Worse than I thought.......

Sooo I drag the old dart out, and strat working on it.. Getting it ready for next year, maybe.. So I start taking the paint off in the fender well/engine bay the frist thing I notice is that some one welded in a patch over the whole top of the inner fender. So not a big deal I was going to take them out and replace with alum. Sooooo after I start doing that, I notice that the firewall is rusted in the wheel wells also.. Man this is getting bad.. I mean I got the car and knew it needed a lot of work, but the frame was good. the guy that had it tried to cover it up with what looks like seam sealer. So now I'm losing focus on it. I don't know what to do. The floor pans are bad also .. I know that by making it a drag car, I'm saving it. I have been buying sheet metal for it for awhile. and now have a lot, but I still need all the window trim, and lots of parts. Just thinking that I should cut my loses and move on. Or just keep pluging away on it. I got like 5 grills for it 4 doors and 4 fenders, and 2 hoods.. complete interior with buckets. Thinking bout selling that stuff to buy much need parts.. I just don't know what to do with it.. Sorry for the rant...

Got any pics John?

I'll take some and post it.. Its bad.. I mean I'm sure I can fix it, but its gona be fun...

There's a hole on the other side to, also you just can't see how bad or big it really is.. Its the whole well..

i dont know john. its hard to build them from that point and stay ahead of the game. if its gonna be a drag car maybe, but if its gonna be a total restore i dont think i would. been there done that and now i have 35,000 invested in a car thats worth maybe 20,000 tops.

It's going to be a drag car, but I want it to look right too.. If I patch it, no one will see it.. but I will Know it's there..

Well try to look on the plus side all ready have holes to run bars down to tie the whole cage/car together

Or you could just cage it and then cut all the rot out and build a custom firewall. Move it back and put in a removable trans tunnel and you'll have all kinds of room to work.

Yep, Bill thats kinda what I was thinking.. I mean heck I got just what I asked for, something I could cut up and not feel bad about it, and now I'm like why did I go that route... I'm not sure what to do with it, but I got so ideas.. Keep it coming guys..

It doesn't look that bad to me? I've owned, built and worked on much worse. Floorboards are easy to replace and it looks like a little sheetmetal repair on the firewall and you'll be good to go.

I'm going through the same thing myself. Now we are building a tube chassis car out of it. Good Luck,
Curtis

I was at the same point with my 68 Dart about 1.5 years ago, it was actually worse than that. I ended up making 2 cars into 1 as the 68 had good rails/rockers and I had a 67 with a good firewall/inner fenders and rear clip but the rails/rockers/floors were shot from sitting in the dirt.

After a month or so of planning I started bracing up the body and getting it square then started cutting and swapping, I had to haul it to a frame machine before I could hang the rear clip because the only thing holding the rear rails was what was left of the trunk gutter and the rails were pushed up about 3", the decklid was serving as part of the rear suspension since everything else was gone.

It was about the same deal up front, I swapped the firewall and inner fenders from the donor, and installed new pans front & rear, while I was at it I also seam welded all the factory spotwelds top & bottom, It's time consuming but I only had about $600 in parts for 4 new pans and the donor car.

At least if you go thru the whole car you will know there isn't and hidden rust or damage.

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It doesn't look that bad to me? I've owned, built and worked on much worse. Floorboards are easy to replace and it looks like a little sheetmetal repair on the firewall and you'll be good to go.

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totally...like you mentioned it will be a RACE CAR, not a concours restoration...don't sweat it man!