So you found that car of your childhood but it's just a bit rusty.
You make a deal with the seller for a few hundred bucks. You quickly
scrounge up a trailer and rush to get your dream car home. Your wife
sees it hooked to the back of your SUV and let's you know you are truely
nuts. She wants it hauled off to the junk yard while it's still on the
hitch. You explain that you will have it all patched up and better than
new in a couple months. But she knows you, it will sit next to the
broken lawnmower in the garage for at least a decade. And it will become
a large shelf for your other smaller household projects.
So before she has a chance to complain anymore, you unhook your treasure
from the family truckster. You immediately start to disassemble some of
the really crappy looking stuff like the ripped up seats, broken
headlights, and smashed door. Now you have a real mess sitting in the
driveway. She yells out the window for you to come to dinner.
After dinner you calmly assess just exactly what you brought home.
You discover it has thin aluminum roof flashing pop riveted in a few
spots for floors. You find the wasp nest the hard way and the mouse nest
was in plain site inside the air cleaners.
You think to yourself that you made a major mistake. You admit your wife
was right. You clean up the mess, push the heap in the garage, wash up
and instead of TV, grab the parts catalog and look at each page, make a
note as to what you think your car is missing. Now fill in the order
page with what you know you will need to start the project.
Rocker panels, fender patches, floor pans. You notice that all the nuts
and bolts will cost you about a buck each.
You will need to make 3 parts orders. First order is for all the body
panels you need. But alot of them are simple sheet metal patches. Buy
what you don't think you can make at home from the catalog. Pick up some
sheet metal from the local sheetmetal shop so you can cut and fold your
own patch panels and or floor pans. Curved panels bend over a pipe will
work. You vice and a 2x4 make a fine metal brake.
Nuts and bolts can get expensive, check your local yellow pages for a
bolt or industrial supplier. You will have to buy boxes of 100 but it
sure saves time going to your bin of bolts and grabbing exactly what you
need, all new with nuts and washers. 100 bolts costs about $5 or $6.
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