how bad is this rust?

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Markrenner

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the drivers side of my frame is rusted pretty bad but the rest is solid and covered in rustolium. how much will this cost to get fixed??
 

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Theres a lot of labor involved. You'll have to remove the suspension and K frame, drill out all the spot welds. Im sure your looking at a good $1000 if your gonna have a reputable shop do it.
 
you could do this your self for the cost of a donar rail and the the consumables for the welder. but you know how it goes. you start the rail and your going to find more rust. i dont see why you couldnt get a rail out of a parts car and then drill out the spot welds on yours and put it up and weld the new one in. i would give it a shot if it was me. i would pull the engine and entire front suspension first though.
 
younggun2.0 said:
you could do this your self for the cost of a donar rail and the the consumables for the welder. but you know how it goes. you start the rail and your going to find more rust. i dont see why you couldnt get a rail out of a parts car and then drill out the spot welds on yours and put it up and weld the new one in. i would give it a shot if it was me. i would pull the engine and entire front suspension first though.
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i'm in the process of doing the same thing to my dart i have a dodnr rail and have the car down to a bare shell takes a lot of time but not really that hard but damb there are a lot of spot welds just make sure you measure everything and get it back in the right spot
 
I would not measure anything on that car with that rail, get a FSM and get all the measurements from it if you are going to do it your self.
 
That frame rail is toast. At the very least, you're going to have to replace the entire rail. If the rail is that bad though, I would suspect that its not the only thing you're going to have to replace, typically there's a lot of body panel rust before you get frame rust like that. Plus, it looks like some of the frame rail has been cut away, which, unless you did it to look at the rust, would lead me to believe there might be other damage to the rail than just rust damage (collision etc).

A quick search on eBay turned up a few A-body frame rails for under $200, but unless you can do the work yourself its going to be pretty expensive. The engine, transmission, K member and all of the suspension will have to come off. Then all the spot welds will have to be drilled out, and finally the replacement rail will have to be welded in. And there's a lot of measuring that will have to be done along the way to make sure the car ends up straight when everything is done. A reputable shop willing to tackle something like that will probably have an hourly shop rate between $70 to $100 an hour (at least they would in California). And I would guess that they would charge at least a few days of labor for the replacement (minimum), so you'd easily be in the thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, you could probably buy another A-body in better condition for less money than it would cost to fix that. In fact, both of my '71 GT's cost far less to purchase than it would cost to fix that rail unless you're doing the work yourself. And there's a couple of running, driving A-body's on Craigslist local to me right now that would cost less to purchase and drive home than it would cost to fix that rail.

Unless the car has real sentimental value, or some serious factory options, you'd probably be better off using it for a parts car...
 
I have done this to my 67' barracuda and I found it is easier and more accurate to replace inner fender and frame rail as an assembly. There
are holes through the short piece that connect the firewall and inner fender together and through the upper brace of the radiator support
and inner fender that the factory used to line them up. the only measurements needed will be from inner side of rocker to outside of the frame rail where it meets the tranny cross brace and between rails at same location and between rails at the front. get the car level and drop a plumb bob floor from the rail at few places and mark on the floor also if you would feel better about it.:tard:
 
DIY is the way to go on this, a donor car would work, maybe think about some thin walled box steel too. Its a classic car, everything is pretty easy to deal with. This is part of the hobby. Take your time, hell you might just learn something. :)
 
I'd get a donor rail and try to fix it, if you can't, well, then you will have learned about what is involved and gained some experience and knowledge about these cars, and you will already have it apart to be used as a parts car. I did have two rails that were mint, but I think my fiance's brother (thief) scrapped them. I'll check tho.
 
cudascott said:
the only measurements needed will be from inner side of rocker to outside of the frame rail where it meets the tranny cross brace and between rails at same location and between rails at the front. get the car level and drop a plumb bob floor from the rail at few places and mark on the floor also if you would feel better about it.:tard:
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There's a reason why the factory manual includes diagonal dimensions for the frame. Never weld a frame back together without checking the diagonals. Straight across, rail-to-rail measurements don't always tell the whole story, you want to include some long, diagonal measurements to make sure you actually got it right.

With old uni-body's there's no guarantee that the other rail is actually straight or where it was supposed to be to begin with. Factory tolerances were only checked within a 1/4", and if the other rail was a 1/4" out you don't want to compound that error by measuring your new rail entirely off of the old one.

Frame work isn't hard, but it does need to be precise. That means a lot of measurements, and a lot of time, to get it right. The car might still drive down the road if you get it wrong, but the alignment and handling of the car can definitely suffer, and that will end up giving you headaches later when everything doesn't fit or roll the way its supposed to.
 
Damn alright I guess Ill either sell it or see how much it's gonna cost a body shop
 
Markrenner said:
Damn alright I guess Ill either sell it or see how much it's gonna cost a body shop
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There's nothing wrong with getting some quotes, I would. But, I also wouldn't be surprised if they're really high. And with that kind of frame damage, I doubt you'd get much more than scrap value for the car unless you part it out.

Looking at that rail just makes me think there's other rust issues with the car you might not be aware of. When I see that rail, the only thing I think is that any "donor" car you'd be getting a clean frame rail from would probably be in better shape than the car you're trying to fix. Which just tells me that you should look for a cleaner car to start with, and maybe use the car you have as the parts car instead of the other way around.

I think its pretty cool that you can still find A-body's in pretty clean, solid shape and not pay a ton of money for them like for E and B body's. But, the downside to that is it doesn't always make a lot of sense to spend a bunch of money trying to fix one that will need a lot of work. You'll quickly end up spending more money fixing the car you have than it will ever be worth, and more than you could just buy a cleaner car for.
 
get hold of member crackedback, his name is rob and he has some dry replacements. those = fubar
 
I have a friend here in Tampa that does heavy collision for a living , and you would be blown away at the Mopars he has brought back... I saw him do the front rails on a 71 Cuda convert in a few hours...(Just the weld up, everything was prepped) Another was a Challenger T/A that had been rotting since the 70's...he can take these cars completely apart and put them back better than new! If you can get it here, with all the prep, he might be willing to help..
 
Well I put the car on craigslist and a mechanic came to look at it for his nephew. He inspected the car and said that was the only problem with the car was the one quarter of the frame. He thinks battery acid leaked on it because the rest of the car was just cosmetic he said. I couldn't find the rails on eBay but I do know a few people with home shops I could ask to teach me. The mechanic who looked at it even said the front suspension was new expect for the upper control arms. Does this effect your previous opinions at all?
 
what does the inner fender look like?rusty around the battery tray area?
if the inner fender is soild and there are no other major rust issues I'd
say go for it. pull engine and tranny and remove everything from firewall forward. get a couple of spot weld cutters and go at it. I do know that you need to make sure you get the replacement rail right back where
the piece of crap was, take lots of measurements at cross member and
radiator support and between rails and of course as 72bluNblu said diagonally. if you leave in the inner fender and do above mentioned you should be alright. Do you have a garge to work in?
 
Not personally but I know for sure 2 people with garages with lifts and everything
 
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