Vultures go away, this thread isn't for you.

Well, I finally got some motivation to start working on these cars again. My plan was to rebuild 363 after the engine bay fire. Well, I started taking the front driver's side fender off... got down to the dog-leg area, removing the bolts that hold the fender on down there. All the metal in that area is rusted to shit and is crumbling/breaking up as I try to remove the bolts. I fear the rust on this car is just more than what I have the means to handle. I have two shells sitting here, one that isn't rusty, but that one was rear ended pretty bad. I seriously doubt I could cut out the really bad rust sections and replace them with sections from the other car. I have a feeling both shells are going to be a loss at this point.

What would you do?

before you scrap, pull the fenders & get an air hammer with a scaler tip. get all the crap out of the way & see how bad it realy is. the fender & effed up undercoating may be making it look worse than it realy is.

i might be interested if u scrap the shells

Id fix it by cutting out & welding in new, that outer rail is a big part of the structure of the unibody. If nothing else I think you'll get a lot more chasis flex in that area, not to mention being weaker in a side hit. That said, I still think it will look a lot less hopless after you get it cleaned up enough to see what you have.

how bad is the bent one? if you can replace trhe quarters, floor and rear crossmember with the rusty one it might be a sounder shell? I've got the the body repair manual. i can post the bits you need?

tells all the spotweld locations and procedures to pull whole lumps out and replace to factory spec. post a pic of the bent one!

Rich

I guess that bent one isn't THAT horrible, but again, more than something I could handle. I didn't think the rust on the white car would be THAT bad, and figured a car with a bad rear end and a car with a bad front end could turn into a good car.

These cars don't take a rear end collision well at all. There's no hydraulic shocks on the rear bumper to absorb any impacts, and those loads are fed right into the unibody rails where they are the strongest, so the unibody buckles where it's weaker.

This weaker area is quite aways from the point of impact

Look for buckling in the real wheel arch, the rear door frames, and stress lines in the roof. (I'm guessing you will find some )

I saw a ~ten~ mile an hour impact total a 91 vr4

here:

I think that if you were to go the route of putting a quarter on the black one i would use a regular galant gsx or somthing rather than the other one you have cause they are both fixable.

Yeah dude, after 27 burned down....I thought for a second about turning it into a full out drag car...but, yeah I agree sometimes you just have to walk away from it.

I have seen worse, and you really won't know the extent of the damage until you really strip it down. both of them can be saved if you have a lot of patience and some good know how. Sad thing is that there have been cleaner ones then that that have been scrapped. look at my #420 that 14u2nv had, it has a little bit of rust, which is tottally fixable. He was gonna toss it, and I rescued it from intiment death.

So tear it down and ask some one you know that might have some experience with rust repair, and make sure what ever you do, if you fix it, spray the repaired areas with POR-15!