Quote:

Very first step is to find ALL of the rust. I would take a ball pein hammer and lots of light and go under the car. When you crawl out from under it be absolutely confident that the frame rails are solid and straight and know whether the floor has to be replaced and if the inner fenders and wheel houses need replacing or fixing.
When you have that established you can price out the parts needed, consult your friend to see if he really is going to help you until the end. Then you have to decide what you want for a finished product.
It's not necessary for every car to be painted and detailed underneath but if that's what you want the approach is much different than if you want a driver that you will be out in the rain with.
So anyway:
1) Find all rust.
2) Price and obtain necessary sheetmetal.
3) Either disassemble complete car or only whats
necessary (depending on results wanted).
4) Repair rust.
5) Finish bodywork and paint car.
6) Repair/refinish trim.
7) refinish interior.

When you do a budget quote, double or triple it and you'll be close.

Sheldon



Good advice given here. THE biggest mistake first timers make is not properly evaluating their projects. They tend to see past all the work and money while envisioning themselves driving the end product- a fully restored muscle car. They overlook many flaws and minimize what they do see (like surface rust).
Most of these older cars have had previous work done on them and some of it way below the quality standards these cars deserve.
I just finished a car (inferior brand name) for a customer who bought it and wanted me to just "freshen it up."
The car had over an 1" of bondo covering one quarter, galvanized sheet metal patches screwed on holding what was left of the floor pans and trunk floor together, the center floor support was rusted away, the bucket seats were add-ons from another car brand, and many other horror stories. What started out to be a $4000 job ended up over $12000 to complete and that was for a driver quality car that would see one or two local shows only.

Without a thorough evaluation of the true condition of the car you risk getting into a never ending project that will eventually be sold "as-is" or rust away in the back yard waiting for you to get around to fixing it.