'm going to work on the trunk for now and maybe it will warm up sometime.
 
I've been making preparations to remove and replace the trunk pan. I'm was having trouble getting to the back of the trunk pan, so I decided to remove the package tray. I cut it with a thin jig saw metal blade. I wanted a narrow gap. I still plan to brace the remaining package tray with some square tubing.







How found some more damage in the package tray extension panel.






I decided to remove this panel and I'm planning on replacing it. Somebody had done some welding on it and gave up, and just filled it with filler.



I've got some repairs to make on the inner structure due to rust.. This will be done after I remove the quarter.



Also I have been scrapping undercoat and seam sealer.




I remember the previous owner tell me that he had sand blasted around the rear window.



Last, I got the car up in the air ready to start on the trunk pan.

 
Holy Christ, how can you work on that floor! Eat off of yes, work on it ---hmmmm. I'd be setting in a chair and staring at it while I drank a beverage :)

You are coming along with your project, it will be a sweet ride when you are finished, well worth the effort and expense you are putting into it :encouragement:
 
Thanks SOF. I never planned on epoxying the floor, but I had some problems when the shop was built. The slab dried too quick and I had several spots crack and I had to repair them. It looked like a poke-a-dot floor after all the repairs were made. I then decided to use the epoxy for a uniform color. Here is a link to the floor repair. I had a lot of help from the folks at garage journal forum.

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=114715

The floor is not perfect. I does create some problems when welding. I just put some welding blankets down.
 
Quote of the week. Wife walks into the garage and says " I want to work on this car to." I say "well grab a putty knife and start scrapping seam sealer". She says " NO, I want to do the fun stuff, not CRAP work".
 
Things have been moving slow in the shop. The replacement pan is on back order. I have been taking pictures and writing down measurements for the new pan. I actually starting cutting the center of the pan out along the frame rails. I'm planning on removing the majority of it so that I can expose the frame rails, inner tail pan, and inner structure at the rear seat. I want to get these areas in cleaned and epoxied. Hopefully the weather will break soon. I plan on leaving a lot of the original metal in the shock tower area. This is all still good in the car and I really don't want to try to separate all these pieces (inner fender, trunk pan, outer shock brace). I'm thinking I will do a scribe and a butt weld somewhere in this area. I will have to make that decision when I get the new pan.





This was a fun piece to remove, I have since found out they come with the new pan:





I decided to upgrade to a 220V welder. Spent most of last week, running around getting everything together for it. I really like my Miller 130XP, but its a tap machine and even on the lowest setting I get enough penetration on the back side of the weld that I have to dress it. This Lincoln is a C model for continuous and hopefully will give a little more room for adjustability as I improve my welding skills. If it doesn't work out I will use the Miller for sheet metal and this new one for larger jobs.



I looked at the Miller 180 and the Hobart 190. Just about went with the Hobart because of the price, but it was still a tap machine. I got a good deal on the Lincoln and its a used machine with just about zero hours on it. A guy bought it for trade school and was not able to attend. It was missing a .023 drive roller, but its in at the dealer. Just got to make it down there to pick it up. I really wanted a Lincoln SP-175 plus, but could not find one.
 
That floor didn't look too bad based on the photos, is it crusty on the bottom side?
 
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