Thats one Nasty 68...(in a bad way ) 

I got a bunch of parts for it already in terms of the body steel. I have the dash panel, upper fire wall, complete cowl assemblys both sides, the lower firewall with toe boards, inner and outer rockers (think they have kick panels too), and on order is the frame rails and trunk floor.

Frame rails should be in thurdsay, the floor had to be ordered. 

Hoping that this week it will be on stands, leveled and have the subframe and rear suspension disassembled. Hopefully can blow the doors and trunk lid and maybe finish gutting the interior too, but with the hours im working, I doubt it. This week should be the official start, but no promises. 

Heres some pictures of the sheet metal. I am very impressed, and so is my dad, not only just at the quality and thickness of the metal, but that everything is coated. when my dad did the last one, quite a few panels were bare steel from my understanding. Big bonus.

355 SBC

Have camshaft head bolts comp springs and pushrods coming for it too. Then I just need my heads done and it should be good. 

Sheet Metal

This is the floor and rockers...

Lower Firewall

Christmas comes early  Good work Ben & lots ahead of you. YOU can do it !!! plus you have a very experienced Car Nut father.

Sorry Ben, I couldn't resist.

66-67-88Chevy wrote:

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Well the car is gutted now. There is a couple of interior trim pieces and the rear glass still has to come out but other than that, it is completely gutted now. Think im going to disassemble the rear end and possibly sub frame tomorrow to try and free up some space. Trunk floor came in aswell, frame rails and trunk dropoffs as well. 

As of right now dont 100% know where to start cutting, as there isnt much good on the car to weld the new panels to. My dad will have a better idea on that type of work, thats for sure. 

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 Wow ! That brings back memories. Stay on it, you'll have a fantastic car when you're done.

I'll put up a couple of the pics I took.  

I know exactly where we are going to start.  Inner and outer rockers then center floor section.  Then we will tackle  the upper and lower firewall and dash top and outer cowl panels.

69SS454 wrote:

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slab wrote:

 I tried to  teach him better Oldguy....I did.  LOL

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 We all tried. He has to "practice" on a Camaro first before he can take on a Nova

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          This resto will only improve his skills required to do a Nova (since they are rotted out totally)The  Camaro looks a lot better than some of the '66-'67 Nova's I have seen.

          Just funnin' with ya' Ben. Good work & keep us informed

          john 

Cat in the Hat wrote:

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I guess Ben will learn Metalwork on his Camaro......

And MUDWORK on a Nova....................................

Just sayin

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         L O L     

Hey guys/gals

Finally starting to make some progress on the car i purchased close to a year ago. 

Really hasnt been much done to it through the summer. Been rocking the LS swapped third gen having a blast.

But we are right at the edge of the cliff right now. The point where things have the potential to go wrong real quick

We started by cutting the bottom of the door hinge pillar on the passenger side. Looked pretty rough, but fixable.

Then pulled the cowl off. Upon cleaning the flanges up, the complete piece I bought didnt fit quite nice, typical of the china junk. No biggie

We are deciding what to do next. The rocker panels on these cars are the main structure. The car is braced up good, but with nothing to attach new pieces to,

its hard to decide where to go from here. We are thinking of removing the cowl and the lower door pillar pieces off of the drivers side, and then from there, removing

the complete fire wall. We would be putting multiple locating points to flat points, bolt holes etc on the old metal. This part is crucial in the alignment of fenders, upper cowl panel, subframe, hood etc.

The experiance we have is more piece by piece style, not remove the whole front of the car at once and hope it goes back properly. We havent decided 100% what to do yet.

Ill post the pics of the mess...ill update on our decision and whatever work we get done in the future. Hopefully we can roll along a little better now that the winter time is coming.

Pieces just temporarily clamped in. not sure if you can see the space between the cowl assembly and the door hinge area flange or not, but its about 1/2'' out at the top

  Nothing a hammer and dolly wont fix. 

slab wrote:

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Ground Pounder wrote:

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When dealing with any early f/body you should always start with the rockers first.This give you structure to work with on a unibody car the rocker are the structure.
When it comes to one peice rockers v.s weld inner an outter together always go for the one piece.
Ifyou intended on putting a big block or just thrashing the car you should opt for the one piece convertible rockers that way you have built in frame connectors an added side safety just in case ya slide er into something...
Starting with the cowl first is a mistake.
Jus saying.

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 I am interested in what you are saying so I will explain why we have done what we have done so far and would appreciate your view again.

We are aware of the structure of Unibody car and thus started with the inner rear 1/4's on both sides so that we would have something to attach the rockers to once the new pieces were installed.  The cowl end of the car we had the same idea.  Replace the lower hinge pillar so that we would have again some place to attach the rocker to.  Once the lower hinge area was cut off we found more rust and pieces that would have to be hand made to fix.  To access the area better we removed the cowll side panel.  After accessing the damage and the need to sandblast the inner hinge pillar areas, it became apparent that there is nothing to attach the rocker panel to, inner or outer.  You will notice that the cowl attaches to the inner rocker which actually comes all the way up and into the interior kick panel/vent hole area.  This piece of the rocker attaches to the firewall(which is also going to be replaced(top and bottom).  As of right now other than some pop rivits and a small section of floor, the rockers are attached to nothing.  LOL  So we have no strength, or really anything to attach to.  At this point I am thinking we should brace it up, and cut the upper firewall, side cowls, lower firewall off and start with the firewall, then I will have something to start attaching stuff to, and still have access to sandblast and repair the hidden areas.  If that makes any sense? Actually.....fixing this car doesn't make any sense!  But we are doing it anyway.

 Please view the fourth picture from the bottom in the post with the cowl pictures as it shows what I am trying to explain.

My friend a couple posts up summed it up best...."it's a bucket!"   

 

 

kewl .wasn't going to respond tonight... As  life is Sh-it show these days an if one was to read posts when we first came here one might get an idea as to what why.! lol.

With that said. I felt i should at least respond 2nite an update later.(As waiting Suck's)

We shall call this "In 2 this life we are thrown"

The 17 th pic down on this thread: http://ontariorodders.activeboard.com/t61920759/years-gone-by/      is what we're use to starting with.

18th pic down is what the charger basicly was as well..

many hard copy pic to back said up..

As the years go by I feel the need to share ..as we're a dying breed for sure!.

Better response soon..

keep teaching those young fella's that are eager to learn...

That way such = will  keep us trying.

 

-- Edited by slab on Thursday 10th of November 2016 05:53:00 PM

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We have been off the job on this project lately due to many reasons but we also had to try and come up with a good way to hold this rust bucket while we rip into it.  The car cradle and even the jack stands are not going to work because there is literally nothing under the car to hold it up.  We have to take out some major structure to start repairing the car.  Our idea is to make an adjustable rack that will hook to the frame rails in the middle of the wheel wells and the front will be bolted to the upper door hinge area.  Front and back will be tied in together.  I will be making adaptors to mount dolly wheel to the rack as well.  I machined the feet to have a fine adjustment to level all four corners.  This is all new to me and Ben but I hope we are on the right track.

You got it Oldguy.  Lunch time and I stayed late a couple times.  Thanks for keeping me honest! LOL  I usually try and pick threads that I have in my collection of programs to help things go faster.  Just some cut and pasting.  But sometimes I have to program from scratch which I do on lunches.  I call it "practising" or "advancing my skills"  when I asked the boss's about it.  They are cool with it.  The funny thing was that I machined a parking brake handle for the Nova and ended up using the same program to make a handle for something needed in the shop for a custom tool.  They company basically got a free program written.  

We managed to get the upper firewall and the upper dash fitted.  We will be getting the lower firewall fit next.  Upper dash was taken back out at time of picture.  We also had the passenger side cowl assembly fit on.

The destruction continues.  

Thanks Glen for the plasma cutter.

We quickly hung the firewall to fill the hole and make us feel a bit better about the lack of car.

More Rust.

69SS454 wrote:

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Got your hands full with this one guys. Keep up the good work

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 Thanks Kurt.   This is definitely the worst one I've ever done.  The nice thing is Ben's not on any kind of time limit.  He still has the 1987 and is having a blast with it.  He has more plans for it for the spring and his little 4.8 should push that 87 Camaro into the 13's.  His daily driver truck is sucking back the gas real bad so he just pulled that big diesel into the shop and we will be working on it now trying to get it on the road.  He is in day release for his apprenticeship and has to drive 1.5 hrs each way to school once a week.  He is hoping the big truck will be better on fuel than his dying small truck.  We shall see. LOL

Damn, I mean DAMN!!!  keep the pics coming.................

Awesome .   looks like a lot of new body pieces .    

427CARL wrote:

Awesome .   looks like a lot of new body pieces .    

slab wrote:  

The majority of the car (90%) will be new.  

Any idea how much this body restoration will cost as opposed to buying a Dynacorn body off the shelf/in the crate? 

"90% replaced" obviously means a LOT of panels, shipping, taxes, sandblasting, welding wire/gas etc. 

Is there any savings to be had buying all the parts separately?  I get the "because I can" train of thought, I get the "it's a learning experience for the youngster" train of thought, I get the "this way we can control the quality of assembly" train of thought as well, I get the "it's easier on the pocket book by doing a little at a time" train of thought too, I'm just wondering how it all works out in the end from a financial perspective.

That is one HELL of a lot of work and more than I'd care to tackle ... my hat is off to you and your son.