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Friday, April 15, 2011

My Short Lived Car Restoration Experience

Back about 4 years ago or more I had gone through a phase where I wanted to do a restoration on a car. I decided to look over auction sites daily and finally found a decent candidate from what the pictures led me to believe. The price had start at .01 so I could not pass up bidding on it, long story short, a few hundred bucks later I was the the new owner of a long neglected 1979 Z28 Camaro.

My first mistake was not looking at the car in person but when you're younger and have your mind set on something it does not really occur to you. My second mistake was buying a car that was not more intact then the one I had gotten. I go pick it up and bring it home and start to look it over. "This could work" I said to myself. I did not really care about the inside of the car at the time because I wanted to restore it into a drag car so all the inside was going to be stripped out anyways. The outside look what would be expected for 20 years of neglect and who cares if it did not have a motor I wanted to slap a big block in it!

The next day I start to tare into it, literally. The carpet was so bad I could rip it out easily with my hands. Out comes the carpet, seats and rest of the interior. Rust spots galore with some holes as well. Headliner comes out nothing but rot in the roof where the T-Tops were. Great now I would need a new roof. Taking it apart took place over the next couple days then it got put on back burner as I bought new tools and some literature on restoration.

Time passed it still sat on back burner, the job growing ever more difficult by the day. Having to find the missing parts to start the body work proved too much and too expensive. I cut my losses and labeled this car as a basket case. It would cost way to much to restore then it is worth and way too much time to do it. It was not a total loss I managed to part it out and now it sits again, a shadow of its former self. I hate to do it but there is one last thing I must do. If I don't find someone who wants it for any renaming parts or rear end it is going to the scrap yard, sad I know but not much else can be done with it.


What the car looked like in 1979. (Not the actual one I bought)

The car when I got it.


The craptastic interior.


The car as it sits today.




Rest In Peace.

14 comments:

  1. It's good you didn't spend too much money on it. It would have seemed like a good project.

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  2. really nice work hope to hear from you soon

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  3. wow thats sweet! i hope all goes well in the restoration!

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  4. So cool, I did that once. Got me some money haha.

    Great blog, following (:

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  5. Good god, man.
    It is hardly a car any more!!

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  6. That car could be really cool, too bad the restoration didn't work out.

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  7. aw man that be amazing if you followed through.

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  8. Buy a lemon once, shame on you. Never buy more than one though.

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  9. Ummmm, honestly, there doesn't seem to be anything that would have helped to restore that car.

    I once wanted to get 1989 Lamborghini for a project, and it was even intact and somewhat drivable, but I'm just not brave enough to shell out $20k on that for it to break down in 2 months.

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  10. I bet it makes a great home for
    bees and other tiny critters?

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  11. Cool blog, keep the posts coming! +followed

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