Hello all,

I'm new to this forum and I'm new to the process of fixing up a car. My father bought this 1969 stock Camaro (it's not a z or a SS) in Sept of 1969 when I was five years old. I can recall the day he bought it and being on the car lot as he picked it out. It was the first car I drove after getting my driver's license and I drove it hard for 6-8 years and racked up about 166,000 miles on it. It's a straight six 250. I want to fix it up and getting back to being road worthy and looking good. I don't care if it's a garage queen/car show quality vehicle. I have no interest at all in bringing out on the car show circuit, I don't plan to race with it, I just want a nice car that I can enjoy driving. The car sat out in the weather for many years. From 1988 until now it sat in a garage. I now have it with me in my garage in Pennsylvania.

My issue is this: I don't have much knowledge with cars, I'm not talented with cars however I'm willing to learn to do things on my own and will do what I can. The unfortunate thing is that I'm extremely limited in what I can do by myself lacking knowlege or experience at working with cars. I recently took it to a classic car restoration shop and they quoted me at about $100,000 to do my car. I thought this was a bit outrageous for a car that I have no interest in making into a car show quality car. It has rust on all the front and rear panels, the panels under the doors, the dashboard near the front window, the rear deck near the rear window, the trunk has a little rust and the driver's side floor pan is completely rusted through. The interior is in very fine condition except for the headliner and the rug. Seats, dash, console are all in great shape.

While I understand that it takes time to do work on replacing panels, I'm not so sure that the panels need to be completely replaced. Even if there is rust that is not seen until the car is taken completely apart, is that really a concern?? I don't know, but since I don't want it show quality, I'm thinking it really isn't that much of a concern. I have it now in my garage in Pennsylvania, so it's not going to be left out in the weather anymore. My dream is to drop a bigger engine in it (350), upgrade the frame/suspension/brakes for drivability, and have a nice looking car that I can enjoy driving around town.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can keep this project within a reasonable budget (reasonable meaning around $25-$35K total) so that I'm not putting in my entire retirement savings into a car? The guys at the classic car restoration shop told me that even if I put $100,000 into it, the car won't be worth that much even after it's completed. Well in my opinion that pretty dumb and I have no desire to do that. I think they quoted me that because they wanted to tear the car completely apart, replace all the parts of the car and turn it into a car show quality car. That's not what I want. I don't care if every single bolt and screw is new and that the entire frame is painted and the engine so pretty I can eat off of it. I don't need it in that perfect shape. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just good. Is there anyone out there that is willing to work on my car, do minimal work as possible, fix up what they can without replacing entire panels, paint it, drop a bigger engine into it and make it have better handling without it costing me $100,000? Hell if I want to spend that much money on a car I may as well go out and buy a brand new high dollar Jaguar or Mercedes. Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but I think someone can do this car up just fine with $25-$35,000. I'm just curious of any thoughts and ideas that others may have. Remember, I'm new and have no idea about cars, so if I'm unrealistic with my thoughts and my dream of what I want with this car, I'm okay with people telling me that. I live right outside of Reading, PA so if anyone lives nearby that has some good places I can go to see who can work on my car, I would be very grateful.

 

You're going to have to take care of that rust first. It seems that you will have to replace a lot of the body, depending on how bad the rust is. Unseen rust is also a big concern and you will have to take the car apart seeing from what you wrote. Hopefully most of the rust can be removed with rust remover.

 

Welcome to the show! This 69 should never get away from you. The 1st thing I would do is find the 1st Gen Camaro guys in your area, as many as possible, get to know and talk to each of them. See who does the best body work on classics for a beer budget. Who restores cars, and would be willing to take on your car. 25k will get you a extremely nice build depending on how far you want to take it, even if the car is a base (X44 i assume). There are plenty of parts houses that sell everything new for these cars. interior, wiring, chrome, sheetmetal, but be leary of cheap china parts. They ARE out there. If you dont know how much rust is there, your body shop will "soda blast" it, which strips all of the paint off and reveals where the rust and body filler is and then you will know what direction your going to go in. But, the car basicly needs to be stripped down of all parts. every piece of the interior can be bought now days, so a good upholstery shop can take care of that when the time comes. If you want a great suspension, I would go with Hotchkis parts. They sell everything you need for upgrades or just replacement. Engine? With you being limited on knowledge, the best route to go is a new GM ZZ350 crate engine which runs about $2499 or the best Ram Jet 350 which is fuel injected and bolts right in your car for $5500. These engines, you basicly never have to pop your hood and tune. This is going to be a worth while project if you can stomach it. I'm sure you have alot of questions so Please dont be affraid to ask even the smallest. We're here to help.

Jason

 

I think one of the big factors when you got the 100K quote, was time. Most of the people that do resto's in their garage do it on weekends, evenings, or whenever they can squeeze a few minutes away from work, family, birthday parties, etc, etc. If you bring it somewhere they will probably have a few people working on it 8-12hrs a day 5 days a week. (So it will be done in weeks/months) The rest of us who don't have 100K laying around spend years on our projects.
I personally enjoy doing the work myself. I learn as I go, and while it can be stressful at times, I think sneaking off to the garage for a few hours is really relaxing. Thinking about spending a few hrs working on the car while I am in the middle of my 12hr work day, helps me get through the day.
So my advice is "do it yourself". Start doing research here, (and on other forums) find a place to work on the car, and get started! You don't need a huge garage, or a full box of Snapon tools, but you do need motivation.
Good Luck!
Oh, and for future reference; we like pics here! If you post pics, I am sure some of the people here will be willing to help point you in the right direction.

 

I just finished completing my restore. Actually, I wouldn't even say that I restored my car as much as resurrecting it. My goal was similar to yours -- I didn't want a show car and wanted a classic car that I could drive around. I also needed to keep the cost down. This is what the car looked like when I got it :

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...o/IMG_0527.jpg

During the cleanup process :

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...o/IMG_0549.jpg

and as of this weekend :

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...g?t=1284995697

When I originally got the car, it was no where near being road worthy. I had to rebuild the engine, replace the fender and passenger door, replace the entire suspension system, paint, new tires and rims, rework the interior, trim, etc. The total cost to me so far, including the cost of the car, is around $16k. I paid $10k for the car and $6k to fix it up.

The biggest cost savings was the fact that my dad and I did all of the work ourselves (with the exception of the paint). Hell, we even modified and cleaned up the exhaust system so that it comes out of the side of the car. I couldn't imagine what this would have cost if I paid a professional to do. On the flip side, the car is no where near perfect -- some short cuts were taken. It has issues, but at least I can drive it around.

Keep in mind that we spent a ton of time working on the car. My dad is retired, so he spent a good portion of the weekday working on it and I spent as much time as I could on the weekend. It wasn't uncommon for us to start at around 9AM and still be working on it at 5PM. There was also a lot of cursing during that period of time too.

I still need to dump another $3k into the car before I'm satisfied. I want to replace the intake manifold and carburetor with brand new ones. I also need a new wiring harness and new motors for the RS lights. All of this, I will end up doing myself.

 

Thanks to all that replied! That was some great information and just what I needed to hear. I tried to attach pictures last night but wasn't sure how to do it. I will try to attach some to this post.

BTW, I just stopped by at a local body shop. I was pleasantly surprised that they do classic restorations on old muscle cars and they told me they could very easily get my 1969 Camaro very close to car show quality for $25k. Now THAT is more like it! I still have a few places I want to check around at first, but that was great news! I kind of thought that $100,000 quote was a tad bit steep. Even thought I don't know crap about cars, I still thought that was nuts. But again, that resto place was immaculate and so clean you could eat off the floors. While that's nice and all, I could really care less and just want someone to do work on my car, a little at a time with what I can afford and resurrect my car as someone else stated on here for about $25,000 tops. But all the replies were great and I do appreciate all of your thoughts and comments. I will post what pictures I have, so please feel free to tell me what you all think.

Again, thank you all for your kind replies!

Don

 

Don, I think your car has a great story and serves as a befitting tribute...sounds like your grandpa was one cool old dude.

If you are not a gear-head born with a wrench in your hand a project such as this can be overwhelming due to fear of the unknown. However, I believe over-coming fear is a life-enhancing experience and this is a great opportunity to at least take a minor role of being hands on.

Don't rush-in, post on here if you have any questions, find a local camaro club and don't be afraid to ask them for advice.

It's important to have a basic Game Plan, since this is a great opportunity to access and update your Camaro with better (nothing fancy or too expensive) parts like brakes, suspension, or exhaust.

Rust is like an iceberg there is always more than meets the eye and until the car has been blasted nobody will know for sure what the damage is.

Talk to your Autobody guy and gently ask him how much money can you save by bringing him the car with the following removed: Motor, Tranny, Front & Rear Bumper, Interior, Sideview Mirrors, License Plates, and Gill Trim. Let him know that you will store everything at your home while he is working on the car.

In some cases this alone will save you $2,000.00 enough to put a nice new motor into the car with a little extra for a tranny. That old straight 6 250 was a good motor for the time, but needs to be retired and not rebuilt. Store it on a motor stand.

Some removed parts like the sideview mirrors and gill trim simply replace, while others like the bumpers you can send out to have re-chromed without any shop mark-up.

See if there is a local college/high school auto shop or a place like WyoTech that will do the motor and tranny removal for free.

Visit a reputable interior shop (talk with some local muscle car owners for a reference) to remove the interior dash, door panels, and headliner.

With a very basic handful of common tools you can remove the bumpers, license plate frames, side view mirrors, door sill plates, seats, carpets, console, gill plates, and interior rear side panels. Also remove the jack and the spare tire when having the car finally towed to the autobody shop.

For many of us on here that **** 10w-40 we would jump at the chance to strip a car down and could do everything mentioned above in a day. For the novice, it seems overwhelming but if you can turn a wrench or a screwdriver it's actually pretty simple, best of all you don't have to put it all back together, the Autobody and Interior shops will do that for you.

Just remember to place any removed screws, nuts or bolts into a ziploc bag and tag it with Sharpie pen as to what it is.

The Autobody Shop will charge $20-30 an hour to do this and they will have to store everything....most shop owners will give you a break if you do these things yourself.

Make sure to find out where the Autobody Shop purchases it's sheet metal from, and where the Interior shop purchases their stuff from. Most importantly share your story, believe it or not guys in the Auto-resto business are all a bunch softies deep down inside and love a story like yours.

Sorry if that was too long......

 

Shevrolay,

Thank you for your very informative response. I believe this shop will allow me to remove as much as I possibly can in order to save some cash. He told me he would prefer at the very least that I remove and store my interior since it's in such good shape.

As you said, this is overwhelming to me as I have no clue what to expect or how this process works. And I'm not loaded with cash to just shell it out, so what I'm finding is that these guys all prefer to have some cash up front (can't blame them) to begin the work. What is concerning to me is that I am probably not going to be able to work on their time schedule. They seem to have in mind that once they start, they don't want to stop and have the body sitting around as I save more cash to pay them. I understand that as well, however without being wealthy, there is no way that is going to happen from my end. I told him today that I can get him $5,000 by December and that I could probably get him another 5-6k by June/July. Unfortunately the wife is not going to allow me to commit $25k upfront or within 8-9 months. We do have two young girls that my wife is trying to save for their schooling, so there is no way my Camaro is going to compete with that. I told the shop guy that today, he told me not to worry and that they would attempt to work out a timeline for me. So, we'll see what they say when I meet with them next week. I'm in no rush for it. But I've noticed that the shops will want to complete it once they begin the project. Is it common that there aren't many shops that are willing to tackle it in a slower time schedule. With this economy, you'd think they would just want your business. Maybe the car resto business isn't hurting too much. Anyway, I'm still checking around in the meantime while I negotiate with this shop.

I appreciate all the advice and responses!
Don

 

Hey I know what you mean. Well you've gotten some excellent advice. I was in need of a car a few years ago and decided to go back to my 1st love......a 1st gen. Mine fell into my lap and we spent a weekend tearing it all apart. I found a great body guy who did things old school. Now we are at the end of a 3 year project. Like you we are not building it for show but so that I can drive it everyday and have a good solid car.

Here's my thread
https://camaroforums.com/forum/67-69-projects-106/my-69-camaro-project-18688/

There's allot of stuff you can do yourself. I had the subframe sent home and scrubbed it and painted it. Put it back together and sent it back to the shop for the final assembly. After it was painted it came home and we have been doing everything else. Found allot of parts on ebay but got mostly everything from NPD. Its been a bit of an undertaking for my hubby and I but we are very proud of the work that we have accomplished.

So just what are they quoting you for? Is this just for the body restoration? Or does it include anything else?

 

Don,

Try giving these guys a call or perhaps just go by there if they are close to you.

Universal Technical Institute - Pennsylvania Campus
750 Pennsylvania Drive
Exton, PA 19341

Ask them if they are ever looking for cars for training purposes...it's a case of they win, you win. Again check your local area for Camaro Clubs, you'd be surprised how far a few cases of beer, a gift certificate at Year One or Rick's First Generation along with some BBQ in the name of friendship amongst Bowtie Brethren can go.

Wish you lived near me, I would definitely hook you up and make it a fun learning experience to boot...check my profile to see my ride.

The guys on this forum are some of the most informed I have ever run into. There is a lot you can do that is free, before you ever take the car into the body shop...questions, problems, snap a few pics and the folks here will jump at the chance to help you out.