Here’s a question for the sheetmetal and body guys of the group. Ive got a 1970 skylark convertible, my first classic car I bought in college. I’ve rebuilt the drive train and chassis, it’s a solid driver… but it’s time to take care of her and clean up the body and new paint for the first time in 30+ years. I have been prepping to build this car since it was my first BUT it’s packed full of body filler, passenger fender is literally held to the rocker panel with body filler… needs full quarters, lots of door work, passenger fender, outter wells, trunk pan work near the inner wells, maybe rocker panels, and deck lid filler panels( from what I can see for now) cut to the chase I recently picked up another 70 vert, 26k Arizona car with title. Needless to say, all body panels are original (except drivers door) and it only needs lower rear quarter patches. It’s much much straighter than my daily driver, but this one is just a body and needs EVERYTHING. It came with no useable parts. I picked up the second car to use for parts, but the car is too solid to cut up. now part of me is thinking would I be better off building this body and taking all of the parts from my original car and swapping them over. Now the kicker would be I’ve already finished the chassis work on the first car, whereas the parts car needs all of that + engine/ trans build. I wouldn’t want to swap that over only because both cars are numbers matching. What are your thoughts??? I can’t determine what direction I should go; build my first baby and put in countless extra hours of time, or go with a body that would have minimal metal work, but needs a full drive chain and chassis build
Swap your drivetrain into the solid metal car. It's a Skylark, so value based on "numbers matching" is not meaningful. move your good working rig into the solid body and don't look back. My 2c.
Use the solid body/frame (good chance your old frame has rust too) and all the good stuff from your old car. Paint it like the old car if you want. Don't worry about the numbers or use the numbers (VIN/Data tag) from the old car. In other words, use the AZ car & do rebody/reframe on the old car if you care enough that it has the correct VIN from the old car. You'll come out years & 10's of thousands of $ ahead & have a nicer car in the end.
Would be foolish to try saving the first car,..if the frame is good just swap the body everything over
Here is an example of what I did to a rotted 70 Chevelle Malibu Convertible. When I got the car it had 2 new rear quarter panels on it and didn't look too bad, it was when I started taking it apart that I found all the problems. The floors were rotted, they had put a new trunk floor over the old rotted floor so water was getting trapped between the 2 panels and was rotting everything out again. The quarters were also put on top of the old panels, so they were no good. The list goes on and on. What I had to do was weld an entire "roll cage" of steel pipe onto the shell before I took it off the frame. That was just to hold it together. Then I put it on a rotisserie and started cutting out and replacing panels from other donor cars, plus added new reproduction sheet metal pieces. The pics I am posting were from the fist time the car started looking "GOOD", if you can call it that, but every panel was repaired and solid at this time. I had already replaced the header over the windshield, 3/4's of the floor with both inside rockers and all the floor braces, the entire trunk floor, and the panel between the floor and the rear seat. The panels where the convertible top mount were also rotted and used pieces were grafted in. One outer rocker was also replaced, while I fixed the other side. When these pics were taken, the car was going back to the body shop a second time for the professionals (Nick at Ivyland Collision) to install the rear quarters and assemble the rest of the body. Now all of this took years for me to do, with finding needed donor pieces, and doing all the work myself, up to this point, and yes I am definitely bull-headed, and sometimes refuse to let things die, but that's just me. This is also not the first time I have done something like this. If this is what you need to do then have at it, but it will take forever. The choice is between saving your original car, spending years of work doing it, then spending large amounts of money as well to fix the body, especially if you do not have the equipment and cannot do the work yourself. Otherwise you can fix the other car and be driving/enjoying it years before your car is done. Hope this helps with your decision. Duane PS, If I had the availability of having a 26,000 mile Arizona body, I believe my decisions would have been different.
Here are some pics of the body on the rotisserie with the "roll cage" welded in to hold it together. I am not a body man, so I made sure to cross brace everything so it didn't move. Duane
I think this does make the most sense. I would like to keep the Vin correct if possible. Is it terribly frowned upon to swap vin numbers? I hear about people rebodying cars all the time, but not sure on the legality or ethics behind it.
I greatly appreciate the input. I've had a car close to that cut up before and know how not fun it can be. But for some reason I thought I was taking the easy way out by not rebuilding my "true" car. I will definitely take this all into consideration, and most likely build the Arizona car and swap frames
There will probably be people screaming at you on the board about the vin number soon. As far as the frames, I would really check out your original car frame before I would let the Arizona frame go. The convertibles like to rot out inside the boxed areas so you need to be careful. When I first got my 70 442 convertible I blew all the “Georgia” clay out of the frame with long air nozzles. It made one hell of a cloud. If I hadn’t done that it would not have survived being in the humid Northeast all these years. You might want to blow out all the dirt inside your AZ frame soon. I don’t know which part of the country you live in. Duane
I will definitely check the situation with the Arizona frame. My car is a PA/ New England car (Live in the mid west now) and its shockingly solid after all these New england years. The Arizona frame also seems to be in great shape but I've got a compressor to blow it out if needed. thanks for the advice.
There's lots of lively & philosophical discussion on here & probably every other old car board about swapping VINs (i.e. rebodies). Not nearly as much about swapping frames even though they're also stamped w/a VIN. If this were a Stage 1 car, I'd probably advise differently but as you move down the food chain IMHO it matters less & less. In general, my philosophical take on it is there were only 2 parts that weren't available at the parts counter - The VIN Plate & Data Tag. You can cut up your AZ Skylark and replace the sheetmetal on the old car piece by piece or do it all in one big piece. On a convertible there's even less of the original structure to "save." Then there's the argument (not in your case) that if you "save" the original shell but do it all with repro sheetmetal are you better off than a rebody w/all orig. sheetmetal? I'm in a similar situation on my '71 GS (350) convertible - Orig. a Pittsburgh car but the lady had a garage. Bottom of the car is gone but the header, top of the cowl, dash, rear filler, etc. is all excellent. I picked up a rust-free Skylark body. Few small holes in the floor and I even have a hardtop with a beautiful floor. Fortunately in my case the upper dash on the donor also has some rust & it's an A/C shell (mine is a non-A/C car) so I can't do a direct swap and that part of the GS is excellent. Also, my orig. frame is pretty decent. But the question is do I completely cut up 3 cars to make one good one just to say I used a few pieces of the orig. rear inner structure & the orig. rear filler panel? Seems crazy, esp. on a 350 car. Again, were it a Stage 1 maybe I'd go through the exercise just to show I did it, but in the end, what am I really doing differently? On my GS, it'll be about as close to a rebody w/o being as you can get as I'll use the original dash, upper cowl, upper firewall, etc. Maybe even the orig. A-pillars. Will depend on how much of all that I can swap over as an assembly. To me, it'll be the same GS as it was born. In your case, if all that metal is good on the donor, I'd swap tags & never think twice about it. If you want to satisfy yourself, swap over the orig. dash & upper cowl & you'll never have to "remove" the tags.
Thats one more wrench to throw in on this build. Original car is factory AC, Arizona parts car is not. I'm sure I could cut the firewall on the non AC car to accommodate AC, but not sure what those changes would be and how hard of a process that would be.
That is a wrench. My idea: Sell the bondo driver. $6,000. As they say in NY, forgettaboutit. Sell Skylark Arizona car. A rust free non air car is worth some coin. $6,000 Grab the 11k you would spend to put a compromised cars A + B = C together. Instead add money A + B + C together. Buy a really nice Skylark convertible. Then cruise it around the extra 1,500 hours you'd put into this deal - assuming you'd see it all the way through.
@Brian Albrecht In this day and age I don't know I'd be able to find a really nice convertible for anything less than 18-20. And that also leaves me without my first car, (or parts of it anyway)
I think that's what Brian is saying. Sell both (A +B = $12k) + take the $ you'll spend combining them (C = $11k) & there's $23k to buy a nice car - There happens to a very nice one listed on here right now for $25k/offer. You get to enjoy the new car now. Valid argument assuming you'll spend $11k combining them & w/paint you spend at least that & prob. more (esp. w/an interior) but it's spread out. On the other hand, I totally get the sentimental value & in the end, you'll probably wind up with a nicer car by combining the two as you'll have gone through everything - It'll be like a new car. Good thing about doing that to a Skylark (or even a GS 350) vs. say a Stage 1 is you don't have to be afraid to drive it!
