Knowing What To Look For Before Your Buy A Muscle Car

I figured that I have really never done a specific article on what to look for in different muscle cars when you go to buy one, in this article I'll talk about the body inspection of a few different muscle cars, and and you should look for when you buy one.

Ford Mustang: I'm going to discuss some of the specific things that you should look at when to want to buy a classic mustang, to start with I'll discuss the front of the car, and work back, talking about certain areas of the car that you should pay attention to as far as the body of the car.

Engine Compartment: After working in mustang restoration shops that specialize in the mustang only I have learned that you really need to pay close attention to certain aspects of the engine compartment, usually along the top of the radiator support is a good place to start your inspection.

I have noticed over the years that mustangs like to rust in this area, it could be due to the fact that the battery sits right on the radiator support of the car, and when you change the battery out, your dripping acid on the top of the radiator support, you should always look at this area.

Next is the radiator support itself, since the battery tray is bolted to the radiator support you'll always find rust holes around the battery tray in the radiator support of the car, you should always plan on fixing this area of the car, and you should always inspect it thoroughly.

Side Skirts Of The Engine Compartment: This is another area that it's common to find rust in, this area gets pelted by gravel from the road, and also people drill holes to hang coils, and other high performance goodies on it, you should always look at this area of the car.

Hinge Mounts: Although this is not a key area it is always best to take a look at it, over the years of operation that paint will wear off the the hinge mounts, and no paint always mean rust, so just to cover it thoroughly you should inspect this area.

Door Hinges: This is another area that you should always look at, the hinge mounts on the door, and the body itself rust due to the years of operation on the car, the paint wears off, and the rust starts, this is just a fact of life on the old cars.

You will see definite unmistakable signs of rust in this area, if you open the door and it sags, there are only two reasons for it, one is that the hinge itself has gone bad, and number two is the the hinge mounts on the door, or the body of the car have rusted, you should always look at this.

Rocker Panels: These are the body panels located right under the doors on the car, and they are a major structural parts of the car, it is really easy to check them, if the car still has paint on it, look for bubbles in the painted surface of the rocker panel.

Floor Boards: This is a major structural part of the car, and you should always look at the floor boards, it's best to just plan to replace the floor boards, patches never seem to work that well on this area of the car, so plan to replace them.

You should also look for holes in the rocker panel, this is always rust, and look for bad body patch work, such as seems coming through that don't look to be factory seems, this is a good indication that a rust patch has been done in the past, you should never fail to inspect this area of the car.

Quarter Panels: These are the biggest panels on the car, they stretch from the back of the door, all the way to the rear of the car, you'll be looking for the same things here that you did on the rocker panels, you should also look for paint lifting, and bad body work, you should always inspect this area.

Rear Wheel Wells: This is a common place for any classic car to rust, you should always look at the rear inner, and outer wheel wells, these take a constant beating from the road, salt, and a lot of other things. All you need to look for here is holes, or bad patch work.

Trunk Floors: Although during the time I worked on mustangs for the restoration shops, I didn't see a lot of trunk floor rusting out, it's a good idea to check them out, you don't want any surprises after you purchase the car, so be very thorough when you inspect it.

That about covers the mustang, up next is the Chevrolet Camaro, and it get's hit in a lot of the same areas as the mustang does, you should always inspect the car thoroughly before you buy it, I know that this is a long process, but it is a necessary one.

Chevrolet Camaro: Here I'll discuss the major body parts that you need to look at the the camaro before you but one, and it is no different from the mustang, except that the entire front clip of the car bolts on, making it much easier to repair.

Engine Compartment: I have restored a lot of camaros in my day, and they are my favorite car, I love them, the engine compartment is a much easier process to repair on a camaro them it is on a mustang, simply because it all bolt together, rather then being a welded structure.

That being said, you should thoroughly inspect all the same areas that you did in the mustang, but it is all easily replaced, and I'd say that if you find any problems with rust here, you should just replace the parts rather then repairing them.

The battery tray mounts to the radiator support just like on the mustang, an it will always rust in this area, the radiator support is cheap, and you should just replace it if you fine any rust at all, it will be cheaper, and better in the end if you replace it with a new part.

The Side Skirts, Or Front Wheel Wells: This is the very same as the radiator support, they are bolted on, and very easy to replace, if you find any rust, or bad repair work, just replace them, I always find this to be the best solution with a camaro.

Hinge Mounts: On a camaro the hinge mounts are part of the side skirts, and if you replace the side skirts you'll be replacing the hinge mounts also, this is another reason why I say you should just replace the front sheet metal on a camaro.

Door Hinges: This is another area that you should always look at, the hinge mounts on the door, and the body itself rust due to the years of operation on the car, the paint wears off, and the rust starts, this is just a fact of life on the old cars.

You will see definite unmistakable signs of rust in this area, if you open the door and it sags, there are only two reasons for it, one is that the hinge itself has gone bad, and number two is the the hinge mounts on the door, or the body of the car have rusted, you should always look at this.

Rocker Panels: These are the body panels located right under the doors on the car, and they are a major structural parts of the car, it is really easy to check them, if the car still has paint on it, look for bubbles in the painted surface of the rocker panel.

Floor Boards: This is a major structural part of the car, and you should always look at the floor boards, it's best to just plan to replace the floor boards, patches never seem to work that well on this area of the car, so plan to replace them.

Quarter Panels: These are the biggest panels on the car, they stretch from the back of the door, all the way to the rear of the car, you'll be looking for the same things here that you did on the rocker panels, you should also look for paint lifting, and bad body work, you should always inspect this area.

Rear Wheel Wells: This is a common place for any classic car to rust, you should always look at the rear inner, and outer wheel wells, these take a constant beating from the road, salt, and a lot of other things. All you need to look for here is holes, or bad patch work.

Trunk Floors: Although during the time I worked on mustangs for the restoration shops, I didn't see a lot of trunk floor rusting out, it's a good idea to check them out, you don't want any surprises after you purchase the car, so be very thorough when you inspect it.

That about covers the Chevrolet Camaro, and it get's hit in a lot of the same areas as the mustang does, you should always inspect the car thoroughly before you buy it, I know that this is a long process, but it is a necessary one.

How To Repair Rusted Sheet Metal

I thought that I'd delve in to an article about fixing rust in the body of your classic car, this is a huge problem if your buying or own a classic cars that came from a place near the sea, or a place where they use salt on the roads to melt the snow, rust in most cases will start underneath the car and work it's way up destroying anything in it's path along the way, nothing will stop rust or slow it down in it's effort to destroy your classic car's body.

There are a few ways to fix rust problems in your car, but first you must find them, you can start by looking for bubbles in the painted surface of the car, and do not take it lightly when you find it, don't look at it and think that just because it seems to be only on the surface that it is, rust will hide in cracks, underneath seem sealer, under that carpet, or any place else that it can, believe be the rust knows that you don't want it in your car, so look at it like a doctor would look a cancer.

To check how bad the rust is, take a body hammer with a pick on one end, and use that end to lightly tap the rusted spot that you have found, if the metal seems like it's soft and moves easily, then you needs to fix this area now, in some cases you'll knock a hole in the area that your tapping on wit the hammer, don't worry about this, it won't be there for long if you fix the rust hole the right way.

What you'll need to do the job, is a, air compressor, a die grinder with a cutting blade on it, do yourself a favor and make sure that you have more then one cussing blade for that grinder, you'll need sheet metal, the same gage as your car, if you don't know what gage it is, you'll also need a 5” air grinder loaded with a 40 grit disc to finish the welds with, then you'll need to buy a metal gage checking tool, and last but not least you'll need a MIG welder with plenty of gas and wire, there are other ways to fix a rust spot without a welder, but in my opinion they are not as reliable.

Now that you have your tools all together and your courage up to the right level where you can begin the job, you'll want to determine how big the rusted area is by tapping it with the pick end of that body hammer until you run in to areas on all sides of the rust that don't seem soft, or like they don't have any strength to them, once you have discovered how big the rusted area is you need to get a sharpie and draw a line around the rusted area, about 2” in to the good metal all the way around the rusted area, so you know that the rust will be gone when you cut it out, rust is not easy to weld to, so make 100% sure that it's all the way gone.

Now that you have your line to cut to all drawn out with the sharpie, you can plug the die grinder in to the air source, now a word of advise here, don't try to cut it all at one time, put a light cut along the line that you drew with the sharpie, just repeat the process of running the die grinder along that line until the rusted area falls out of the car, now that the rusted metal is out of your car, pick up the rusted piece of metal and lay it on top of your new sheet metal, take that sharpie that you used to draw the first line to cut to, and using the rusted piece of metal draw a line to it with the sharpie, using the same process that you did on the rusted spot in your car, cut the piece of good metal out with the die grinder.

The die grinder has left a rough edge on the back of the good piece of metal, you'll need to clean that up, the best way to do this is to take that 5” grinder that you have with the 40 grit disc on it, and lightly run it over the back of the metal until all the burs are gone, now you'll need to that 5” grinder with the 40 grit disc on it, and clean the area on your car where you cut the rust our, make sure that you have about 2” of bare clean metal around the area that you cut out.

Now take that good piece of metal that you cut from your sheet of repair metal, and fit it in the hole that you cut out of your car, I usually use visegrips to hold the new metal in place, now this is where things can get a little tricky, so pay close attention this section, make sure that you have a good place to put the grounding clamp for your welder, if you don't see a place for it right close to your work area, then take that 5” air grinder and make one, make sure that the clamp has a solid connection.

Plug you welder in, and make sure that the gas is turned on, I usually run the wire feed, and current set at about 3 or 4 on my MIG, but this could be different on your machine, so do yourself a favor and test it before putting it to your car, now that we're all ready to go, you have the visegrips holding the metal in place and you have your welder setup right, your going to want to run about a 1” bead on the top, bottom, and both sides, and then you can get the visegrips out of your way.

Now you have four weld beads holding the patch panel in place, now heres a bit more advise, mig welders get very hot, and it's possible to warp the metal in your car while welding the patch panel in place, so never weld more then 1” beads at a time, and move from the top to the bottom, do a 1” weld on the top of the patch, and then cool it off with a little air, and the do a 1” weld on the bottom and cool it off, and the do the same thing with the sides, until you have one solid bead all the way around the patch panel, you have now fixed your rust problem, all that's left is the finish work on the welds.

Grab your 5” air grinder with the 40 grit disc and grind the welds flat, in most cases you should not even be able to see the welds if you have done it right, the job is now complete, I'll move on to the body work part in a later article.

Muscle Cars: Community for the muscle car enthusiast - MCI.

Muscle Cars: Community for the muscle car enthusiast - MCI.

Chevy Vin, Trim Tag, Specifications & Decoding

I have written a lot of articles about this subject in the past, but it seems that there is never enough information out there on this subject, this will cover the thirteen digit codes from the 1960's era of Chevrolet, and GM cars, so let's dive in haed first.

As I said the vin codes from the 1960's are thirteen digits long, any longer it would be a newr car, and shorter, it's an older car, now that we have that out of the way, let's get right to the numbers, here we go, when l,ook at a Chevrolet vin tag, the first number you see tells you that it's a Chevrolet.

This is what a refer to as the division code, as you know GM has a lot of divisions, and if the car your looking at is a Chevrolet that very first number that you should see is a "1", if you see any other number as the first digit, it's time to suspect a rip off.

The second number in the vin sequence is the model indicator, this number will tell you what model the car is, in this case the vin will start like this "12", this would tell you that it's a Chevrolet camaro, the next number in the sequence will tell you the engine, and for a V8 would b a "4", the very next number in this case is "37", this tells you that it's a tow door sports coup, or a hard top.

To this point in time we have a vin code that looks like this "12437N", spelled out this car is a Chevrolet camaro with a V8 engine, and it's a two door sports coupe, or a hard top, the very next number in the sequence is the year of the car, and in this case it's a "9", indicating that the car was built in 1969.

Below I will give you a list of the number positions and what they mean, this should take you to the next level, and help you gain some confidence in the knowledge of decoding your vin tag before you purchase the car, the vin tag won't tell the whole story, but it will tell a big part of it.

Number Possitions

• The number first is the manufacture id number, the number 1 denotes a Chevrolet
• In position 2 is the number 24 this indicates that the car is a V8 Camaro
• In position 3 is the number 37 this indicates the the car is a sports coupe
• In position 4 is the year in this case a 9 indicating that it's a 1969 model year
• In position 5 is the assembly plant, in this case "N" indicates Norwood Ohio
• The last six digits indicate the production number, this was the 125687 TH car built in 1969

In this case you vin code would read "124379N125687", it's not a really complicated process to read these numbers, in the long run it will pay off to know how to do it, the fact here is that you can never know to much about the car you want to buy.

That is why I continue to write these articles, I like to help with the purchase all I can, and then make sure that you have all the information that you need to get the car restored, or customized to your satisfaction, I write for you, I want to help with all the information that I can.

How To Pint Your Classic Car

How To Paint Your Classic Car Like A Pro

After the finish body work is done, and your primer has been sanded to 600 grit wet, you can mask your classic car, and get ready for paint, if your lucky you can rent a paint booth for a day to paint the car, if renting a paint booth is the plan, you should wait to mask your car, until you get there.

I always suggest that you rent a booth, unless you have a garage that you can clean, blow out, and hose down until it's absolutely dust free, if there is any dust around your car, it will be in the paint in the end, where if you rent a paint booth, they are usually kept clean, all you have to do is water the floors.

Now that you ready to paint your car, no matter where you have chosen to do the work, you need to be sure that you have all of the supplies that you need, because once you start to paint, you can't just stop and make a run to the paint supply store, below I'll add a list of the supplies you need.

Supply List

• 1) Paint
• 2) sealer
• 3) reducer
• 4) Catalyst
• 5) Tack Cloths, preferably designed for clear coat
• 6) Measuring Cups
• 7) Stir Sticks
• 8) Measuring Stick
• 9) Strainers
• 10) Respirator in working order
• 11) Paint Prep Cleaner

The list above is a list of the supplies that you'll need to paint your classic car, you cannot skimp on this list to save money, you will need every item on it, so be ready to spend some money on it, on average your supplies will cost between $600.00 and $2,000.00 depending on what you use to paint your car.

Now that we know that the car is masked, we'll prep clean it, this will clean any contaminants off of the surface of the primer, after you have done this you can tack cloth the car, this is done to remove small dust particles from the surface of the car.

Now I will give you a few things to think about, when painting with metallic paints then you must pay allot attention to the settings on your paint gun.


Metallic paints will tend to get lighter if the pressure goes up and darker if it goes down, your fluid flow and fan on your gun will also effect this.

Now I will give you a basic mixing chart, most paints will follow this chart.

Instructions

1) get your paint ready to pour.

2) make sure that your mixing cup is clean.

3) Get your strainer and sticks.

4) Put a strainer in the top of the measuring cup.

5) Now pay close attention to the level of paint in the cup.

Paint Mixing Table. Always be sure to read and follow the paint manufactures mixing guide lines. These mixing ratios are just a basic idea of what to do, things will change with different manufactures.

Recommended Air Pressure At Gun Head. Paint Mix Ratios. Paint Product.

25-40 PSI Mix 4:1:1 Base Coat

25-40 PSI Mix 4:1:1 Sealer

25-40 PSI Mix 4:1:1 Clear Coat

25-40 PSI Mix 2:1:1 Primer Coat

When using a spray gun, you try to achieve a certain spray pattern of spray coming out of the gun, this is done by adjusting the air pressure at the tip of the spray gun, also the fan of the paint, and fluid flow of the paint, all of these factors will make, or break your paint work.

What your looking for in a perfect spray pattern is very simple, it will consist of a fan 4-6 inches wide, that has no dry spot in the middle, or heavy spot on either end of the spray fan, once you achieve this type of spray coming from the gun, your ready to go.

Remember do not test you spray pattern on the paint booth wall, or on your car, take a piece of masking paper, and hang it on the wall of the booth, and use that to test your spray gun, if you rented my booth, and sprayed on the wall of it, I would charge you to remove the paint from the wall.

You should always follow the manufactures recommended paint mixes, and spray pressure, the manufacture know more about their product then anybody else does, if you follow what they sat to the letter, your paint should look great.

Body & Paint Prep

Body & Paint Prep

I thought I'd write another article on body prep & paint work, since prep is in my opinion one of the most important steps in the process of creating the perfect paint work on your classic car, or muscle car, I know I have done an article on this before, but I can't stress enough how important it is.

After that body of the car has been stripped of all paint, and previous body work, and you have redone the body work that needs to be done, the prep stage of the body work will begin, and different people define this in different ways.

You should begin this stage of work by shooting primer to the car, I usually recommend three coats of high build urethane, or epoxy primer for this step, and in every case I recommend twenty four hours of dry time before you begin to sand the car.

After you have let the car dry for twenty four hours, sand the car and then seal all of the seams, let me remind you that this won't be the final prime on the car, you'll need to prime it one more time after you seal all of the seams on the car.

Seam sealing is an absolute must when you do a complete paint job on your car, seam sealing will stop water, and other contaminants for getting between the welded areas of the metal and causing it to rust, there are a lot of choices of seam sealer, but I use 3M fast and firm sealer when I do it.

This is a critical part of the prep process on your car, and it has to be don the right way to work right, I usually run a strip of masking tape down each side of the seam, leaving about 1/8 of an inch for the seam sealer to sit in, and this seems to work great for me, you can do it as yo like.

Give the seam sealer about two hours to dry, and then you can sand the car by hand with 220 grit paper on a long sanding block, once you have sanded the entire car with the 220 grit paper you can re-prime again, and you should be ready to wet sand the entire car first with 400 grit paper, and then if you want to 600 grit wet paper for the best results.

Some people stop at 400 grit wet sanding, but I usually finish with 600 grit, this has provided the best results for me in the past, if the windows are still in the car make sure that you have masked the car properly before you spray any primer, or paint.

Also make sure that you have taken the time to setup your spray gun properly before you spray any paint, or primer, the settings of the gun will make or break the outcome of your primer, or paint work on your car.

Planning A 1969 Camaro Restoration

If you have a standard 1969 camaro you should not have a lot of problem finding the parts and supplies that you need to restore the car, but if you have a special 1969 camaro you'll probably run in to a few problems locating some of the parts.

Allow me to differentiate between a special 1969 camaro, and a standard 1969 camaro, a standard 1969 camaro would be a Z/28, SS, RS, RS/SS, RS-Z/28, a special camaro would be a Yenko Camaro, a Baldwin Motion Camaro, or a ZL1 Camaro.


These are camaros that a very limited number of them was built, making it hard to find some of the parts, so if your restoring one of these you'll need to add a lot of patience to the restoration plan of your car because if will take a while to locate some of the parts.


For this article we'll assume that you have already bought your car, and now it's time to start the restoration process on the car, first of all get the car in to the garage, and plan on it being there for a while, this is not an over night process.


Planning a restoration on your 1969 camaro is no different from planning one on any other car, the first thing you need to do is take an inventory of the car so you can list the tings that need to be done to restore the car.

I have a method for doing an inventory of a car for restoration purposes, first get out your notebook, and divide one of the pages in to three columns, name one of them replace parts, name one repair parts, and name one repair work.


What your going to do with this notebook is a walk around inventory of the car, you'll bee looking for parts that need to be replaced, parts that you can repair and reuse, and getting a general feel for the repair work that needs to be done on the car it's self.


The reason we do this is to get an idea of some of the things that we need to do to restore the car, I realize that you can't get a complete list of the things that you need until you tear in to the car, but this will give you a good idea of where to start.


You can take your list of replace parts and start to run down suppliers for them, and the cost of them, make sure that you inspect inspect the entire car when you do the walk around, I usually work from the front to the rear of the car when I do this.


Then after I get everything that I can see, I lift the car off of the ground and inspect all of the systems under the car, like suspension, brakes, steering, rear end, and sheet metal, once I have the inventory completed I can get on to the tear down.


This inventory can help you in a lot of ways, the first and most obvious is the fact that it will help you get a feel for the pricing of the parts that you'll need, if your good at estimating how long it will take you to repair and replace things, it will give you a good idea of how many hours it will take.


Take your time on this parts of the restoration, the more through this is the better it will be, you'll get a really good idea of the parts you need, and the cost of them, you'll get a good idea of the time it will take to do the restoration of the car.


If you know these things up front, you won't get a lot of surprises as you do the work and you'll enjoy every hour that you spend working on your car, keep this in mind as you do your inventory, in most cases if the car is in good condition, it takes professional shop about 600-800 hours to restore a car.

That of course changes when you add more work, but it will give you an idea of the time that these cars can take to restore, it takes a long time to complete one of these projects, the the reward is well worth the time that you'll spend restoring the car.


Resource: 1969 Camaro Restoration

Camaro Restoration – Part 10 Primer Surfacer

Not that the metal work is done, we can get on to the primer surfacing of the car, now this to be done right needs to have attention paid to the smallest details, first go over the car looking for any small imperfections in the metal work, it does on occasion happen that you'll find one or two.

After your sure that you don't have any small dents, dings, or ripples that need attention you can begin to clan the car and get it ready for masking, make sure that you have a can of metal prep cleaner, cover the entire surface of the car with the metal prep cleaner, pay attention to detail, take your time.

After you have finished the cleaning phase, you can move on to the masking, unless you have removed all of the windows, chrome, and bright work, you'll need to mask the car, if it's just a shell, you don't need to worry about this stage.

For this article we'll say that you didn't remove all of the glass from the car, so you will be masking the car, this is really one of the most important parts of the process, you need to have your paper, tape, and razor blades ready to go, and again I can't stress enough, take your time on this.

You'll either be spraying epoxy primer, or urethane primer, and either one of these products is made to stay on the parts that you spray it on, so let;s discuss it a little bit, first of all you need to be sure that everything is masked, and nothing is masked that doesn't need to be, this is where you'll need the blades.

What your looking to do here is cut the paper to match the parts that your masking, and believe me when I say, the over spray will get every where that you fail to mask, I learned this the hard way, it can take days to clean those kind of mistakes up.

Spend time and cover everything that you think doesn't need to be painted, now we'll get in to the primer itself, first of all get you car in to the spray booth, or the area where you plan to paint it, once it's in the paint area make sure that you ground the car by hanging a chain from the car to the floor.

Grounding the car will help to insure that static electricity doesn't accumulate an pick up miscellaneous dust and other contaminants from the air, now that you have gotten in the booth, and grounded it, you can get ready to spray the primer.

What You Need:

1.A Spray Gun

2.Primer Surfacer

3.Mixing Cups

4.Stir Stick

5.Reducer

6.Catalyst


Now that you have these things you can begin the mixing process, you should always follow the manufactures recommendations when mixing the primer, they know what the best mixing process is, if you think you'll more help then what's on the side of the can, ask the paint company that your buying the product from

Once you have mixed the primer, rather it's urethane or, epoxy primer, you'll be spraying no less then three coats on the car, this usually works out to about one gallon of spray- able material, when you begin to spray the primer you'll need to know a couple of things.

The first thing is that you should always hold the spray gun parallel to the surface of the car at 90 degrees to the surface, or with the spray head facing directly at the car, the gun should spray an even fan with no voids of primer in the center, when the gun is set at 35 pounds of air pressure.

You should always keep the gun 6-8 inches from the surface of the car, any closer and you will more then likely get a run in your primer, any farther away and you'll get a dry spray, you'll also get dry spray if you move the gun to fast, or a run if you move to slow, you have to figure out the right speed.

Once you have these techniques down you only need to remember one thing, you must overlap each paint line 50% to get even coverage on the car, I'd suggest that you practice these techniques before you get serious about spraying your car, learn the speed, the fan settings, and how different air pressures affect the gun that you use.

How to Create Perfect Auto Body Work | eHow.com

How to Create Perfect Auto Body Work | eHow.com

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