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The worst of the rust |
A bit more rust |
Rally Dash in rough shape, but the
gauges look good.
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Beginning to get rid of the surface rust and determine what
needs replacing |
Looks really good and solid, just a few spots with small
holes. |
Looks good back here too |
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Pulled a fender to look for rust. Looks good! |
Engine compartment is going to need some work. Inner
fenders were cut for header clearance. |
Drivers side floor pan cut for removal. Just a few pinholes,
in the center. I decided to leave as much good metal as possible. |
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Cleaned up behind dash |
Peeling back floor pan. The spotwelds were easy to find on
the clean metal, but were impossible to see in the rusted areas. I drilled
all the welds I could see and used an impact chisel on the rest. |
Pheww... After about 2 hours it's finally out. This is the
first time I have done this. I'm sure the pros work much faster. |
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Very little rust in the unibody frame |
Wheel well before scrapping |
Wheel well after scrapping |
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Test fit of floor pan |
All four floor pans removed.
Subframe connectors and ladder
bar mounts visible. |
Rear floor pans removed |
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August 7, 2007 |
I used paint stripper on the
firewall and inner fenders. It
cut through the black spray
paint like butter, but required more get to bare metal. |
Getting closer, much of the
firewall is down to bare metal. |
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It took about 6 hours to go from
this to what you see in the photo on the left. |
Over the past 37 years there must have been three sets of
seats in the car. |
Some of the holes were torn.
The only answer was to replace
the holey metal. |
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September, 10 2007
Most of the last month was spent
stripping the front clip. I think I should
have sprung for media blasting.
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Getting closer to laying down
some epoxy primer.
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Window Tracks and regulator |
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Boxed in section of subfloor.
The area had been cut out for
collector clearance with the
fenderwell headers. |
Underside of the repaired
section. |
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After repairs. |
One patch on the tunnel
and one on the floor. |
This inner fender looked like Swiss
cheese before I filled in all the holes. |
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My neighbor had a glass shop come out to replace the windshield on his
truck. I stopped by asked the installer if he would remove the glass from
the Dart for me. He did the job for $25 and most importantly didn't mess
up the trim. |
With the windshield removed
I was able to pull the dash to gain
better access to the firewall. |
Pheww! Finally clean and ready for epoxy primer. |
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I found this fiberglass six-pack hood for $100 on Craig's
list. Exactly what I was looking for, for an unbelievable price! |
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November 23, 2007
2 coats of epoxy primer is on and first coat of Evercoat
Rage Extreme has been applied. |
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Roof has been stripped. Dark area is surface rust from
original vinyl top. |
Cleaned out the junction between the roof and quarter panel
with sand blaster. |
Epoxy primed firewall |
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Blasted rear filler panel. |
Time to replace the rust with steel.
Rust isn't too bad for an Northeast Coast car. |
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Location of "hidden VIN"
The stamp is VERY light. Sandblasting brought it right out. Scraping or
wire wheeling would most likely have destroyed it. |
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I built a jig to roll the car around on. It makes things
much easier! |
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