Building my 1967 Camaro - retrospective - Episode one - purchase and bodywork

Episode one, purchase and bodywork.

Episode two, mechanicals and interior.

Episode three, final details and the finished car.

Bonus episode, LS conversion.

Double bonus episode, converting the 4L60e tailshaft housing to a mechanical speedo drive.

Triple bonus episode, the details leading up to the purchase of this car and what it meant.

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I've had my Camaro since 2007 and redid every nut and bolt. I thought I would chronicle its transformation on my blog in order to preserve the process of building it. It's more for memory's sake than anything.

Here's the car I bought:

Ahhh, the memories. 

The car was an ebay listing, bought sight unseen. I would never recommend buying a car without seeing it. It was dumb, frankly. But these were the days before the crash of 2008 and it was a good buy back then. The car looked pretty good and it was a perfect candidate for the changes I wanted to make. It was the year and body style I wanted, it was complete, together, and running. It wasn't a high value rare car. 

It was the car I was looking for.

It was originally a 6 cylinder with a manual 3 speed on the floor. It had a console and the gauge package. The interior had been redone at some point, actually sewn together from scratch. But it was not savable thanks to some mice. That was ok, however, because I was going a different direction than red.

It turned out I was pretty lucky, despite my stupid move. There was some rust in the front fenders, but the trunk and the floor were solid with only surface rust:

(Taken November 2007) 

My plan was to do the car incrementally and drive it while in process. So I wanted to do the brakes, drop in a small block and an automatic, clean up some wiring, etc., but the problem with this is familiar: Mission creep. Once I got into the car I just kept going with the "while-I'm-at-its." 

That is the nature of building a car, it seems.

So I started with the body. Both quarters had been crunched and were full of bondo. So I cut them off:

(Taken in April 2009)

There was some rust in the wheel lip:

So I fixed all that:

I painted everything with POR15:

And put on new quarters:

I put a new skin on the driver's door:

Primer:

(Taken in July 2009)

And put some temporary paint on it:

This is some paint I bought at Home Depot for $6.99 a quart. I wanted to get the car drivable but didn't have the money for the real paint job. Rust-Oleum to the rescue. This was surprisingly good for temporary paint. I was pretty happy with the body work I did, and using this paint was useful to show where I might have to do more work later.

My friend came by with his Camaro, which I built and sold to him:

Taken in August 2009)

I drove the car this way for a summer. But the car whispered to me in the night. It wanted more. And I was happy to give it more. So the next year I started anew on the bodywork, wanting to get it as straight as possible:

Taken September 2010)

Primer, block sand; primer, block sand; primer, block sand. Lather and repeat. This took me 8 months. 

After an abortive attempt to spray the car myself (it's hard for a relative novice to spray metallic paint, and this was my first experience with base/clear), my son hooked me up with his co-worker at the local Ford dealership. I told him that the car was paint ready, which I'm sure is a line he's heard before. Bodywork done by people like me are never paint ready. But surprise, he told me that it was indeed paint ready, the first time in his career this was the case. He only had to do some light prep and spray it. 

Yessss.

He was granted the use of the dealership's spray booth and the oven:

And here's the finished product:

(Taken June 2011)

Love the color. He did a nice job, and didn't charge a whole lot.

So I got the car back home and started reassembly:

I'll post the picture of the completed car at the end. 

Next episode, mechanicals.