What I did on my car in 1973 was take a 90 degrees pick and went inside
the trunk and inside the rear quarter panel behind the interior trim and scrape out all the foam caulk and then put latex caulk in the seams........never had any
rust in my quarters because of that. I did have rust pop up in the front fenders
in 1974, and I bought NOS front fenders and modified them so they would drain and never any rust after that. On my hood, I repaired it twice and it kept coming back and I was able to find a perfect Ram Air hood out of a Judge that was being parted out that was built with the latex caulk and I've never had any problems with that one. My car is a Dallas car all it's life so never any salt but was driven in the rain for ten years, never again after that. The biggest build flaw on these
cars that you must address while you are restoring it is the factory routing of the
wires going down to the starter on the non ram air cars. The non ram air cars have the starter wires and positive cable routed through a metal tube at the back of the left cylinder head. After a few years of driving the heat bakes the wires and they short out inside the tube, causing an electrical fire. I'm in the
car repair business and work on a lot of other people's GTO's and I 've had them
burst into flames in my shop on two different occasions. The fix for this is to buy a reproduction Ram Air engine wiring harness from Ames. and install it. On the
Ram Air cars the starter wires run all the way down the inside lip of the valve cover and down the front of the left head, then run to the starter next to the
oil pan, along with the battery cable. You want to run the wires and bat cable
so that they approach the front of the solenoid from the 8 o'clock position.
This way no tube is needed and the wires and cable are in the cool air space next to the left oil pan rail, and no where near the exhaust manifold. Another tip......when you have the top replaced, make sure that they leave a long tail
of convertible top material that reaches down inside the plastic rain gutter below the rear rail. If they don't know to do this and simply cut off the extra material, rainwater will miss the plastic rain gutter and get your floorboards wet. Ask me how I know this! If you aren't a stickler for exact authenticity and
aren't doing GTOAA point judging, a neat trick that makes the car look a lot better is to take black out tape and install it on the rear lip of the front fender trim next to the windshield, covering up the two screw holes and then use
weathersrip adhesive to glue the trim to the fenders. The way the factory did it,
you see the reflection of the two phillips screws in the lower windshield stainless and this ruins the clean look around the windshield. Also be sure to
paint the underside of the hood where it meets the windshield black so that
it looks much cleaner when looking out the windshield inside the car. Blacking
out the windshield washer nozzles helps in that regard also. Also when you reinstall the GTO emblem on the front fenders, do NOT use speed nuts as you
have to unbolt the fender to remove them if you ever have to repaint the fender. Just put a little 3M weatherstrip adhesive on each of the three pins and slap it on the car and apply masking tape to hold it tight to the fender till the glue dries overnight. Then all you have to do to remove them for repainting is
lightly pry them loose. My emblems have been held on this way for 45 years so far and have been off and on several times during that time.
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