I just bought a 1980 camaro for my second car(first was a mini-van). the car has a nice 383 stroker engeine and a solid body, exept the undercarriage. unfortunatly i didnt get to see the damage underneath until i got it home and put it on my step dads lift. the sheet metal by the passenger leaf spring is all rotted out. i dont know anything about cars and i have no idea what to do. my step dads a mechanic but doesnt know anything about body work and he told me that i should find an empty shell to put the motor into because its unfixable but im a little more optimistic. any advice???

 

got any pics?

 

nothing is un-fixable if u have the money, have any pics to see how bad the damage actually is?

 

yea, ill upload them now

 

 

 

it looks like the pressure from the leaf spring shifted the mount and possably snapped the missing bolt in the pic

 

Well it's not unfixable, but it wont be cheap if you pay someone to do it. Buying another shell might end up with similar problems, or even different problems that are worse. The good news is you have a spring mount that will serve a a locator for the new pieces.
The area that needs replacing can be cut out once the spring perch is removed, then you can attach the spring perch to the repair piece and use that to mark around the patch and remove any metal to fit the donor. You could even make up the patch from pieces of heavy sheetmetal and weld it all together, then drill and bolt the old perch back on, and tack the nuts from the inside of the cab. That way when you rebuild the inner portion it covers the nuts, but they will already be secure.
If you and your dad can weld, then it's not expensive, just takes some time. BUt one thing you need to do first is to make sure this is the only rust. If you inspect it closely and find it's just the first you've found, and there's a lot more, then you may want to locate a donor car with less work needed. Look at the floors, trunk, and body to se certain there's not a lot more to do.