Mating the Royal Sport's Body to the chassis for the very first time!
We've been drilling lots of holes in this Camaro. There are many parts we plan to replace, and a few we're going to have to fix. By drilling out the factory spot welds, we're able to stay away from patching in small pieces and our end result will be a clean, complete body without a jigsaw puzzle under the carpet.
We drilled out each panel so the rusty, dented, or missing original piece could be repaired, straightened, or replaced. This tail panel looks like it was shot full of holes... this gives you an idea of how many spotwelds were used to hold this panel in place. We drilled each one out to remove the panel.
Once we removed the quarter panels and the rear wheelhouses, it became obvious that the remaining rear structure needed to come apart. There was a considerable amount of rust damage in the trunk floor, rear wheelhouses, and the tail panel was punched full of holes from a previous crash repair. Once we get the whole thing disassembled, we can transfer any parts we're going to re-use to our new structure on the chassis jig.
We're using Rotabroach spotweld cutters made by Blair. These high-quality hole cutters allow us to penetrate through the top layer of steel to separate the factory spotwed without destroying either of the panels. This gives us the option to reuse the panel. Rotabroach cutters are available in various sizes for different kinds of welds, and the sharp cutting teeth aren't easily dulled by the mild steel used in 1960's and 1970's musclecars. We're able to drill lots of holes with each cutting bit. They're available from quality body tool suppliers like Eastwood.
After the spotweld is drilled, the sheetmetal can be pulled apart cleanly. Sometimes you need to use an air hammer to separate the panels, just be careful not to destroy the pieces so they may be reused later.
The inner structure around the rear passenger seats where the convertible support and drip rails live poses an interesting dilemma... ours was not only rusty, but the driver's side was wrecked at some point. We drilled all the spotwelds out to seprarate the panel for repair, as the inner structure is not avaialble in a reproduction.
Moving to the rear of the car, the factory tail panel needed to be removed for replacement and to gain access to the trunk floor. Again, we drilled out the spotwelds, then split the panel with an air chisel. There are lots of hidden spotwelds on these panels, so we scuffed the seams down with a 3M abrasive disc to make them easier to find.
With the tail panel removed, we could attack the rear filler panel. The filler panel is the piece above the rear decklid behind the rear window. These tended to rust inside on the convertibles, and ours was no different. Again, we broke out the drills and air hammer to pull it apart. We have a reproduction panel from YearOne to replace the rusty original.
The side inner rear structures are going to be repaired, as the reproduction replacements are not available as of this writing. The ends of ours show some rust holes, so we drilled and pulled these to be repaired on the bench and reinstalled later.
The remainder of the trunk floor came out after the spotwelds were drilled along the frame rails, where the floor meets the passenger compartment floor behind the rear seat support, and at the back of the rocker panels. The whole rear floor section came out as one piece, leaving us with very little of a Camaro.
The front of the body section was also rusty, so we addressed the rusty upper cowl and dash next. The same routine applies; strip and find the welds, separate with an air chisel, and remove the old panel. We had some clean-up grinding to do on this part of the car after the original dash and upper cowl was removed.
Can it be? The first new panel is test fitted to the Camaro tub. We’ve turned the corner between taking apart and putting together. Here, the new upper cowl is set in place.
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Blair
Eastwood
YearOne
