66 Valiant Vert RUSTORATION

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66valiantconv said:
thanks for the voice of confidence :) honestly, i'm not looking to "restore" the car for show or race or anything like that..... i just want to be able to drive it with the wife in the passenger seat and the top down:burnout:.... if it meant welding a big "X" with a tubular frame i'd do it :p.... well maybe not THAT far!
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i think that once you dig in and start getting the new metal in , it will spiral downhill and you will find yourself taking up a ton of pride and sense of accomplishment and want this thing to exceed everyones expectations !!! :D
 
i'd fix her my 65 cuda has similar front frame problems but if you good at fab and welding and got lots of spare time why not but your does look alot worse than mine and ive welded up quite few cars and there always worse than they look. if i was doing your car i'd start with making a full square tubing frame with a custom floor that was my plan for my car with a wide 5 stock car suspension until I started tearing into it and realized it wasn't all that bad so im gonna repair whats there.
 
I'd plan on scoring full rear frame rails . They tend to rust from the inside out. There is alot of rust you cat see yet lol. Anything can be fixed . Weather or not it's worth it is up to you.
 
Good luck, I have no doubt the car can be saved. It just depends what you want it to be and how interested you are in getting there.

My 67 will never be a show car but it was as bad or worse than yours underneath (Ontario winters and salt). After a winter in the garage for repairs and 10-15 rolls of mig wire, my wife and I have 4500 miles driving so far!
 
well, i'm going to start making room in the garage for the disassembly tomorrow and hopefully will have more pics up on saturday.... thanks for all the good words and the tubed floor idea :)

p.s. i know i need rear frame rails, mine are shaped like a U :p
 
I hate rusty cars, but it is all that I buy :). I had a guy at a steel shop bend me some u-shapes out of steel for frame patches, and I was able to save my high school four door belvedere. Not worth it to anybody but me, but if its what you want than go for it. You might want to pick up a cheap four door donor car to drive around while you work on the vert, keeps you motivated!
 
power went out so i had time to kill.... as you can see from the pics, i had some critters living under the back seat (gone now), and the driver floor totally destroyed the front seat mount.... needless to say, i have no floor pans to speak of in the front, but where the convert top is is surprisingly solid... even with the big hole in the driver rocker (i think in the last pic) the car is on 4 jack stands and the doors still open and close! it's ugly, and i haven't even vacuumed out the deteriorated stuff (no power at the time), but i feel really good about this car........ damn i'm a sucker! :p


here's the pics you've been waiting for...............
 

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Seeing the picks of your floor boards makes me not feel as bad about my rusty floors lol.keep the pics coming. You gotta cool car. It will be awesome when you getter done!
 
Of course it looks like the tin worms haven't left much BUT otherwise it looks like the interior stuff is in good condition, the dash pad doesn't look cracked and the rest of the vinyl that I can see looks nice. Usually the hard plastic rear seat side covers are cracked or have the lower portion broken off, yours look good and with some paint they'll look new - check the ash trays they are usually rusted out inside.
 
Ok after seeing them pics its not looking good to me it would be a parts car for me ... But lets stay upbeat here .. You have a ton of work but just set back and look at what your want it to be and then get your butt back to work lol ..
 
Wow!
The floors are bad, but it's only metal and time.
You can fix anything given enough of both.
On the upside, it would be easy to put a new floor in the car in one piece because the top isn't in the way!
I can't wait for more pics.......
 
What's keeping the car from folding in two?
 
273 said:
What's keeping the car from folding in two?
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cleaned out the rusticles (all 15 gallons of them.... thanks shop-vac!)...... man i sure am glad i got this car, it must be full of miracles because i have no idea what's holding it together either :p i included an open door pic at the end just for fun :)

p.s. i don't think the frame rail under the pedals should be missing pieces.... hmmmmm.... and CHECK OUT THE GREAT PIC OF MY JACK STAND :blob:
 

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look at the bright side. you wont have to drill out a buttload of spot welds to get the floor out !
 
I know anything is possible, but you have to think about the value of what you will have after you invest a massive amount of time.

I still say the best thing to do is to make this car the donor car. The question is whether the other car needs to be a convertible, or if it's possible to move the convertible windshield frame into a hard top car.

If you can get a shell for less than $1000 (and I think you can) it will be the best money you ever spent.
 
The missing floor isn't a big deal but it looks like there's a lot of the frame missing. Yes it's fixable but you need to understand it will take a lot of time and effort.
 
65DartGTConv said:
I know anything is possible, but you have to think about the value of what you will have after you invest a massive amount of time.

I still say the best thing to do is to make this car the donor car. The question is whether the other car needs to be a convertible, or if it's possible to move the convertible windshield frame into a hard top car.

If you can get a shell for less than $1000 (and I think you can) it will be the best money you ever spent.
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working on that idea as we speak :)
 
66valiantconv said:
even with the big hole in the driver rocker (i think in the last pic) the car is on 4 jack stands and the doors still open and close!
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The front and rear frame rails don't connect on these cars. Since it's a convertible there's no roof. So the only structure in the middle of the car are the rockers and maybe the driveshaft tunnel.

I noticed when I was cutting out my donor floor pan that the rockers are pretty tuff. I was cutting the pan with a sawzall and when I got into the rockers it dulled the blade really fast. If you're going to patch them, do some research on the kind of steel they're made of and how welding might weaken them.

Also consider putting in some sub-frame connectors to carry some of the load.
 
73AbodEE said:
LOL....you have any pics of the trunk?

a new floor and rockers, you will be 1/3 of the way there
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the trunk is just as holy and the frame rails for the rear bumper are nearly gone..... i'll clean and post those this weekend

at least my slant 6 and 4 speed are good :burnout:
 
X2 my idea of building a custom rolling chassis, suspension and floor and drop your body on to it. If there's anything under the paint but rocker MUST be good they got to make up for no floor and frames. You should check out what this guy did but for as bad as his car was it had decent frame and some floor .

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=106974
if you decide to fix it good luck.
 
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