I set up a part time business called Avon County Road & Race about 18 months ago and rented a good size unit with a view to collecting and restoring a few cars and also to provide a place of work for my two lads where they can work on my cars, friends cars or their own projects when they are not busy working away on motorsport activities of their own and its been a really good arrangement, but really good to have the space to make as much noise and mess as I like away from home!!
Some may remember from my opening topics on here back in Feb 2011 that I bought MLL 40L being a 1969 Camaro that was well known back in the 70's as Red Devil and then Rampage... Well the car was quickly sprayed matt black all over for uniformity of colour and used sporadically on the road during 2011 and mechanically it was fine only needing replacement UJ's on the prop.
In August 2011 the MOT ran out and it was obvious it would not pass another MOT without a number of issues being attended to. How it came to have an MOT in the first place is another question, however we move on... I knew when I bought it that it had some serious bodywork issues to resolve as well. You could see it had been crudely tubbed, the nearside rear quarter panel had loads of filler and fibreglass on it, the roof was badly rippled round the sides and rear and the offside rear quarter had also been badly replaced as the welded seam joint below the wing line went in and out like a rollercoaster !
The following panels were ordered in from NPD back in the summer;
Roof panel
Gutter sections
Full rear quarter panels
Inner and outer wheel tubs
Rear deck panel
Rear tail panel outer & inner
Front inner wheel housings (as these were 'missing' on the car as well)
The car was stripped of all lights, wiring, interior and front sheet metal and bumpers back in the summer as well.
Finally I've started work on the bodywork and taken the following pictures. I'm doing all the work on the Camaro on a one day per week basis so this ain't going to be a fast build thread but we should make some reasonable progress.... All the pictures are on our Facebook page here for those who want to tag along and see what else we're doing https://www.facebook.com/colin.fox.359# ... 1896471714
Started work by just chipping off the filler along the top of the rear wing and pulling a lump of fibreglass off by the rear boot lip corner and revealed this wonderful welding effort. You can just see the seam running along the line of where the filler has been chipped off.
There's no metal at all holding the outer roof panel to the inner structure along the roof gutter edge above the drivers door....
Here is an inside shot of the drivers side rear wheel tub made out of pop rivetted aluminium sheeting, bits of fibreglass and with a sizeable chunk of the inner body panel chopped away to allow for the bigger tub. No wonder the rear quarter window wouldn't work properly either as the mechanism had been chopped off as well so thats on the next list of replacement parts!
The usual body rot at both lower corners of the rear screen but again the nearside corner is the worse side. Oh yes, the rear window wasn't even bonded in but just laid on a bed of mastic and was easily pushed out from the inside with no effort at all.........
So, after a quick whiz round with the air chisel this was the result. NOt much original metal in there at all.....
And then a few tugs with some mole grips removed the aluminium wheel tub pretty quick and this is what we are left with
And then finally I removed the rear deck panel to reveal the inner deck panel which although looking quite rusty is actually quite solid except for the rearmost 1" where there are numerous pin holes. The rear 2" will be cut away and a new boot lip repair section will be welded in here (its just visible lying in the boot)
Well thats the state of play at the moment and I'm looking forward to tackling the other side in due course. This weekend may well see the removal of the outer roof skin.
