1967 ss/rs resto/mod

[NorCam]

Nice work on the floors and the welding. Do you have plans to Day 2 this car?

[Too Many Projects]

I'm in our local Camaro and Chevelle Clubs and it was getting into March of 2019 and the Chevelle Club was looking for a "tech session" project to work on. I have held a number of these for both the Chevelle and Camaro Clubs during the long winter months over the past 12 years.

I had a complete front disc upgrade and Global West upper control arms sitting on a shelf for several years, so I said we could throw all that on for the club to have a meeting and get together.






I have hosted a few of these complete front end make-overs in the past and with 6 people working on it, we have done these kind of swaps in one Saturday.
I got the car turned around in the shop to face forward and removed the front wheels in preparation for the event. I was looking at the dirty, surface rusted sub frame and thought I can't just throw all these new, clean parts on it like that. Well, most of you know how steep the project creep slope is and I started removing other parts for access to the subframe to clean and paint. This is where I stopped...





I figured we could do a quick clean and spray of the frame and get all the parts on and I could finish it up the next day. Uh, huh. I, also, had a fresh rebuilt 350, that another member of the Chevelle Club had built for me and had just installed. The original 350 was long gone, as was the original powerglide.
After we had a meeting and pizza, the guys removed all the suspension and were encouraging me to remove what little was left and get the subframe powder coated. So, what the heck, lets do it.





The entire front sheet metal went out for chemical stripping.








Sub frame, inner wheel houses, core support and all small under hood pieces went out for powder coating.





And the firewall was stripped and rust found in the lower cowls. That turned into the usual repairs but I tried a product, new to me, that was supposed to be the greatest at stopping and sealing any future rust. More on that time consuming fail later.

[Too Many Projects]

I found some rust in the lower right cowl and repaired that.














As I was cleaning out the firewall to upper cowl seam, I found an area with no spot welds so put a few small tacks in the seam to get covered with sealer.

[Too Many Projects]

The left side turned into a much larger issue, from a seemingly, small area.





I cut out the side panel and when I saw how rusty the whole bottom 8" was, I cut off the front panel too and eventually the rest of the side panel and drilled out all the spot welds. I wire wheeled and sanded all the rust that I could reach and then treated it with a rust encapsulator.





In the process of all this removal, I discovered a misplaced panel and the spot welds to the firewall weren't holding anything. The panel had been allowed to be too far forward and was spot welded in place to the body mount supports. I drilled out those welds, pulled the panel tight with drill screws, clamped the support brackets together and welded it all up.








Then it could move on with the "tulip" panel as some call it.