For now, I don’t intend to race it, but the 440 is definitely too exotic to be on the street for long. I’ve been told I need to swap the pistons and cam/lifters to get it better suited for street use. I’m still kind of at a loss there.
My big issue now is say, the trunk floor needs replaced, so do the rear frame rails, quarters, trunk extensions, and tail panel/bumper support. I have no idea where to start. To me it seems weird to weld a new floor to half rotten frame rails, then hack it off and continue down the line. If that’s normal practice then that’s what I’ll plan on.
I’m just a bit green and worried if I tear the whole thing apart and weld in supports, that I’d never get it back together right.
With stuff like this you will need jack stands, and a bunch of aluminum, or steel shim stock about the width of tongue depressors, and 4 cheap spirit levels. I got 4 of em at northern tool with magnet mount for $5 each.
You want to dissassemble the car of unboltable stuff like the front suspension K frame rear suspension etc get your jack stands under it and shim between the frame and Jack stands to get the body level on 4 axis. I say remove everything before doing this since if the car has severe corrosion issues you want to take the weight out of it before jacking and leveling. Once you set it in place and Jack and level it. Take your levels in place, mark the floor where the stands are, and do not move it until your framerail and floor replacement is done
How bad are the rear framerails? You may be able to just splice in new rear sections. Are they solid but with surface rust? Or are there holes in the sides you can poke through with a screwdriver? If you can splice, typically you add a U channel doubler of steel same thickness of the framerail that fits perfectly inside the framerail about 2' long so about 1' past the splice joint on either side a little less if you have to. You drill holes on both sides of the framerail to rosette weld the splice to it, and weld the joint where the frame sections meet. Then grind the welds flush. Lots of precision measuring, and cutting. Take your time. It's harder to cut it back out to redo it than it is to do it one time. I must have pulled the new trunk pan for my sons car in and out 3 dozen times to check, adjust, fit, prep, until I was happy enough with it that I welded it in. Seems fussy I know, but it's in, and perfect how it's done.
The other thing with rust is sometimes it's hard to tell. Something could look pretty bad till you hit it with a sand blaster, and it's just minor, or something that looks minor ends up holey when you blast it. If trunk is bad, carefully cut out strips that line up with the inside of the framerail U channel and take a peek inside see how bad the insides look. Be careful not to cut into the framerail.
I have had to put good parts together and "temp" tack weld them to the bad parts I was going to replace next. Think of the rusted floor as a temporary jig for the framerail your replacing. It helps hold it in place and provides a tell tale for alignment besides your tape measure. You can also use self tapping screws to hold those pieces together until you can weld the framerails in at the normal mounting points, then just zip the screws back out.
You really need to post pix of the "ROT" your mentioning. Sometimes it's not as bad as you think, sometimes it is. Hard for anybody here to make any assessment without seeing what your talking about.
Also these cars were made with nothing but tooling holes for alignment all over them. This helps you in the end to get it all in the right place on reassembly.
