Work in progress

I stopped by Murphy Rod & Custom today to see what progress has been made on the El Camino. The short answer is some. When I arrived Josh, Kelly’s son, was welding away on a door and the firewall.

The door was having some minor rust issues repaired, and on the firewall he was sealing up holes left from the removal of the heater core. The reason that he was working on both at the same time is that you have to weld slowly to prevent the warping of the sheet metal. So while one place was cooling, he was welding on another place, and in between bouts of welding, he was grinding the welds to make them smooth.

The holes are in the fire wall because the firewall is being smoothed. Smoothing the firewall is taking off some or all of the things that the manufacture placed there to obtain a clean look. Some people take it to an extreme and remove everything, but in my case I am just having the heater core removed. The holes that remain are where the ducting attached to the heater core and if they are not sealed up, well, the car would be a might drafty. Because the car is having an aftermarket air conditioner put in the heater core is no longer necessary. The air conditioner unit, which is mounted under the dash, not only will cool the interior of the car but it will also heat it. So I guess the unit would be more accurately called an aftermarket climate control system.

Also this week, the drip rails were shaved. Drip rails haven’t been found on cars in years, but at one time nearly every car had them. The drip rail was a bit of curved metal attached to the roof that ran along the top of the door. They were there to prevent rain from running off the roof and onto the door by channeling the rain around the door opening.

On my car I had them removed, or shaved, to clean the roof-line of the car up a bit. You can see the roof after the rails were removed in the last few pictures. For such a small change, the impact on the look is enormous. I think that is going to be money well spent.

The last picture shows another disappointing find. After much consideration it was decided that the front of the bed need to be replaced. The panel that was there looked ok, but the supports behind the bed were so deteriorated that it was cheaper to replace the whole thing than to try to fix the support.  It is amazing the amount of damage a little leak can do.

Nearly every GM made during the 1960′s and early ’70′s leaked around the rear window. It is a given that if you buy an unrestored car from this area you are going to have rust to repair around the back glass. This El Camino is no exception, and I knew about the rust when I bought it.

Unfortunately that leak allowed water to get into other places and cause rust that is now going to have to be repaired. Fortunately there are products available that weren’t available in 1969 that will prevent this from happening again. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating when you have to cut out and repair all this rust though. You can tell where old cars rust without ever setting eyes on them. Just look through a catalog of parts … if you find replacement panels, that is a good indication that those panels are prone to rust. For an El Camino, almost every piece of the car is available … if that tells you anything.

Despite it all, this is still a better than average example of a 1960′s GM product. I just thought I was getting a much better than average example when I bought it.

Photographs taken January 16 & 20, 2012