[mudslinger]

Brent...that be my son bought this 68 in July 2011
Non #s matching, block dates to 69, 4 speed, 3.55 rear,supposedly Endura delete,
P.O. lost the paper work from PHS

It's was a driver but I talked him into putting it on a trailer for the 400 mile trip home over the Cascades from Eastern Wa..... luckily he had the trailer cause he no sooner then bought it and the tranny got locked up in first loading it on the trailer...he was told car had new clutch and Munchie shifter.




Demolition started in Oct. of 2011. I told him he would be driving it by the the following summer...as you can guess we didn't make that dead line




It looked like the car was a older resto...albeit not a good resto. Paint was blistering over the entire car, l front corner was tagged pretty good after the poor restoration.
L front frame rail was swung just enough to make alignment of body panels impossible.

Besides all that the car was pretty much complete and fairly solid.
It had some rust in the back window, lower front fenders and around the rear wheel arches on the quarters.
Floors and windshield where solid...all and all not a bad foundation to start with.

We had the drive train pulled and towed the car to my auto body shop for the frame repair. My shop was closed for 3 days for new years, as the date shows that's how we spent celebrating the New Year


We brought the car back to my shop at home after fixing the frame, we did the majority of the rebuild in my shop at home
We had the hood, fenders,trunk and doors blasted
Hood didn't survive the process. We opted for a repop hood
We shot BASF epoxy primer on the panels prior to body work.

[cuz68]

Looking good, What color was it new? TKS Randy.

[The Boss]

Looking good! Lucky boy!

[mudslinger]

Car originally was Nightshade.
I tried to talk him into painting it that but he wanted no part of green.

This was the worst corner, L front. Bumper had rolled back into the fender about 2".
PO had adjusted bumper as far forward and applied a couple inches of mud.
Not the best photo but it shows the front edge after we drilled out the spot welds and removed the front brace in the fender for straightening of front edge of fender and brace.
Fenders must have been installed off of a lemans at one time. we welded up the holes for the lemans emblems.
Car is a true 242.
The front end of this thing had been around the block a few times in its 40 some years.
The endura bumper was a royal pain. I walked away from if more than once.
I don't have any good photos of the repair process but we had to bend, cut and weld on the metal reinforcement , add and subtract on the bumper substrate.
We used the Fusor line products on the bumper, only because that is what we use in my shop.

[2002Z4CSS]

Nice car and barn.

[Simple Man]

Nice ride!

[mudslinger]

All Metal applied over top of welded areas and seams.


Once we had the fenders in prime we moved on to stripping the body and jams.
After our problems with the hood that the blaster destroyed we decided to strip the body with a razor blade and a D/A

We use Glasurit in my collision shop and they want a etching primer applied before the epoxy on bare metal that was sanded.
We applied 1 coat of wash primer/etching then a coat of gray epoxy.
This is the etching primer.

[68gtoMN]

There were VERY few Nightshade Green cars made. VERY cool color - I own TWO Of them. There are some posts on this forum and elsewhere stating that approx 300 were made, but I have NO way to validate that assumption. It's not a heavily GREEN car, but more of a Charcoal Grey with a dark green tint that changes color in light.

Good luck.

Here are a couple of shots of Nightshade I had handy... First pic of trunk is more accurate. Pictures in Sun (Florida, I believe) do not have the right filter / exposure.

[Verdoro 68]

Love Nightshade. Very pretty and unique color.

[mudslinger]

That's the color all right.
Car had been taking down to metal on the outside when it had been done before
When we took it apart we found the originial nightshade color under the roof pillar weatherstrip channels
Color was for sure more gray than green.
I have been in the auto body trade going back 50 years or so.....
I can't say for certain but I don't think I have ever run across that paint code before.

Bill

[mudslinger]

Rear shelve had some rot in the usual spots. this was in epoxy primer


Some rust showing under the w/o moldings on qtrs
Doesn't look bad but we kept chasing it


At this point decided car needed to go back to town.
I don't have a lift at home and I wanted to try my hand at the resistance spot welder I have at my body shop.


We ordered outer qtr skins and wheel houses.
Our a/m supplier sells us the parts at wholesale and no shipping. We figured if the panels where nice we would use the entire panel.
Well as you might have guessed, we opted to use just a few inches around the arch on each side. We used the entire wheel house on the l side but the r side was such a bad fit we ended up welding the old wheelhouse back in after we repaired the bad areas on it.
We also tried to stay away from the factory seams if possible
This shows L wheel arch in place and we where ready to install the outer

This is of the r side before we removed and repaired the wheel house

This is how much of the after market sheet metal we ended up using on the r side.
Left side we didn't even need the section behind the wheel


Rear shelve we did the same staying away from the seams. We got a good look at it from under side and only replaced the area needed saving as much of the orginial metal as possible

[68gtoMN]

Originally Posted by mudslinger

That's the color all right.
Car had been taking down to metal on the outside when it had been done before
When we took it apart we found the originial nightshade color under the roof pillar weatherstrip channels
Color was for sure more gray than green.
I have been in the auto body trade going back 50 years or so.....
I can't say for certain but I don't think I have ever run across that paint code before.

Bill

It's surely your son's choice for color, but I try to convince any owner of an original V code paint car to go original. It's so unique and garner's way more attention when parked but flies under the radar for police.

Here's another few pictures, including someone's youtube video of nightshade green
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7H9YGvsLJo

http://www.highperformancepontiac.co...8_pontiac_gto/

nice story - keep it coming and good luck!

[2002Z4CSS]

Looks to be a pretty solid car to start with.

[mudslinger]

After panels where welded in the car went back to my shop at home for the mud work.
You guys have probably seen enough photos of bondo so I won't bore you with a bunch.
Body ready for primer, shot some etching primer over the bare metal spots.
After making a mess of my shop and boat when we did the mud work on the front and doors, we wised up and hung some plastic from the rafters to contain the dust and primer overspray.

This is Brent dry sanding primer. Dirty job but someone has to do it.


Mocked up body one more time....Makes me shutter just thinking about how many times we had the front sheetmetal, doors and front bumper on and off.


Bill
BTW I lost out on talking him into painting car the original color

[paint guy]

Hey Mudslinger, how many guys you have working on that thing? The work you got done in a week would've taken me a month. BTW, you'll probably still get to paint the car the original color, just wait about 10 years or so. And nightshade is definitely a color I would have considered had it been available in 69.

[mudslinger]

Originally Posted by paint guy

Hey Mudslinger, how many guys you have working on that thing?

4......
Me,myself,I and Brent

We had the car at home so we could only work on it evenings and weekends.
At age 23 Brent helped out when he could, but I am sure we can all remember what life was like in our early 20's.

Bill

[mudslinger]

Both myself and Brent needed a break from body work.
With everything in primer.
We started cleaning up the interior floor. The floor was really clean of rust, we just cleaned it up good and shot some epoxy primer on a few spots that we had taken a wire wheel to.

Also wanted to rebuild the front suspension and paint the forward frame. I never planned on doing a frame off but we wanted to clean up the frame and underside a little.

Applied Ditzler DP primer first then single stage Concept with a flattener.we weren't concerned about being factory correct on the gloss. We did the frame in semi gloss, firewall and suspension parts in satin I think.

We went with Moog on the rebuilding the front end. Also went with QA1 coil overs.

[Greg Reid]

Another vote for Nightshade. One of the coolest and rarest colors ever offered on a GTO in my opinion. I've never even seen one in person. Not that it's up to a vote though... It's going to be the color he wants it I'm sure...lol
Nice car by the way and nice work!

[68gtoMN]

4-piston caliper brakes! Are they sleeved yet? Man, these things stop the car NOW when working properly. I have several with this and several spare sets

[mudslinger]

Well he went with black. Of all the colors he kicked around beside the original I could live with black, tho I started wondering about our body work. Trunk was ready first.

With other things going on during the summer our progress went rather slow. We managed to get some more painting done and work on getting the body ready for paint.
We wanted to get paint on it before the weather turned.
And BTW, I didn't do the laying down of the paint, I left that up to my painter, I put down the spray gun close to 10 years ago and let me tell ya...I don't miss it.

The body was ready for paint and we also wanted to spruce up the rest of frame and under body...needed to use the lift in town so off to town again.
The underside was dirty but in pretty nice shape. We cleaned it up and sprayed the underbody and the frame


We had the diff out while we where at it, we found this pink paint on it. Any ideas ??


We installed QA1's and changed out the arms with ones from Spohn


We got the body all ready for the painter in the morning

And back home.
The color has just a touch of pearl that only shows up when the sun is out.