BODY

Here's where I'll chronicle the body work I'll have to do.  As far as outside sheetmetal, there isn't a whole of rust, just some dents and stuff to smooth out.  The floorpan and trunkpan are another story.  I'm probably going to have to cut most if not all the metal out and weld new sheetmetal in.  

I most likely won't start this until the chassis is done, probably sometime in the summer 2001. 

November 21, 1999

Here's a few shots of the dolly we built to roll the body over to the new garage and start assembling the chassis.

December 17, 2000

As soon as I'm done the engine/chassis, I'm going to start working on the Bodywork.  I think the first thing I'll do is build a Body Rotisserie.   This will allow me to work on the underside much easier as I'm probably going to have to replace the entire floor pan and trunk pan.

April 8, 2001

Well, I'm finally done building the body rotisserie.  Below are a few shots just after I transferred it over from the dolly.  The last pictures is it tilted a little.  I haven't tried rotating all the way around yet, hope those welds hold! 

 For the plans I used to build this click here   Now that I have it on the rotisserie I can start stripping the paint and undercoating off the bottom and start working on replacing the trunk and floor pans.  There's quite a bit of rust so I'm going to be cutting most of the sheetmetal underneath out.

As far as the outside sheetmetal I'm probably going to take it somewhere to have it media blasted. 

April 15, 2001

Took the doors off which lightened the weight on the rotis.  Below are a few shots of the inside before I took the wiring harnesses and pedal assembly out.  As you can see, the floor pan is in pretty sad shape, will probably need an entire floor pan patch panel kit.  I'll pick that up this weekend at the Carlisle Swapmeet. 

May 20, 2001

I decided to start on the passenger side floor first, and after grinding alot of the rust away, I found that alot of the old metal was still good.  I made the cuts with a jigsaw and cut-off wheel and traced the pattern onto the new patch panel.  I decided to butt-weld the panel instead of lap-welding it so it wouldn't be noticeable from the bottom.  This makes it a whole lot harder because the panel has to fit perfect. 

Below are some shots of the cutout, the new panel and it welded in from the top and from underneath.  I bought the four piece panel set so I'm going have to replace the driver side and the 2 back panels the same way too.

June 28, 2001

I finished up repairing most of the rust in the floorpan.  I also scraped all the undercoating of the bottom of the pan and the wheelwells.  Did that with a heat gun and scraper...lots of fun.

I plan on starting on the trunk soon.  That will probably require a full trunk pan set since the entire trunk pan is pretty much rotted out.  Then I think I'm going to send it out to get media blasted to strip all the paint and stuff off.  Will probably take it here

November 11, 2001

After about 4 months I'm still working on the trunk.  On both the right and left side, where the panels are braces are welded to the inner wheel house, there is a fair amount of rust ( see last picture), so I'm decided to install the 3 trunk panels first and then patch the wheelhouse.  They don't sell a repro panel for that, and I only need a 2 inch strip anyway, so I'll fabricate that. 

So far I've cut out most of the sheetmetal and have welded in the right and left patch panel.  The trunk braces were rusted but were in decent shape so I decided to coat them with POR-15 and the backside of the panels where they meet the braces and spot weld them in.

After the trunk is finished, I have the dash panel to replace and then its off to the Paint Stripper to get rid of all the surface rust and paint.  This will allow me to start working on the outside sheetmetal which will involve mostly straightening of dents and block sanding.

February 25, 2002

The trunk is finally finished, along with the wheelhouse part that was cut out on the right and left side.  I was going to send the body out to the paint stripper, but decided to take care of the rust in the rear deck panel first.  The whole piece wasn't rusted, just the lower window channel, but it comes as one piece so I decided to replace it all.  I'm going to replace the dash panel support too before I strip it. 

March 15, 2002

Well, I finally dropped the body shell off at the paint stripper today (photo below).  The company is called Plastic Media Blasting in Doylestown, PA.  It was a real trick getting that rotisserie up on the Flatbed but we did it.  Its going to be completely blasted, inside and out and also they're going to prime it.  I've decided to use the PPG DP90 epoxy paint on it.  It should take about 3 weeks or so before its back.  That'll give me time to clean and organize the garage.  I plan on insulating and drywalling it and also painting the floor with an industrial floor paint.   

This will detail the second half of the body work that will have to be done before I finally get it painted.  It will include dent removal, filler, block sanding...lots and lots of block sanding.  I still don't know who I'll have paint it, it probably won't happen for another year or so.

March 18, 2002

The body is at the paint stripper right now.  I didn't send the fenders, doors, trunk and hood because there were alot of dents in them and I either will pound them out or replace them.  I'll look around for new sheet metal at the Carlisle swap meet next month and if I find some cheap I'll get them, I'm not looking forward to pulling dents.  The trunk I can probably get cheap, fenders too, but the hood I'll probably have trouble finding as the SS hood and Malibu hood are different. 

Also, while the body's away, I'm going to finish the garage.  I bought some floor paint from www.GriotsGarage.com and some insulation and floor panels, so I'll fix it up while I have the chance.

When the body get back in about 3 weeks I'll put it in the other garage and will start working on the dents.  There's a major one in the left side quarter panel, and some in the trunk.  

May 1, 2002

Finally got the body shell back from Plastic Media Blasting.  Had them completely strip the paint and rust off and primed it with PPG DP90 primer.  This will give me a good base to apply the filler, and the primer/surfacer to prep it for the massive amount of block sanding thats ahead of me.  Oh and theres some dents to be pounded out too, so I should be busy till Fall.

I'm going to start with the weld seems and dents in the trunk and bottom of the floor pan.  Since I haven't done much of this kind of body work, this will give me a chance to learn on pieces that won't be seen much.  I found an all Metal body filler made by Evercoat called Metal-2-Metal which is supposed to be better than the "Bondo" type filler out there now. 

May 6, 2002

While the body was away being blasted, it gave me a chance to fix up the new garage it was in.  I painted the concrete floor with the Griots garage paint mentioned above while came out great.  I also paneled the walls and will drywall the ceiling soon.  This will be where the finished car will live. 

May 20, 2002

I've filled in most of the weld seams in the trunk and the bottom of the floor pan.  The Metal reinforced filler I used from Evercoat worked great.  It went on smooth and sanded real nice. 

Next up is pounding out the many dents I have in the quarter panels.

April 26, 2003

After about a year off, I'm starting up on the body work again.  My 71 Chevelle, which is my daily driver, needed some body work done on it.   Rust had eaten alot of the sheet metal off and I was tired of looking at it.  I have it almost completed and ready for paint. I'll post pictures of that when I'm done.

In the mean time I've bought a stud welder to pull the many dents I have in the left quarter panel and fenders.  The 2 pictures below are of the lower right side quarter panel with the stud pins welded on.  I use a slide hammer to pull the metal straight.  I found this dent after the body was stripped, it was filled with lead which had to be melted out.

After I get this and the other dents pulled and filled in, I might drop the body onto the frame.  This will let me put the fenders and hood on to check alignment on everything...not sure how I'm going to do that yet.  Email me if you have any suggestions.

July 4, 2004

I've decided to try and put the body back on the frame.  It'll probably be easier to do some of the quarter panel body work with it still on the rotis, but I'm sick of looking at it like that...so back on it goes.

Before I do that, I have to finish the underbody.  I had started applying filler to the weld seams from the floor pan install last year, now I plan on finishing that up and paint it the semi-gloss black it came from the factory with.  I also have to fix some of the body mount nuts, a few were rusted so badly that they broke when the body was taken off.

I also need to bring the chassis over from the other garage and install the fuel and brake lines and other miscellaneous stuff that will be easier to do with the body off than on.  Right now the plan is the put the body on 6" X 6"s and sawhorses and slide the chassis underneath, kind of like I took it off with.  Then lowering the body down with the engine hoist.  Sounds easy, we'll see.

October 3, 2004

Finished painting the underbody.  I used DP90 epoxy primer and topcoated with Eastwoods semigloss black.  Doesn't look too bad, it is only the underbody you know.  I'm getting the chassis prepped for putting the body back on, putting the fuel lines, brake lines, body mounts, etc.  The plan is to drag the chassis over in a few weeks and determine how to lower the body back on the chassis.

December 13, 2004

Finally got the body back on the frame yesterday.  This was a huge milestone as I can start assembling the rest of the body pieces (doors, fenders, hood, etc), and start working on removing some of the dents in the quarter panel.  I'm tempted to replace the passenger side quarter panel due to extensive damage, you can see that in the 4th pic.  I didn't notice it before it was stripped because it was leaded in.  I ended up melting it all out and using the stud welder I tried to pull a lot of the dent out.  It's going to require a lot more work. 

I used the engine lift on each side of the body as I lowered it.  I had the chassis on wheel dollies to move around to line up the body mount bolts.  Starting to look like a car now.