Found a 71 GTX that's got a lot of rare options/color combo but it's a Mid West car and literally every panel has rust. I have heard horror stories about Mid West rust. I'm looking at a 5+ year project with my kids, not worried about the cost as it'll never leave the family. My question is: do I run or grab it? I have a spare 71 Sebring that's 98% rust free to use. It's a real N96, numbers matching 440, auto, etc. Originally sold at a Mr Norms lot (paperwork and original title and fender tag present)

Depends on the price and your skill level. Also depends on the depth of your wallet...

So you're going to do a rebody?

Grand Spaulding Dodge sold Plymouth’s? Never heard that one.

Check the cowl and make sure it isn’t rusty.

Do you cut up the Sebring & transfer parts over to the GTX or vice versa?

Need pics! How bad is the rust and where is it? I bought a 71 Road Runner(N96) car as a parts vehicle. It was rusted everywhere! It was so bad the aprons where tweaked because of it.

Never said I'd do a rebody. And at this point in the game, these cars are getting so hard to find, if you've gotta replace most of the metal to get it road worthy again, I'm personally not against that.

It'll be easier to say what's Not rusted lol. Inner fenders, firewall and radiator support are clean. Frame rails are good minus a small piece near the tail panel. Trunk lid is fine as are the trunk gutters. N96 hood is intact and is fine.

Looking at new fenders, doors, quarters, tickets, floors and roof.

I'd never hide anything and wouldn't hide the fact it's all been replaced. But I've heard stories that once that salt starts eating the metal, sooner or later it's just going to return. I'd be afraid of sinking money into it and then 5 years down the road, the rust returns.

That I believe is considered a rebody if I transfer everything to the Sebring and is illegal, right? Transferring numbers to a better body?

If money isn't a issue and you have access to rust free factory metal, sounds like a great project, a complete numbers matching car, id go for it.
Depending on how much work you could do yourself always dictates the final numbers and this car, id think needs a complete disassembly to the bare shell and blasted of course.
Done correctly, stored properly and not driven in snow, rust will never be a issue, especially in a climate acrid like CO.
Best of luck

I have done several '71 GTXs. Like the E bodies, they are very prone to rust. Once started, in my experience there is no way to really stop the rust. I even had one dipped by Redi-Strip and it wasn't rusted real bad. Still had some spots coming bad just a couple of years later. And it really surprised me that when we got the car back from Redi-Strip that a small rust spot would actually have rust for a foot or so around that spot. Stripping the car revealed that there was far more rust under the paint that wasn't even visible than there was rust that was visible.

Rust is like cancer. The only way to deal with it is to completely remove ALL of it. Which is basically impossible in a car that has a lot of visible rust.

If the rust is that bad at a surface level, I would run. It only gets worse as you tear down the car. I might make a good donor for a clone build of your other car though.

It takes extreme measures to make sure that rust is stopped. For instance on my challenger I am going to window the rockers for access to run a wire brush up and down the rocker before treating it with a rust killer. Doing the same thing on my pickup bed- windowing the wheelhouse to gain access to the back side of the bedside arch that always rusts out. It is a lot of extra work, but nothing compared to having to do more restoration work 5 years down the road.

I recently picked up a one owner 71 roadrunner 383 N96 car. Same deal, rust everywhere. The rear frame rails are almost non-existent.
At this point im thinking about using it for parts to clone a 72 satellite I have into a road runner. Sometimes you cant save them all.

Why would you not just build the Satellite into a clone and forget sinking time and money into a rust bucket GTX?

Same here, was it traded in on a Dodge?

Love the 71-2 N96 cars!