Al1

I've been chipping away at this over the last couple of months. The entire exterior is now down to bare metal and I've done about half of the rust repairs. I've been taking it slow as I'm still learning about how to repair cars and do body work. I'm not used to working with such thin steel and the world of panelbeating is much more complex than I'd guessed. I'm really enjoying learning this part of it though, making strange shapes and learning to stretch/shrink metal is a lot of fun.

During the school holidays my routine was to make up a little patch panel in the morning, and then weld it in after work. It's an honest life. There were a few holes in the rocker covers, the wheel wells, and the boot that I've already sorted out.

While cleaning up the boot I found yet another hideous fix-up from a previous owner, or repair shop. The metal on the inside of the boot, near the passenger side boot hinge had rusted away entirely. Their "fix" was to recreate this structure using aluminium tape and then paint over it in that thick textured paint that you see in wheel wells. Bastards! I've kept a decent run of this tape, with paint still attached, as a memento to go along with the sandwich-sized hunk of filler from another part of the boot.

Anyway, progress is being made and luckily all the rust is mostly in the boot and not on frame rails or the underside of the body. So I'm not too put off by it all. Here's some pics of my helpers, son & his friend, who I coerced into making paper templates for the rust holes and some pics of the largest panels I had to make

 

After more summer holidayin' some progress got made.

Using some old guitar strings and longer 0.75mm galv wire, son-shine and I managed to get the front and rear windscreens out without cracking them. Huzzah for that because I don't even want to imagine the cost of glass for an older car like this. Found some rust holes in the rear window channels but the front's good.

We emptied then removed the fuel tank, fuel pump and then some garnish like wheel flares, door electrical boots, and all the redundant electrical wires that weren't bound up with the main harness wrap. I'm pretty sure the car will start without this large mess of cables, he said hopefully.

Then it was stripping time. I'm daunted by a bare metal restore but it's the only way to be sure, play it by ear I guess. I started at the back and boot where the rust is the worst, managed to find some steel under it all. After I've found out the extent of the rust I'll get onto patching in new metal.

Today I removed the steering column, dash, kick panels and a bunch of redundant wiring. It was pretty easy but the "Heater Control Assembly" (thank you @CUL8R) and kick panels were a bit of a pain to get out. The heater because of the cables, the handling of which I've had a problems with my whole life, and the kick panels due to how cramped it was on the drivers side with the headlight high-beam foot switch. Got it all out without breaking anything though.

I'm quite excited to be removing much of the seemingly useless wiring that's inhabiting my car. Perhaps they wired all these cars up for every conceivable option like power windows, air conditioning and CB radios etc, because it was cheaper to do it that way before some subsequent step on the factory floor customized it. I dunno. All I know is that there's a huge amount of wiring that goes nowhere. There's definitely been some other tinkerers who've added their own flair to the wiring but I figure it's a good time to start anew.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to take the front and rear windscreens out. Apparently you can use a guitar string to do this.

The next step was the small nudge of the passenger's side door to bring it up by about 15mm. To get at the hinges I needed to take off the fender. To take off the fender I need to take off the bonnet and front bumper. So this was scheduled to be started and finished over the Auckland anniversary long-weekend, sounds achievable. Here's where the whole situation started getting away from me...

The door also needed a new lock barrel as it was seized preventing the door from being locked. So I'll just take the glass off first I thought, gosh that took a while. Then I found some rust in the door skin, then some more on the A-pillar. By the end of the long weekend I have everything off it inside and out. Well, not the dashboard yet. Also there is a little panel in the front seat in the footwell, it has cables for opening the air vents, how do I remove this? If anyone's reading this and knows what this panel is called, and how it might be removed I'd love to know. I'm thinking I have to take the dash out to get access to the cables that need to be disconnected. Might as well take the dashboard out and fix the cracks in the vinyl, otherwise it'll feel left out by my ever expanding plans to restore everything else I come into contact with.

The only downer was finding out that the boot was not in fact a boot but was actually an art installation created by a famous sculpturer who worked exclusively in the medium of bog. I dug out a solid piece of bog that was about the size and thickness of my hand. I'm not too worried about this though (because I've never done car body repair before) as I do have plenty of welding time under my belt. Now to watch a vid on how to remove a gas tank without exploding. 

I had roped my 14yo son in to help out all 3 days and it was probably the best experiences I've ever had with him. We spent 6+ hours each day ripping out parts, watching instructional youtube clips, bagging and tagging parts while making up increasingly esoteric names for parts we couldn't describe adequately.

Got some quick wins with the WOF progress

• Brake pedal was stiff because brake booster wasn't getting any vacuum. I got lucky with this one, it only needed a $6 brake booster check valve to be replaced
• Power steering was leaking from the low-pressure hose. Bizarrely the existing hose was made from two separate bits of aged flexible hose with a metal pipe in between them and then wrapped in many rusty hose clamps. Threw that all away and replaced with a single piece of new hose
• Axle bearings replaced. Ordered the parts from rockauto, bought a slide hammer from trademe and got into it. Rockauto sent me a used part but promptly sent a new one after I notified them. Great service. While doing the work I rotated the wheels a bit and the spider gears escaped from the carrier. Was going insane trying to put it back together before I realised that I had to move the Z-clip in the middle as that'd moved too.
• Speedo cable wasn't attached to the gauge which made for a quick fix. While doing that, saw that the printed circuit fabric(?) at the back of the speedo/tach cluster was in a terrible state. Burnt out tracks and rough handling apparent. FIxed up a bit and found a bad ground which was stopping the cabin/dash back lights from lighting

Picked this up in October 2023 and only recently got around to working on it after months of watching youtube clips learning about cars, and what I'd got myself into. Original plan was to; "Just get a WOF and drive it around". It's gone off the rails a bit since then.

From the factory the car was a 400ci V8 with a manual transmission. At some stage, one of the previous 26 owners replaced it with a 350 chev and TH350 3-speed auto (I think that's what it is).

Known problems and mods are:

• Car paint has faded
• Exhaust is hanging too low
• Front seats are worn
• Dash has cracks in it
• No heater or AC
• Failed WOF in late 2023:
  • Brake pedal hard, brakes are weak
  • Power steering leak
  • Axle bearing play
  • Passenger door sagging, not closing properly
  • Speedo not working
  • Headlight aim
  • Boot not staying open
  • Some rear lights dead
• Stereo is not banging
• Huge gaps between door window glass and weatherstripping. Water will go straight into door skin
• Very slow oil leak from bottom of transmission, only leaks after being driven
• Has a gilmer drive
• Dash is missing the original temperature gauge, has a stuck DC voltage gauge, and has a cluster of 3 aftermarket temp/pressure/voltage gauges flopping around unsecured below the stereo.
• Has a 1977 trans am frontend. Suspect that one of the horde of previous owners was really into "Smokey and the Bandit"

I'm using this forum topic to keep track of what I've done so will make a few posts in a row just to catch up to real-time

Name (first is sweet): Al

Location: Bombay/Mangatawhiri

Cars you own: '75 Trans Am. Purchased from @j.e.d.

Mods to them (can be brief or detailed): Nothing yet. Need to get WOF sorted

Pictures (Either attach the files here or use an image hosting website):

How you found out about oldschool: Referred by previous trans am owner

Anything else you want to add: Furiously youtubing on how to work on cars as I'm new to it