1969 Pro-Touring Camaro - ZZ69

[zappa]

So now the main part of the cage is out, next I had to tackle the thorn in my side....FATMAT...Its been used on a few of my previous cars and I hate it, it can only be described a bitumen based "roof flashing" and IMO it has no place in the Automotive industry, and the fact that I found it under my carpet means the whole lot is coming up.

Why? For those that haven't had to deal with bitumen-based products, they have a few issues:

1. 1)They are messy as hell
2. 2) They liquify under heat and get brittle when cooled
3. 3) When used on vehicle floors they have a bad habit of separating from the body and creating small air pockets between your floor and the film
4. 4)These air pockets commonly build-up condensation, creating the perfect environment for rusting out your floor.....

My advice, use good quality Butyl rubber based products ONLY..

In addition to the floor, it had been applied in a load of places inc behind the rear seat and directly under the door trims (not to the panels?!), so first up the sheets on the rear seat back and floor had to come off, while this looks simple it was one of the worst jobs I have had to do on a car...in some areas it comes off easy but the majority its an absolute nightmare to get off and leaves small traces everywhere.







Wherever there was heat, this junk stuck like glue!


I could see a number of the bubbles i mentioned above so I took a knife to those to see what was waiting for me underneath...



Initially this is all i saw (sorry about the average iPhone photos) this is the rear footwell...When I saw the bronze I was a bit unsure what to think as it was in a weird spot...



Then I dug a little deeper



and realised it wasn't in a weird spot, it was everywhere in the footwell so I continued to scrape the filler away

[Frenchy666]

is it just me or are the pics not working?? i am really interested in this thread but no pics is no fun

[zappa]

The front footwells had up to 3 layers of this crap on them (note the AC drain hose and water stains...), it also shows one of the bubbles that I cut open towards the top left..



Some muppet decided it was a good idea to run just two wires underneath the FatMat.....the result = I now have 4-wires :roll eyes: This shot shows how poorly this stuff performs in some places while it sticks like hell to other areas....the lack of surface prep on this car probably didn't help that either (note the fluff underlay on the floor).



I also found an extremely large cutout for the shifter...another item added to the list of things to do



This is the drivers footwell, as you can see in the photo it was extremely damp under the FatMat:





And this is exactly what I was referring to re;Condensation, its a worry to find this much water just sitting underneath the deadener

[zappa]

Originally Posted by Frenchy666

is it just me or are the pics not working?? i am really interested in this thread but no pics is no fun

Ah spewin really? I can see them...Are they working for anyone else? If ur logging on from work the service might be blocked?

[JaseSV8]

All the pics are working fine for me.

[Frenchy666]

I am on a work computer (busy doing work things obviously, ha ha) but every other thread the photo's work... oh well i will just have to imagine how good your build is

[Russ]

Pics work for me.

[zappa]

Bottom line was that I soon discovered that all of the floor pans had been replaced approx 30yrs ago (before the previous owner) and the work was "rough" at best. My main concern was the depth of yellow/orange cancer that comes with moisture and the drivers footwell had some of that as did most of the other floor pans, I have used smaller images for this post as theres quite a few of them.

Drivers Floor:




Passenger Floor (baked on FatMat)


Many years of crap and layers of coatings combined with a small amount of rust:









So given the mess I decided to take the whole interior back to the metal and see exactly what I am working with.







Took a lot of work to get it to here but still a long way to go, the mess it made cleaning this out was ridiculous




---------- Post added 08-12-2016 at 12:00 AM ---------- Previous post was 07-12-2016 at 10:21 PM ----------

Interior mounts out after a bit of messing around, believe it or not it ended up being the dremel that saved the day getting these out!


Fast forward a week or two and several buckets of crap later and its starting to look much cleaner and the majority of the rust turned out to be just on the surface with only a few very small pin holes that I patched up, I dropped right back to the dremel to try and get right into the smallest areas...







I won't keep posting photos of the floor as I have already wrapped that up but heres a couple of shots when it was "close" to being right back to the metal




Once I had finished getting the interior right back to bare metal the next step was to give it a good vac and degrease to remove any leftover wax/oils.....The car had been given a good coat of POR15 on the underside but thats no good when the rust is coming through from the other side, so first up I applied a rust neutraliser to stop any existing oxidation that I had missed and while that was drying I moved into the boot to remove the boot mounts.....

Biggest problem with the boot mounts was hitting metal with a grinder right above the fuel tank....I managed to find an "Intrinsically safe" air grinder that didn't produce sparks when grinding this allowed me to take a fair amount off the welds but i was being extremely cautious as the tool was worth the same amount as the car in the end I gave in an decided to pull the tank out.....Not what I had planned but allowed me to get stuck right into the mounts and cut them out



Plenty of Weld here!

[Angry]

Awsome thread,....scary how a car that looks so good on the surface is thrown together with such a rough approach.
Youd have thought that after going to that length theyd have done a few things properly.
Looking good..subscribed ..

[Stealth 69]

Great work - the satisfaction will be rewarding once you finish digging through the previous owners efforts - and the addition of rebuilding as 'your' Camaro

[zappa]

Originally Posted by Angry

Awsome thread,....scary how a car that looks so good on the surface is thrown together with such a rough approach.
Youd have thought that after going to that length theyd have done a few things properly.
Looking good..subscribed ..

Thanks Alan, Yeh I agree, unfortunately its pretty common to find shortcuts with builds that have evolved over 10-20yrs v.s. a full house rotisserie build. But it seems to be the case with a lot of the cars getting around (Both USA and in OZ) some people just aren't detail people i guess.....lucky for me there was nothing that wasn't easily reversible. I am always majorly skeptical if I see a pro-touring build claiming to have had a full rotisserie re-build for anything under around $85k USD, bottom line is it will be lacking somewhere.

Great work - the satisfaction will be rewarding once you finish digging through the previous owners efforts - and the addition of rebuilding as 'your' Camaro

Thanks mate! Yep, that was the plan....bring in the vital big dollar bits then address the detail and make it mine

[Angry]

Awaiting your next chapter....

[zappa]

Ahhh the boot...for some stupid reason I thought the boot would be a walk in the park compared to the inside of the car.....I couldn't have been more wrong!

First up I very very carefully cleaned up the weld on the floor


Then hit it with a solid coat of the rust neutraliser to take care of anything I missed:


Then curiosity got the better of me and I started to look for where the rust dots were coming from...it quickly became one of those jobs that you wish you had never started....


I soon discovered the boot pan had also been replaced, and then bogged up then coated...the removal of all of this took a very very long time

The filler was pretty thick to cover the welds....I don't know why they were worried about what the boot looked like...


The crap the came out of the boot was unbelievable,


One of my pet hates! When you live in the country where these parts are so readily available, very cheap, and most of the time with free delivery yet you decide to leave this sort of rubbish in this type of build! (boot latch and rear light housing mounting screws)...worst part was the lights were leaking water and the boot latch was barely working..



Just below where the water was dripping in from the rear lights:

[zappa]

The wiring up back was very average, some lights were dropping out and a side marker wasn't working....this was just something I couldn't leave and I ripped the whole lot out!






As usual one thing lead to another and I figured I may as well fix the leak and freshen up the rear light housings + Marquez Billet Lights, so out they came too

[zappa]

More unusual panel work in the boot, I assume this was part of the shocky relocation......


getting there slowly removing all the crap....


Rear Harness out of the car, Main power wire out as well, it was good cable but was meant for welding and has much higher resistance than normal Auto cables.



and this is the sort of thing that justifies my rewiring....this is all it takes to send you on a wild goose chase looking for a short...



Once the boot was completely gutted and stripped bare it also copped a full coat of rust neutraliser just for good measure and I moved back to the interior!

First I had a panel laser cut to fit tightly around the shifter, it sits just below the lip of the shifter to ensure it doesn't hit if theres any movement


And then I decided to take a closer look at the dash.....