69 Cuda resto

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You are doing good work.
One thing I think you should have done in the beginning is to align the doors before any of the rear sheet metal was removed or at the very minimum support the opening between the door opening.
 
So, we went ahead today and built some bracing for the car in hopes of getting the old front end off soon, along with the floor and the rockers. We also realized that the service manual has dimensions in it that will help us straighten the ol' girl out. I've been gone for most of the last month so hopefully I'll finish up the grilles soon and post some pics of that repair job.

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Over the last month I've earned about 80 hours of comp time. I'd like to use it all to work on the car. There is also talk of a 22 day furlough, man think of all I could get done in 22 days.
 
Today we got the front end removed and the new clip mocked up just so we could see what the ol' girl's gonna look like (again) soon.

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Sammie decided to go for a swim amidst all the excitement.....goofy dog

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She's looks like a car again!!!!


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So, this week we'll clean up some rust and weld the front end on. This is a big deal. Once the front end is on we can put on the rockers, finish the rear end and than get one of you guys to sell us some fenders.....lol. It was a great feeling to see that complete front clip on the car.
 
Great progress. I would put fenders and doors on and tweak all the gaps before finalizing the welding of that front clip. But yeah that has got to be a good feeling seeing that new clip on there. Now I see why you put all that bracing in place.
 
Oh, yes, there's more than just welding it on. One thing though.....wrecking a car is never a good thing, in our case though it was a blessing in disguise. We are finding rust in places we never would've seen if we weren't replacing the front clip. I don't believe in destiny or anything like that but this resto never would've been this 'good' if I wouldnt've wrecked the car. We would've patched the quarters and the fenders and gone on about our way.......with a rusty *** car that would've fallen apart at the seams at some point.
 
First off, the drivers side door post pillar was pretty ratty at the bottom so we made a patch piece for it. The big news is that the front clip is on for good. We got the frame rails welded onto the crossmember. We still need to clean up around the A pillars a bit and weld all that together. Things are moving right along.

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We used some bracing and a come-along to make sure the rails were butting up to the cross member as best as possible.

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Now these are some UGLY welds

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The ol' girl is whole again

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Now we can really start putting in some sheet metal.
 
One thing that helps the welds is to wire wheel the metal surfaces until they are shiny and clean.
 
We had the metal cleaned up pretty good and the spot welds went in very nicely. We than decided to beef the connection up a little with some welds around the flanges. The three biggest problems we ran into were: 1. I have sucky welding skill 2. I was welding upside down 3. My upside down welding skills are worse than my right side up welding. When we started the project our biggest fear was our welding skill so we were going to hire someone to weld on the clip. As we got better and when we realized we didn't have to stick with just the factory spot welds (Why do it like the factory when you can do it better) we felt confident that we could install the clip oourselves. Everything turned out great. Thanks to BB-Dave, that is....he's the one who told us it was a piece of cake.
 
Today we got the left hand rockers, outer wheel house and A pillar welded in. There's no pic but we put the door on and with the exception of a 1/4 to 3/8 inch sag from worn out hinges the door fits great.

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As we make progress we find ourselves sitting back and just looking at what we've done in complete and absolute awe. With the exception of the right hand rocker and floor pan we are done tearing stuff up and are able to concentrate on only putting it back together. So, once again I will put the word out.......if anyone out there wants to sell me some fenders, let me know......LMFAO!!!!
 
Bill, maybe by the time your ready AMD will have them made????? LOL!!!!

Are you going to use the AMD full quarters?
 
No, we have AMD patch quarters. They fit great. I am having a hard time finding right hand full rockers though. They make the left side (obviously) but I can't find the right side. I'm gonna call AMD tomorrow and ask. I find it hard to believe they would make one side and not the other. My dad called them a few months ago asking about fenders and they said they had plans for them but it would be a couple of years. We have a few fenders that are pretty chewed up and we'll see if we can repair them.
 
Sweet project Bill-glad to hear your grey cloud has a silver lining what with the wreck and all. Otherwise, nice looking 'cuda! I might've missed it at the beginning of the thread, but what's your end goal?

Just a guess, but do you work at Wright-Patt?
 
txstang84 said:
Sweet project Bill-glad to hear your grey cloud has a silver lining what with the wreck and all. Otherwise, nice looking 'cuda! I might've missed it at the beginning of the thread, but what's your end goal?

Just a guess, but do you work at Wright-Patt?
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Our goal is to have a nice looking car that's loud and goes fast. That's really about it. We have no allusions of a concours resto or even show quality, so the first person that tells us we are using the wrong bolts in the radiator shroud, or other such nonsense, will be treated poorly by the both of us.....LOL.

Yes, I work at Wright-Patt. I'm an ART flying crew chief with the 445th AW. COME ON FURLOUGH....I could really use 22 days to work on the car!!!
 
We temp installed the quarter, did a couple of repairs on the lock post pillar and threw the door on the see how it fit. It fits great!! When we had the door on a couple of weeks ago it sagged pretty bad so we put new pins in the hinges and took care of most of that problem. Keep in mind, the old quarter is still underneath the new one so the gap isn't exactly how it will be.

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The door to rocker gap is nice and straight. It looks great on the inside also


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The quarter patch panel doesn't have the extension that runs under the door sill so we made a little pacth. It still needs a little tweaking.


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The pillar was rusted out at the lock post so we patched it up. We're getting better!!!

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Obviously this isn't the finish fit but it's pretty damn close to being perfect


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We also started removing the passenger side rocker


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Things are moving right along as we gain experience and, most of all, confidence. When we removed the other rocker it took days of contemplating and poking around. This one took us about an hour. After this rocker is out and the floor is removed we will be done with tearing things apart (other than things we screw up and have to redo, of course) and only building. We're still pretty amazed we are damn near building a car from the ground up. It's a great feeling!!!
 
Your "fish jig saw puzzle" looks like it is coming togeather nicely!

Keep up the great work..

Ma Snart
 

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make sure you keep the numbers from the smash radiator support.
good to see you fixing the car.
 
Great work, man. I remember back in 1987 when I was doing the bodywork on my first car- a 1969 Barracuda just like this one. At the time, there was absolutely nothing available in the way of aftermarket sheetmetal for these cars, so everything had to be fabbed from scratch. Thankfully I only needed to do some quarter repairs behind the rear wheels, since doing the level of replacement you're doing would have been impossible.
 
Thanks to all. To BobK....We would NEVER had even considered this had there not been aftermaket parts. Although we are doing a little fab work there is no way on god's green earth we could've accomplished ANY of this without new sheetmetal. Now if only we could get some EFFING FENDERS!!!!!!!!


Any whooooo......................this winter I started repairning the grill surrounds. I started with the typical glues and epoxies. I finally found some plastic epoxy that actually bonded the plastic chemically. It seemed to work pretty good so I went ahead and primed everything. As I was painting the grill surround snaps and smashes to the ground (it was hanging from one of the screw holes with a wire hanger) and snaps in half. I said to myself "self, what bad luck you have. Gosh darn it think of all the time wasted repairing that". At least I think that is what I said as I don't remember the next hour because I was blind with $%^king rage. I did notice though that the repaired areas were quite visible through the primer and the more I sanded to get them smooth the weaker the areas got and wouldn't stay bonded. I then had an idea and decided to see I could "weld" the pieces together using plastic from some other busted up inserts I have. It seems to have worked out great.

When I started I had an idea to help strengthen the repairs. At places that would be hidden by the chrome I drilled two small holes, at the tops and bottoms of the cracks, and threaded through some cotton string and tied it as tight as I could. My idea was that not only would the string help hold the pieces together but that the epoxy would soak into the thread to stiffen it up.


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After the fiasco in the paint booth I decided to try to weld the pieces together. The first thing I did was get the tip of a screwdriver scorching hot.

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I then melted a trough half way through the plastic along both sides of the crack and then filled the trough with plastic from another surround

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I then sanded everything down, added some epoxy on the surface to fill low spots and sanded again. Bet you wish I had some pics of them finished don't cha? Well, maybe next time. The surrounds aren't here. I'll get some pics of them this weekend when I'm over working on the car.
 
Nice thread.
Do you have any idea how fast you were going when you hit the wall?
 
Bill,

Did you melt the ones that you got from another member to repair that? efriedrichs were pretty complete if I remember...

Either way you are doing some great work. Keep it up.
 
I used Fusor to repair my grilles and reinforced the back sides with fibreglass in the fusor to make it rigid when it dried.
 
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