Most of my friends give me crap about my car cuz i'm a girl. I think all the guys are just jealous! :)
Keepin it Classic with the Black and White Plates...
...and the Radial T/A's
Hey i'm Jamie and this is my El Camino. So i bought this car in June of '06. I had been looking for El Caminos for sale in my area for about a year and finally stumbled across this 1972 El Camino SS with a 350 small block. The body and paint were in great condition with a few scratches and very minimal rust in the bed. The interior however... But hey the car was running! I'd been saving forever and so i went for it! I love this car so much, it is a blast to drive in the summertime! Sometimes it gets a little roasty inside with so much glass, black interioir, and no a/c! But night crusing is the best! I feel guilty on the days i drive it during the winter haha although that doesn't happen too often in utah, the rear-wheel drive isn't too great in fresh snow :P
No Rust in the Bed!
I didn't have a whole lot of cash left over, so I spent the first few weeks doing minor fixes. Rear view mirror, interior lights, license plate light, touch up paint, tailight lenses, stuff like that. The guy that had the car before me did a half-ass job of all the electrical wiring in the car, so there were a lot of re-wiring to do. Under the hood there were only a few quick things to do. I dropped the oil pan, adjusted the timing, just easy things becuase the engine was already rumbling great when I got it. My only complaint is that i put a quart of transmission fluid in every week or so, and a quart of oil in every 2 weeks. So everywhere i park i leave a nice purple/black spot! Maybe someday i'll get around to fixing that :) As i got more money i re-did the water temp./oil pressure guages, got some chrome and upgraded the distributer cap, spark plug wires, and spark plugs. A few months ago i had to replace the alternator, and at the same time i added a chrome bracket and water neck. The only real work i've had to do uner the hood was replacing the cam shaft. Yuck, that was a pain.
The first real project i took on was the back window. All of the glass in the car is original and over time the window sealer had gotten all goopy, so the back window pane had starting slipping down. This left gaps on three sides and so water would collect on the frame below the window. I removed the window, scraped all the old goopy black window sealer off and, as i had suspected, both bottom corners were rusted completely through. I removed as much rust as possible, then filled the holes using fiberglass mesh and epoxy. I finished by coating the whole frame with self-etching primer. I put the window back in and caulked from the inside, then did the outside bottom ledge to make sure there'd be no resting water on the bottom frame. From inside the car I removed the rust caused by water trickling down and coated it in self-etching primer too. I sprayed black rubber coating up under the corners that had rusted through, then painted the back wall glossy black. I bought a new strip of vinyl to go beneath the window (the old one was warped and ruined by the rust and water) and clipped the chrome trim back in and ta-da it was finished! Looked exactly the same outside, but the inside was much better. The whole thing took about 5? days.
Interior Before Back Window After
The second project i took on turned out to be a larger problem then i expected... Judging by the uh delicious smell coming from the carpet, i knew there was some more work to be found on the floor panels so i enlisted the help of my dad. The side trims, bench seat and seat belts were easy to get out (haha prolly too easy to be safe), but the side and rear kick panels were a pain! We ended up leaving one of the back panels in during the whole project. Ripping out the old nasty carpet was easy, seeing how it wasnt even glued down. Both floor pans, but especially the driver's side had rusted through along the welded seam (who's brilliant idea was that anyways!?) leaving about a 1" wide by 1 ft long hole in the bottom. Surrounding the gash there were hundreds of other pin-head-sized holes, makin the floor panel look more like a cheese grater! There wasn't any type of insulation or dampener underneath so water was just splashin through to the carpet.
Using a power driver and multiple wire bristle heads we got rid of as much of the rust as possible, which unfortunetely made every hole about a 1/4" wider of every side. Then we covered the entire floor of the car with self-etching primer. From under the car we used aluminum tape to seal off the holes from the bottom, then poured a layer of epoxy over almost the entire floor plan, using fiberglass mesh to help repair the biggest holes and seams. From the bottom side we sprayed a bunch of undercoating to help seal out water.
During all this i had removed all the door panels to keep them from getting dirty, so while they were off we sprayed some 'litium grease' on all the hinges and locks, which helped smooth things up a lot. We replaced a crank shaft for the wing window and replaced the armrest pads. I also bought some silver paint and touched up the trim on the panels. We put the doors back together, laid down some dampening pads in the floor, and spent the rest of the day putting in the carpet. Luckily everthing went smooth there, it fit well and looked nice. Ha ha then i bought some huge ass SS floor mats. Put the bench seat, seat belts, and kick paneles back in then finishied it all off with new door sill plates.
