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How to Restore an Old Car: Part 1
H O W T O R E S T O R E A N O L D C A R
Part 1: Getting Started
First of a multipart series that takes you step-by-step
through an old-car restoration.
Popular Mechanics is restoring a 1967 Camaro convertible in honor of the
Camaro's 25th anniversary this year. But virtually everything we'll show
you about this project is applicable to restoring any old car from a Molel T
to a Lamborghini. And every restoration project provides the same deep-down
satisfaction of bringing a dying car back to life. There's no thrill like it.
Before you start spinning wrenches, your first step should be a
subscription to Hemmings Motor News, P.O.Box 1108, Bennington, VT 05201. In
Hemmings, you'll find not only cars for sale, but advertisements for parts,
tools, suppliers, books and the specific marque club for your car. These are
all things that you're going to need before you've finished your project.
You're going to need a place not only big enough for the car but for you
to work around it. With a ground-up restoration like our Camaro, we easily
filled another bay just storing old parts coming off the car and new parts
waiting to go on. Thousands of people have restored old cars under a tree in
the backyard, but we'd say the minimum practical space is really an empty 2-car
garage.
You'll also need a minimum amount of automotive knowledge. Happily, old
cars are much simpler to work on than today's computer-controlled machines.
As you work on your restoration you'll also learn a lot, which is half the
reason to do a project like this in the first place.
Any old car can be divided into sub-assemblies. Don't think about
restoring a whole car-that's far too intimidating. Instead, set yourself and
attainable goal: "Today, I'll sand, prime and paint the wheels." Once the
wheel subassembly in restored, set another goal for tomorrow. If you restore
enough subassemblies, pretty soon you've completed the whole car.
How long will it take? Our Camaro is a pretty complicated project, but
we're also professional automobile restorers. We'll have between 1200 and 1500
man-hours in this car before it's finished. Figure you'll spend at least 1000
hours on almost any ground-up old-car restoration-and probably a lot more.
That's why the car you select to restore is so important since you'll be
spending a lot of quality time together.
We found our Camaro convertible through the local want-ad press. It turns
out to be a very rare Camaro, serial No. 4524, built within the first few
weeks of production in August 1966. For the purposes of this project, we
wanted a car with considerable rustout, so we could show you what is
possible to accomplish. Unless you truly enjoy the challenge of difficult
bodywork, however, we'd recommend you look for a car with a chassis and/or
unibody as rustfree as possible. Anyone can bolt on a new front
fonder-replacing the entire rear unibody is a little more complicated.
We knew going in that our restoration could never be pure since our car
carried a later 307 V8 instead of the proper 327. We had already decided
that we wanted to try Chevrolet's new HO 350 "Bowtie" replacement engine
fitted with a modern 4-speed overdrive TH700 transmission. The increased
perfromance mandated optional front disc brakes instead of the drum brakes
that came on our car.
Since it could never be totally authentic, we decided to upgrade our
Camaro with both the optional SS and RS packages, and change the car to red
with a white interior instead of white with red.
Is this pukka? Does it matter? Our car will be totally stock 1967 Camaro
in appearance inside and out, but with 1992 levels of performance. It's not
a hot rod, but rather the perfect marriage between authentic looks and
improved performance. Would we make these changes in a car with the original
matching-number engine? Never. But our car would not have survived at all
without us, so we say: "Hey, let's build a really neat Camaro we'd be proud to
drive."
Years ago, I stated to replace a rotten board in the porch of my Victorian
house. Behind that board was another rotten board. And another rotten
board. By the time I got done, I'd replaced the entire porch. This Camaro is
a lot like that old porch. I drove it home 200 miles with no trouble at
all. But once we started to take it apart, each piece was rustier that the
piece we'd just taken off. By the time we were done, we had stripped our car
till all that was left were the firewall, the rocker panels and the
lightweight structure that supports the trunklid.
This is some pretty scary stuff. My friend Murph Mayberry came by. He's
the legendary auto racing mechanic who built, among many other things, Mark
Donohue's Trans-am Camaros. "I've never seen a car so far apart," said
Murph, and left shaking his head. But we had confidence. Why? Because we
were incredibly systematic and we always thought in terms of attainable
subassemblies, not of the vastness of the whole project.
STEP ONE: We put down a huge plastic tarp that covered the whole shop
floor. This kept us from losing small parts, kept the freshly painted floor
much cleaner and made it easier to sweep up each night, too.
STEP TWO: We recorded everything. As each part was unbolted, the part
itself was labeled and then placed in our empty storage bay in the
approximate position it occupied on the car. Each set of bolts was put into a
clear plastic ziplock bag with an identifying label, then all the bags were
safely stored in a bin in the order in which they'd come off.
STEP THREE: It takes suprisingly little time and surprisingly few tools
to disassemble a car. It tooks us approximately 75 man-hours to carefully
reduce a working Camaro to a pile of parts, using primarily hand tools. We
also used a lot of penetrating oil.
STEP FOUR: We started by unbolting the wheels, doors, bumpers, hood,
trunklid, taillights, grille and valence, front fenders, radiator, inner
fenders and other small parts. The engine, transmission, driveshaft and rear
axle came out with surprisingly little work, as most are held in with only a
few large bolts. The most difficult items to remove were the rear springs and
the front subframe.
The rear springs perches were bolted into blind nuts that had long since
rusted solid, so we ended up having to cut away part of the floor to get them
out. The four huge bolts that hold the front subframe to the unibody were
equally stubborn. After repeated soaking in penetrating oil, it took two men
with a 4-ft estension handle on the wrench to pop them loose. Even our
biggest impact wrench wouldn't budge them at all.
STEP FIVE: Then we tackled the interior, carefully removing, labeling
and saving the top frame, seats, console, carpets and all trimpieces including
each and every screw. Replacement interior trim is notoriously difficult to
find, even for a popular car like the Camaro.
Compared to working under the car with a 3/4-in. ratchet and a long
extension, interior pieces require extreme delicacy and care.
STEP SIX: Once every piece that could be unbolted had been, we started
carefully slicing away at the unibody. The rear fenders were the first to
go, chopped off with an air hammer, metal shears and a rotary cutoff tool.
This is dirty, potentially dangerous work. You must wear goggles, hearing
protectors and heavy gloves. Expect to come out absolutely filthy at the end
of the day.
We thought of the unibody as an onion-we tried to peel away each layer
without damaging the next one down. Before cutting away, we'd use our
sandblaster and spot blaster to look for solid metal. As it turned out,
there was virtually nothing solid left in Camaro No. 4524. We peeled away
until we reached the core. If we'd gone one step further, there would have
been no car to restore.
As it was, we left the barest bit of a skeleton from which we could
position our replacement parts as we welded them on and brought our Camaro
back from the grave. And that's where we'll leave it this month-we've done
the easy part, taking our Camaro as far apart as it will go. Now all we have
to do is put it back together!
==============================================================================
A C l e a n , W e l l - L i g h t e d P l a c e
Three tools are indispensable for a restoration shop: A big air
compressor, a lift and a pushbroom. A 5-hp compressor with an 80-gallon tank
is really the minimum for running a sandblaster, bead blast cabinet or air
tools. Once you achieve that air superiority, you'll wonder how you ever
sputtered along without it.
The same goes for a lift. A chassis lift like ours costs suprisingly
little, and will save not only hours of time, but quite literally your back.
We move our Camaro up and down a dozen times a day, adjusting the part we're
working on to a comfortable height. I promise you, within a week you'll never
want to see another jackstand.
The pushbroom is self-explanatory. Our shop gets swept and vacuumed at
least once a day, more often if there's dirty work going on. Other
recommendations for your shop: bright and easily cleaned gloss white enamel
walls, epoxy-painted floor and lots of light. We use not only overhead
fluorescents, but portable photofloods on tripods to get light where we need
it. Of course, you must have 220-volt, 50-amp service for the air
compressor, lift and welder.
Don Breslauer, the master welder who did much of the bodywork on our
Camaro, used to work for Jaguar racer Bob Tullius. Tullius, like most
mechanics, is an absolute nut about cleanliness. In Tullius's shop, says
Don, they even had a word for making things cleaner that clean, neater that
neat, more perfect that perfect. Everything had to be "punkin." And to make
something punkin was to "punkinize." That's the motto of our shop, too.
Punkinize.
==============================================================================
S O U R C E L I S T
The following is a list of some of the suppliers for this project:
o Auto Body Specialities, P.O. Box 455, Middlefield, CT 06455;
(203) 346-4989 (Body Parts)
o Cambell-Hausfeld, 100 Production Dr., Harrison, OH 45030
(513) 367-3130 (Air compressor and air tools)
o Chevrolet Division, General Motors Corp., 30007 Van Dyke Ave., Warrren, MI
48090; (313) 492-8855 (Engine and transmission)
o Coker Tire, 1317 Chestnut St., Chattanooga, TN 37402; (800) 251-6336
(Reproduction old-style tires)
o Daytona Mig, 1821 Holsonback Dr., Daytona Beach, FL 32117: (800) 331-9353
(Mig welder)
o D&R Classic Automotive, 31 W. 208 Diehl Rd., Suite 107, Naperville, IL
60563; (708) 369-2030 (Camaro restoration parts)
o DTS, 22250 Scheman Rd., Warren, MI 48089: (800) 521-0628
(Rear axle ring and pinion)
o Eagle Equipment Co., 23 Wetherill Place, Plainville, MA 02762:
(800) 535-0016 (Lift)
o The Eastwood Co., 580 Lancaster Ave., Frazer, PA 19355; (800) 345-1178
(Specialized restoration tools)
o Gearbox Grannies, 3944 Indian Ripple Rd., Dayton, OH 45440; (513) 429-5642
(Even more specialized restoration tools)
o General Motors Service Parts Operations, 6060 W. Bristol Rd., Flint, MI
48554; (313) 635-6980 (Body, suspension and trim parts)
o Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., P.O. Box 9125, Akron, OH 44305;
(216) 796-2490 (Contemporary tires)
o Kanter Auto Products, 76 Monroe St., Boonton, NJ 07005; (800) 526-1096
(Springs, shock absorbers)
o Minisport, Jackson Hill Rd., Sharon, CT 06069; (203) 364-0311
(Complete auto restorations)
o OEM Glass, P.O. Box 362, Route 9 East, Bloomington, IL 61702;
(800) 283-2122 (Auto glass)
o PST, P.O. Box 396, Montville, NJ 07045; (800) 247-2288
(Suspension bushings, antisway bars)
o Sharon Auto Body, Route 343, Sharon, CT 06069; (203) 364-0128
(Finsih bodywork and painting)
o TIP Sandblast Equipment, P.O. Box 649, Canfield, OH 44406; (800) 321-9260
(Sandblaster, bead blast cabinet, paint sprayer)
o Wurth USA, 93 Grant St., Ramsey, NJ 07446: (800) 526-5228
(Fasteners, i.e. nuts and bolts)
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