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Camaro Door Straighten

10K views 41 replies 14 participants last post by  mitmaks 
#1 ·
After replacing my fender it's now time to try to salvage the door skin on my trusty 78 Camaro. It got slammed into by an errant motorist on a cell phone and dinged up the passenger side of the car including the quarter panel and a badly crumpled front fender.

I did not want to spend any money to buy a stud welder so I did the old tried and true method of drilling holes and pulling out the dents. A 4-1/2 foot long pipe, some hardware chain, tapcons and my spare tire as a pedastal for the bar and chain and out came the 4 foot long depression in my door.

This is what we did thirty years ago with a morgan knocker and then just filled the holes with filler. I am tempted to go back and weld these closed but there is enough depth left in the dents to allow a primer coat of duraglass before hitting it with some regular filler.

If it wasn't for the guard beam in the door I would have hammered this one out. I was not willing to put forth the effort to replace the skin or cut the door apart to fix. We would not have done it back then in the collision shop I worked at and I ain't doing it now.
 

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#37 ·
Hey GD ,Your right next door in Fla...I used to live in Ocala about 15yrs ago we had some pretty good yards there but the demand was high ,theres a lot of hotrodders down there,You cant hop in your car and go to the store without seeing a few ...I dont know whats up with this town but thers not too many rodders out there.You wouldnt believe the cars I've seen at the yards even the U-pull-it had a 40 merc with a few good parts left,a 66 mustang,the nose was flattend but from the doors back was pretty nice....and all the interior was still there.
heres a pic of the old doorit had some rust that I was going to repair but when I saw all the bondo I scrapped it (red door)
Then a pic of the new one after I stripped it(silver door)
Not too bad for 50.00
 

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#38 ·
End of an era

Yeah, when I was in west palm 15 yrs ago there were scads of 70-81 camaro and 70-76 Duster-Valiant stuff. Used to make me sick how many minty valiants went to the yard. I got all the glass out of a Duster for $40.00. The rustbelt cars always had good door glass because the window felts were not all dried out from the sun to scratch everything. They had the good interior parts too. When WPB enacted the smog checks that sent allot of retiree's cars to the yard who had migrated down here from up North. Good times, but the ride is over.

I have hit several yards in my area in Vero that do not have a single 2nd gen camaro or duster part.

Your 85 Camaro is the 70 Camaro of the now. Enjoy it while it lasts......
 
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