Doug's 66 GTO

Alright, Doug has been giving me crap about not getting his project on the site, so here it is in all it's glory. lol

The car ran and drove pretty well until Doug blew the motor up... he he he So now is a really good time to redo the body. Not in to bad of shape for it's age, some panels will be replaced and some very good inprovments to the car will be done.

First things first, we built a rotisserie from scratch and got the car stripped down and off the frame.

A bit over built but plenty strong.

Next step is a good sandblasting. Doug and I co-own a large commercial unit and nothing will get a car cleaner or done this fast. That said, it still takes about 8-10 total hours to get every part of a car clean.

The blasting will also show you your weak areas.

The frame is getting cleaned up here.

Nice clean frame, ready for POR.

One small problem, the previous owner did some hodge podge frame repair, this will not work. Doug ground out the poor welding and did a proper repair.

I am skipping ahead a bit as Doug works on this project himself mostly and I help when I can so there are not as many pictures. Here the entire trunk floor is removed and getting ready for rust work and patching.

The new trunk floor looked good but we quickly found out that at the slightest twist the factory spot weld popped! Nice quality control there.... we simply got out the welder and redid the work. Now it is strong.

See.... Doug does do some work.... lol

Test fit of the new trunk floor. Not to bad of a fit.

A view from the bottom, note the new spot welds.

From the side, it is all lining up pretty well.

Now we will begin to fix the trunk drop offs and fit the quarter patches.

The drop offs were removed, reworked and reinstalled. They also got the POR treatment.

Fitting the quarter patches.

The fit pretty well and now we began the process of welding them in.

Not bad on this side either.

Jumping ahead again, the doors are fit and the fenders are next. As with any restoration, many hours have been spent getting to this point, and I did not cover it all here. But a couple notable items are the new front disc brakes, poly front end kit, stainless hardware all the way arond, and new fuel and brake lines.

Fenders, hood and grille all test fit really well, only minor adjustments will be needed.

The gaps are very even and the door sit level.

Doug blocking our view of a nice GTO....