Finally started the body work on the 82

superpowers · 12-31-2008, 09:39 PM

I stripped the car earlier this summer. My dad came over from California last week and we hit the body work hard. From Thursday afternoon to late Sunday night we put in a combined 95 hours of work.

Here is a bit of background on the bodywork area of the car. I bought it 2 1/2 years ago. I had sat in the back of a body shop for 10 years and then spent another 2 years in a metal building. When I got the car it was halfway in primer. I knew it had been in an accident but what I didn't realize was how shitty of a job the body shop did fixing it. Apparenty the car had a new driver side fender and inner fender installed. As I was working on the engine swap the front end started to fall apart because I was leaning on it. So I knew something was wrong. The following pics will tell the rest of the story...

The day I got it

The tear down

As you can see the fender was attached with freekin bondo. There is a special bonding agent that GM uses to "glue" the panels together. I literally used a 3" putty knife to pull this fender off, no other tools were used! I was hoping that after the fender was off I would be in the clear but I wasn't! The hood surround was also damaged and it too was apparently attached the wrong way. :tear:

superpowers · 12-31-2008, 09:40 PM

If you take a look at the firewall you can see that they didn't even replace the missing parts! So at this point I was hoping that I could get away with a partial fender/hood surround.

Well after further investigation of the front end I discovered that the impact from the accident damaged the passenger side as well. The rear of the fender was de-laminated from the firewall and there was a partial de-lamination at the bonding strip. So here I went again...

After that I decided to scrap the front clip and just get a new 1 piece front clip and a fiberglass bumper cover so I could bond it to the front end for a seamless look.

Now it is time to get the body off of the frame so I can get some work done to it and the frame. I have never done a body off and I did it the "Red Neck" way. I used anything I had laying around.

superpowers · 12-31-2008, 09:40 PM

Now it is time to get the thing stripped. The Auto Spra-Strip worked awesome. It melted the paint right off and it even melted the bondo!

superpowers · 12-31-2008, 09:41 PM

After the initial stripping was done I did it again just to make sure I got as much off as possible. The stripper is $30 a gallon and I used about 1/2 a gallon. Sand paper is way more expensive and time consuming.

Now that I had taken the body off and knew the process, I came up with a different idea to take the body on and off the chassis.

superpowers · 12-31-2008, 09:41 PM

Now onto the real body work. My dad flew in from CA. on Wednesday and we took the car out for a drive and then pulled it into the garage and promptly started tearing the thing apart. He started sanding and removing any traces of the old bondo on the car while I took off the temporarly attached old front clip, windows, door locks, door handles, and prepped the body to come off again. All traces of anything done to the car prior was removed, I didn't want anymore hidden surprises.

The drivers side door was in really bad shape, someone built up the whole front of the door with bondo and the skin was partially de-laminated from the door frame. My dad removed all of the crap and then rebuilt it with fiberglass and resin. After that he applied a fiberglass stranded filler for extra strength. Then sanded and blended that, after that he applied standard filler so he could re-shape the front of the door, getting the crown on the door took along time to get it right. After that metal glaze was applied and blended. On other parts of the door my dad re-created some edges that were gone from the previous re-paint. The glossy stuff is Bulldog adhesion promoter.

The drivers rear fender was in really good shape, just had to blend the factory bonding seam.

superpowers · 12-31-2008, 09:42 PM

The passenger rear fender was de-laminated from the body. So we used the factory bonding agent to re-bond it and then used factory style rivets to hold it in place while it dried. Then he put some stranded filler in there for some more strength. I still need to sand it to make it pretty. The whole face of the wheel lip was rounded off, so my dad re-created that edge to look like factory. This fender required a little more blending at the bond seam.

The passenger door was also in pretty bad shape, I removed all of the bondo, and we went from there. It had two low spots on the skin that needed to be filled. The part near the door lock was a real challenge because there are alot of compound curves there and it is hard to use a block for that.

The rear deck lid just needed to be filled where the holes were from the aftermarket spoiler.

The whole driverside of the firewall was gone, so I ordered new pieces but there was still quite a bit of prep work to be done before they could be installed.

superpowers · 12-31-2008, 09:42 PM

After all of that work was done he sprayed on 3 coats of primer filler and now it is ready for final blocking.

stay tuned for updates!

Char1ieBrown · 12-31-2008, 11:00 PM

the part where the paint is like melting......LOOKS SOOOO COOOL. haha loooks like fun i wish i could do stuff like that damn

mrmarchuk · 12-31-2008, 11:03 PM

this thread is too sexy for my google phone, my browser keeps crashing.

either that or u got waaay tons of pics. ill have to check it out when i get on my pc. but till then, looks good. that bumper u sold me looks nice on my car ^^ still havent got the thing painted though xD

mrmarchuk · 01-01-2009, 04:22 AM

hey so how long did it take you to scrape off the paint?

Char1ieBrown · 01-01-2009, 04:25 AM

looks like you got your work cut out for you....but your dominating it!!!!!!

E_Tar · 01-01-2009, 04:38 AM

DAYUM, i NEVER KNEW SO MUCH WORK WENT INTO IT...

That's insane hard work brother...

Wish I were there to help you and glean the know how from you too..

Fred Mann · 01-01-2009, 05:42 AM

That's some major work and a great dad too!

Thanks for posting the whole process. It's going to look great when you're done.

Curby · 01-01-2009, 08:57 AM

Amazing work!

My 82 was almost as bad as yours when I got it. Someone had removed the entire front end and a one piece Ecklers nose was on the car along with a fiberglass front bumper.

It is getting close to being ready to bond the nose on the car, too.

Keep posting those pictures!

raidmagic · 01-01-2009, 09:55 AM

Wow, just wow.