[67'7F6'Bird]

Hello Esahlin - My brother made up for the trunk work today - His day was floating in the pool.

I brought the car outside again and had it up on jack stands to get the remainder of the rear under-carriage silica blasted. What a long day - I think about 10 hours today were spent underneath the car. I can only emphasize to everyone the importance of having the right mask for blasting - as I did not. Spend the money and get a good sealed face mask.

I applied Picklex to all sandblasted metal.

[67'7F6'Bird]

Here are pictures of the rear frame rails, trunk pan and fuel tank opening. My brother may not have been helpful today but he had a nice new custom jack-stand so I thought I'd give it a try; holding my car up - the 722 Jackstand was solid and held the car right in place.

[esahlin]

Lookin mighty clean under there!!! When I stripped my underneath...... laying on my back in the driveway..... I used 1/2 a million wire wheels and burned up two power drills.....not fun.

I spent most of the day today removing my roof and the underbracing. the underbracing was kinda rusty so I spent time stripping the POR15 off that I had applied 5 years ago. Also removed the seat braces and subframe bolt braces from the floorpans. getting ready to install new floor pans. Amazing the hidden rust under the seatbraces....you cant see it until you remove them. The floorpan under the seat brace is just bare metal....thanks GM for treating the metal in the factory . Those subframe bolt braces (under the seat braces) are galvanized (I think) and are actually rust free but the cage nut for the subframe bolt had a good amount of surface rust. Vinyl tops suck.

Spray some epoxy primer on your underside/bare metal soon. Here is a link for the best epoxy primer for the $. Ask around and maybe post on their message board....call the owner Barry Kives to ask questions about his products and receive incredible customer service. plus, if you need more info about learning to paint, paint guns etc.....Barry is a great guy to ask. His is a smaller paint company catering mainly to the restoration market.....very high quality for great prices. Check em out if you interested.
http://www.southernpolyurethanes.com/homepage.htm

[67'7F6'Bird]

Hello Esahlin - I new I should have purchased the car tilter for working on the undercarriage, next time I'll change the trunk pan instead, my back is so sore. We took your advice and removed the rear inner panel (behind the tail panel) to see what rust may have been lurking there. It wasn't that bad but the braces for the gas tank where rusting badly, only a small portion on the end, so Ed fabricated the brackets and we were able to sand the surface rust out on the trunk pan - At first we thought we went to far remnoving this panel, but with A welder I guess there really never is a too far if you have the patience to work on it. But futher inspection on the gas tank brace we were glad we removed it. The metal used for the brackets came off his 69 Camaro original rear panel that we changed last year - I knew his Camaro would be good for something - HAHHAHA

Steve

P.S. Thanks for the advice on the paint.

[67'7F6'Bird]

We did get the undercarriage stripped of undercoating, original paint and just about all the rust. What came in Handy today were dremmel bits (aluminum oxide) for the Die Grinder, this helped to get in all those small and tight spots, especially in the leaf spring pockets. We did finally get 2 coats of Eastwood Rust Encapsulator on the metal. I had used a combination of Rust Mort and the Picklex for the metal prep, for the few days the undercarriage sat without paint it had both rust inhibitors to coat the metal. I did resand only a few spots and then applied the paint. Top coat to be applied in a few days.

[esahlin]

You guys are making great progress.

I'm only a little bit ahead of you guys and i have been working on this car for 5 years.

[67'7F6'Bird]

Esahlin - It feels like all I do is work on my car, although my 5 weeks in the garage has aged me so much!!!! Thanks for the pictures. 5 Year - WOW! Keep at it, I bet its looking great!!!!

Here were trial fitting the inner panel and tail panel. There is a huge gap in the middle of the inner panel were it should meet the tail panel. Has anyone else come across this? And recommend how to fix it. The inner panel is listed for 67/68 Camaro Firebird, so is the problem that its basically stamped for the Camaro and Im stuck with this gap?