I have a month off from work every June and I use that time to do projects. Last year I added 450 square feet of living space to the house by converting some of the attic into a room. I had planned on being done in 30 days, it took six months for most of the work and I just had the permit signed off last week! This year I am doing rust repair to my 65 BuCamino.
I bought the BuCamino for the 65 Skylark GS frame and four speed drive train the El Camino body is sitting on. The car previously had the 75% of the floors replaced and a complete paint job. Looks good at twenty feet. I have decided to complete the work started by the PO by installing upholstery and then using the car as a daily driver while I build a true Bucamino body. I knew that the rear window leaked but I wasn't sure how bad, so I washed the car so I could see how much it leaked at where. I didn't want new carpet to get wet the first time I washed the a car. When I washed the car I noticed that there was also some water at the back side of the kick panels. So off came the front end and out came the windshield (which I broke and it was new
) Surprise, the windshield channel isn't the culprit, it was the poor quality of the repair to the kick panel area where it meets the floors and leaks in the A pillar area where they meet the cowl/firewall.
So I have removed the driver's side kick panel and cut out a patch panel from a 65 Skylark cowl I have laying around. This will be an improvement over what was done by the PO, but not a great solution. I think the only correct way to do this repair is to take the body off the frame and remove the back side of the rocker panel and use a complete kick panel from a donor car, not something I want to do to this body. This repair will be much better than the way the car was and will redirect water flowing in the area away from the joint with the floor.
The pictures that I have attached show some of the repair and some of the rust damage that I will be fixing in the next three days before I go back to work next week. So, as usual I will finish this project in a couple of months, I had planned to just do the upholstery in June and be done with it..... rust happens.
