The GTX (1969 Plymouth GTX)

[ckessel]

Doing the drip rails and skin are daunting but it's just peeling layers of an onion. Multiple pieces all going together that have to get fitted well before you pull the trigger. Before you get too far, lay the glass in to ensure it's going to fit too. At a shop I used to manage, we heard a story from the glass company about another shop who had done a quarter on a PT. They just cut it off and welded the new one in. When it came time to set the quarter glass, the opening was too small. OOPS! The glass company ground the outside of the glass down to fit. Our guys would mock everything up, especially on what we called train wrecks. Doors, hoods, lights, glass, fenders, bumpers, hoods etc. On the frame rack, all was good on the target reading but you could still have the upper structures off. When this happened, they would do additional pulls up high until all fit as intended. The insurance companies would bitch about it but we would give them no choice. Make it right or let them deal with the wrath of the customer.

 

[ckessel]

Your in box is full, trying to send a PM.

 

[Rich H.]

Never had to touch the drip rails using my roof skin removal method. The other methods I was told I had to use would have made perfect sense in a situation where a person was trying to save the roof skin. I on the other hand, wanted to scrap the roof skin LOL.

The Dutchman was surprisingly clean, except for the top edge under the window. Needed to remove it to access everything + repair the metal underneath it in the window channel. I fabricated the strip under the rear window/rear edge of the package tray from 18 gauge. I also fabricated the structural rear window corners, before topping them off with the AMD reproduction reinforcement piece that sits between the structure and the quarter panel.

Of course the Dutchman was the wrong dimensions/too long as has been documented here before so I fixed that.

Why do these cars rust so badly? One reason is Lap joints everywhere, and no coatings of any kind between layers of metal. I did the best I could and drowned everything in black epoxy as I went along, but have no delusions of grandeur, it's basically built the same as it was. Hopefully adding the epoxy will have a protective effect in the future.

 

[Rich H.]

Doing the drip rails and skin are daunting but it's just peeling layers of an onion. Multiple pieces all going together that have to get fitted well before you pull the trigger. Before you get too far, lay the glass in to ensure it's going to fit too. At a shop I used to manage, we heard a story from the glass company about another shop who had done a quarter on a PT. They just cut it off and welded the new one in. When it came time to set the quarter glass, the opening was too small. OOPS! The glass company ground the outside of the glass down to fit. Our guys would mock everything up, especially on what we called train wrecks. Doors, hoods, lights, glass, fenders, bumpers, hoods etc. On the frame rack, all was good on the target reading but you could still have the upper structures off. When this happened, they would do additional pulls up high until all fit as intended. The insurance companies would bitch about it but we would give them no choice. Make it right or let them deal with the wrath of the customer.

I broke the windshield but did use the rear glass and other things to mock up and make sure everything went back as it should. Quarters were not installed without the doors and trunklid in place. Weight supported by the chassis (not the hoist!) is crucial

This happened about a year ago but probably seems like it's in real time as it is being posted here.

 

[Rich H.]

Your in box is full, trying to send a PM.

I will try to figure out how to empty it. Thanks!

 

[ckessel]

Getting any corrosion protection on now is 100% more than what they got during assembly. Nobody did any background protection until somewhere in the 90's? Didn't matter if the car was euro, oriental or US made. As I get areas completed on my 65, they'll get protected with various methods.

 

[Rich H.]

Definitely will be using plenty of cavity wax when the time comes, hopefully that and the epoxy will work well over time.

 

[ckessel]

I have a gallon can of POR15 plus a container of the cavity wax. I made sure I got the 4' wand for the wax.

 

[Rich H.]

Reading the more in-depth builds on this board, where folks are doing their own work + on other boards has been IMMENSELY helpful. The ability to address the known problem areas before even fully attaching the panels helped me do a much higher quality job than if I had not been aware of the known trouble spots going in.

I have replied on threads here and there but I feel the best way to thank the many folks who have helped me out is to advance the hobby and pay it forward by showing my version of the same repairs that the reproduction stuff seems to all need on these cars.

Although always fun eye candy, it's never quite as helpful to me to check out a thread where each post is about the next place the car is being taken for someone else to work on it, but must admit if I had anyone obvious to drop it off to...I probably would!
At the beginning of the project I'd asked around for help, and didn't like any of the answers. They ranged from "no, I'm too busy" from the most likely candidate, to "sure, haul it a couple hours up the road and we can talk" to "I charge a thousand to paint one door, off the car, with no bodywork". I didn't care for any of these answers so I stuck to the original plan of attacking it myself.
The assumption I'd learn more that way did turn out to be correct LOL! Definitely learned more than I bargained for and still am.

 

[Rich H.]

The lap joint where the dutchman meets the trunk gutters is always a mess on cars that have spent lots of time outdoors. Mine were no exception.

Not being a full OE Stock restoration, but definitely caring enough about the legit status of the car, I repaired and preserved the trunk gutters (sequence number on the left side). However instead of a bare metal lap joint held together with a cluster of spot welds and some seam sealer slopped on, I metal finished the upper edge and did the remainder of the joint to resemble the original lap joint. The upper edge was partially influenced by a show car that I checked out that had the entire joint metal finished....I compromised because I wanted to keep some of the stock look to the area.

 

[Rich H.]

Major milestone met as the result of a whole bunch of hard work.

 

[Rich H.]

The trunklid should have been replaced, but after looking for a few weeks I determined all of them available were either 500 for ones worse than mine, or 1500 for nice ones thousands of miles away, or had a 10,000 dollar car attached to them. I wasn't getting anywhere shopping for one so I repaired what I believe to be the original.

Note the Lynch Rd only restoration details I normally don't get too hung up on....but when you own a car as long as I have, and you get "F70 X" staring at you every time you open the trunk for a few decades, after awhile it becomes important.
A guru whom I respect has indicated the "X", to the best of his knowledge and confirmed on other vehicles, that the car was built with 15" wheels. Because the car was built after the August '69 recall wheel kill date, and because of the lack of fancy 15" wheel options otherwise, I can say with some confidence this car came with dog dish hubcaps and was very low optioned as GTXs go. Somebody wanted a 440 4 speed car and not much else (and I don't blame them). I like that fact about it.

Anyway the trunklid almost deserves it's own thread. I fabricated the bottom 2.5-3" from 18 gauge, and rebuilt the underside/lower area that was gone.

 

[Rich H.]

I still haven't found any deals on clean trunk lids, so I am glad I didn't wait and just fixed this one.

Note the cut off piece. This is why I laugh when anyone points at rust and says "It's only ____"
Fill in the blank....a little surface rust, a couple small holes, or whatever.
Once you can see a tiny hole on the outside, the whole backside is gone and probably paper thin too.

 

[Rich H.]

I'm going to get away from chronological order again here, because it pertains to the trunk lid.
Exciting topic, right? LOL

Quite Awhile later after I'd done a whole lot more work, I started feeling some burnout and needed a motivator.
To help get through that I decided I would pick a color and paint the underside of the trunk lid.
I'd kicked around several colors for awhile but in the end the original A4 silver was the winner.

I ordered a sample from an online seller that everyone seems to like, they charged me way too much for it, and the color did not match original paint at all. I'd picked out a second choice late model color in case I couldn't nail A4 (Mercedes Iridium Silver, which I also love), but really wanted to try harder to get the stock color if at all possible.

Then I went to the PPG store, they gave me a free sample of A4 basecoat, and the color was exactly what I wanted.
Very close to original, but more clarity being BC/CC. T

he PPG code that corresponds to 1969-1970 A4 silver is 2016. How do I know that....I don't, I looked it up on paintref.
paintref.com is the best site I have found for the first step in locating paint mfg cross reference to car mfg codes.
This may seem like an unnecessary step but for old colors that local shops don't deal with every day, it's very helpful to provide them with their number, rather than the car manufacturer's number. They have no idea what A4 silver is, but their computer spits a formula for 2016 out in less than one second.

I looked at my test panel under all kinds of different lighting esp outdoors, and it had everything I wanted in A4.
The flop to Green and gold, depending on K factor of the lighting, drives me crazy and was an absolute must.
Went back and bought more than enough to complete the project, "Boxed" it or mixed it all together thoroughly in one bucket ("boxing" your paint is a crucial step often missed by amateurs like myself), and poured it back into the original containers.

I did experiment on my test panels with two different clearcoats as well for practice, self education, determining what product I wanted to use on what area of the car. (Example: Underneath the carpet of a street/strip car does not need restoration grade, high solids, expensive clearcoat).

I waited until the last minute to strip the underside of the trunk lid, because this was the largest area of the car that
still had original paint showing, and was needed for color match. If I had sent the trunklid out to be dipped before working on it, it would have been easier, but I would have had nothing to compare color to.

Primers and clear here are SPI products.
I can give info on the entire setup and process if anyone is interested.

When I got this done it had exactly the effect that I needed it to have.....If I felt burned out I'd look at the
newly painted part, then look at the car and imagine. This really did the trick for me. Don't ever underestimate the power of visualization....it can be a powerful motivator. Knowing that about myself, painting the trunklid was probably the smartest thing I could have done at the time.

Stripped, epoxy, surfacer, sanded to 600, base, clear.

From that point forward, my mission has been simple
"Now: make the whole car look like this. You already know you can do it."

NGL, this being only my third paint job, creating a confidence booster has been great as well.
Any hints of self doubt or negativity are very quickly put to an end by looking at this one little part.

 

[ckessel]

Nice work. I'm very blessed on my 65 not having rust issues like many others. The metal work and paint process are being re-learned while I'm going through it. Like you, I'll know who to blame if its not quite right.

 

[Rich H.]

I did the seams the old fashioned way, with body solder aka Lead.
Todd had taught me how to work with lead on the C body 15 years prior, I bought the materials and watched Eastwood's video with Gene Winfield for a refresher course.

People on social media seem to get unnecessarily super emotional about this kind of work.
I'm familiar with the other ways of doing it. I could have put fiberglass reinforced filler in there or welded a strip and metal finished it
like many others do, but after a little soul searching I decided I wanted to to really restore these areas and do it the old way. Mostly because it held up so well on this car + on the C body (where I did one side in filler and the other side in lead).

Have to admit I totally forgot about the rust in the right door jamb until I started working the seams, but repaired that problem with butt welded 18 gauge steel while I was working in the area. I have some more detailed pics of the repair if anyone is interested, but this gives a high level/general idea of things anyway.

 

[Rich H.]

EDM sanded off, epoxy, block sanded, mudded, blocked, epoxy again, surfacer, and a couple holes drilled for the emblem.

 

[Rich H.]

The doors almost deserve their own thread. Basically skinning the door, repairing the structure, then installing new reproduction skins. The AMD skins fit amazingly well, hats off to them for those parts. I wanted to use the original structures underneath not just because of substantial cost savings but also because I had fit the quarters using those original parts, and did not want to create more work for myself.

Also I got a break on the parts, and it was nice to be thrown a bone considering the labor involved to install these. Jegs had one door skin as a blem for less than half price....the edge was dented which I hammer and dolly repaired in about 10 minutes. Roseville moparts had the other side door skin on clearance/old stock.

I had no idea how to do this going in, and I learned how as I went + used all the online resources I could find.
Most important points are....Don't rush and try to pound the metal down all at once, and make sure you trial fit the assembly to the car before your final hammer-down and adding welds.

 

[Rich H.]

Door work

 

[Black_Sheep]

Maybe I missed it, are you going to paint it A4?