I purchased a 77 firebird donor car specifically for the roof. I determined it to be the factory door on the car and for $500 it was mine. Once I got it home I realized that through one of the perforated holes in the under lying roof structure I could see what looked like to be fairly bad rust on the underside of the roof skin.
I decided to cut the he roof off. If nothing else I need the inner structure anyway. My current car has t-tops in it, so the underlying structure is cut up. I have since cut the roof off and am working to decide if I need to replace the skin and I am very much on the French about it. The window lips actually look decent. I took a strip disc to the roof skin and it seemed that there was rust imbedded deeper than just the surface. These are the shiny parts of the skin below that have brown "dots" in the stripped metal.
The really shiny spots in the metal are where I took a 36grit roloc disc to very quickly. I did the same thing to the underside where the rust was on the underside of the skin. I took a very quick pass over the rust that looked so bad in the first pic and it came right off revealing good strong metal underneath.
I feel a lot better after a lot of assessment this evening, but I'm still not sure if it's smart to put this on a $100k car.
My options are to use this roof as is and repair the a-pillars' bases (oh yeah, they're rotted too), use this roof structure and put a new skin on, or buy a complete roof for a 70-73 and modify the skin where it meets the quarters around the rear window since that area is different from the early and late second gens. The benefit of doing this is that I get all new a-pillar skin, a-pillar structure, and under roof. It is a bit of a risk as even the stamping people like AMD don't seem 100% certain that all the other contours are the same.
My main question is what do you guys think of the skin on the donor roof? Would this be safe enough to paint over and do a really nice restore with? If not, what's my best option??
Here are some more pics of other inner portions of the skin.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I decided to cut the he roof off. If nothing else I need the inner structure anyway. My current car has t-tops in it, so the underlying structure is cut up. I have since cut the roof off and am working to decide if I need to replace the skin and I am very much on the French about it. The window lips actually look decent. I took a strip disc to the roof skin and it seemed that there was rust imbedded deeper than just the surface. These are the shiny parts of the skin below that have brown "dots" in the stripped metal.
The really shiny spots in the metal are where I took a 36grit roloc disc to very quickly. I did the same thing to the underside where the rust was on the underside of the skin. I took a very quick pass over the rust that looked so bad in the first pic and it came right off revealing good strong metal underneath.
I feel a lot better after a lot of assessment this evening, but I'm still not sure if it's smart to put this on a $100k car.
My options are to use this roof as is and repair the a-pillars' bases (oh yeah, they're rotted too), use this roof structure and put a new skin on, or buy a complete roof for a 70-73 and modify the skin where it meets the quarters around the rear window since that area is different from the early and late second gens. The benefit of doing this is that I get all new a-pillar skin, a-pillar structure, and under roof. It is a bit of a risk as even the stamping people like AMD don't seem 100% certain that all the other contours are the same.
My main question is what do you guys think of the skin on the donor roof? Would this be safe enough to paint over and do a really nice restore with? If not, what's my best option??
Here are some more pics of other inner portions of the skin.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk