Thread: 69 F(ed) body hack

Well on the roof it's the old saying measure 2 cut once. You do really good work no sense in messing up now on the roof of all things.

Roof should come out nice but yep theres a huge risk of disaster if I hurry. Had to run like heck to get this done today-

Today I blew some time on shop equipment maintainence and assisting others, so I kinda had to hurry and kinda wished I had got more done. But I refuse to rush the sail panel seams. Got a good amount of help too, though. Had an assistant help me handle the roof skin so I could use the drill press to make almost all the plug weld holes and that was a bit of a boost.

So the roof is welded on all around, except what you see here-





As you can see, I tacked in a filler rod to make up a little short edge part on the left. That seam will be so nice especialy on the right side...

IF I keep my cool!

Glad Dynacorn makes the skin this way, with no indent. The roof skin fit very nice. Trouble is, I have welded for a day and a half but ground nothing, so that means I gotta hustle. All I can do is keep it moving, and I shall. There are a few other nit-pick items to weld on or tweak yet, including seat braces. But I'm liking the looks of it with the skins on-

sooooooo is the roof back on

BAM yup!

i see gaps.......................................


KIDDING i know you checked it out

Oh I could go over it and touch up all those spots but it would be overkill. Those aren't holes, just low spots.

GM put some funky little braces right here in the corner of the roof rail to quarter joint. I made abbreviated versions-





I ran and ran a did a lot of stuff that I didn't get pics of today.

Smoothed the welds at the front of the roof.

Welded in a floor flange strip that was ready from where I left off before.

Reinstalled trunk hinge spring rods, decklid, spoiler.

Tacked skins of trunk and doors to shells.

Patched the little gaps in the rear window bed lower corners.

Sliced and welded for gap on the right quarter where it was brazed.

Straightened and patched the left rocker's rear end.

Grinded the rear edge of the left door back at top and bottom corners then welded to correct tight spots in the gap.

Made those quarter corner braces...etc.

Its all finished now but this was all I got-




When I was about to get my end-o-day pics, boss walks us and says how we lookin. "Ready for mud if you want! Heres whats left blah blah" says me.

There were not a lot of blahs left, and we're in good shape. Thats huge, to be able to give the right answer about a deadline. Makes the hurrying seem worthwhile and satisfies everyone.

So, aside from a dent in the left rocker, some more flange strips inside, and making shifter and console holes, I think thats about it...

and there it is- a re-skinned 69 Camaro that won't need a great deal of filler work. Whew.

you are capt body panel gap master in my book. cant wait to see it painted.

It should be... very...






Green!

im so cool with green cars, what type of green, todays green or 69 green?

Kinda just regular green, google it. Not sure if its a GM color. A medium metallic green.

I hate to be the guy that says this but... this picture looks like you did nothing BUT knowing how far you went with it and how much of a pain this job was/could have been for you. all that dam effort really paid off. looking at how you said nope that door gap needs to be right and why the fvck is that trunk gap so messed up. when i see people who take that kind of time and effort to make it right YOU are the people who keep these cars on the road for 40+ more years I just hope someday that these pictures help someone get into this line of work and remember how this car went together and try to make one even better.

Originally Posted by idrivejunk

There really isn't much better than work like this.

Scotty- British Racing Green, sry. Not sure from what.

Thanks guys. Yep I put this stuff here hoping somebody will catch on, try it, and get it right. Once you have a few tools theres no limits.

I have 20 pics for you today. I did not quite finish up, I have flange strips on the driver's side to go. BUT- At the beginning of the day, boss re-appeared and returned my written log... and said that we hit the hours right on the predicted nose. Amazing, to me. I did sprint the whole time. Again today, too. Lets look-

This was S.A.D. (sandpaper-aided design). Its the template I made for those roof rail corner pieces from yesterday.



This is where I had to create some clearance at the bottom corner of the door-



And at the top-



Last thing I did before I split, driver's side seat brace-



Passenger side flange strips from across the interior-







RF corner trunk gap fix (where it was brazed)-



Window bed corner patch-



Driver's side still waiting for flange strips-



Passenger front floor-



Driver's rear window corner patch and stuff-





That rocker fix from yesterday. Both rockers have big dents still. That will be grouped into the mud work phase, labor-wise-



Up front-



See the factory "stud goes here" triangles?







Passenger rear flange strips, from above-



Passenger front again-



Wouldn't want to leave anything out, its all important but isn't all exciting.

Today I got done with this stage of the job. All the flange strips are in and I can't think of anything else to weld. Took it outside to blow it off, and its still filthy...









Then out came the epoxy primer on a brush. Flooded all the new seams with it twice. Of course I did spray rattle etch on the backsides during weld prep.

Epoxy almost dry here-







Tomorrow I'm working on the '68. These cars are a simple pleasure to work on, body-wise.

Painter started doing filler work on it last week. Not too shabby but it is dusty-

It has been polyester primed and 2K seam sealed-







...and now its in the block sanding and glaze putty stage, in preparation for urethane primer.

Almost all sanded out now. The grey seam sealer is a soft urethane, also 3M. The light grey primer is polyester, the darker is urethane. The whole car gets a coat or two of the urethane mixed as a sealer, right before the green goes down.