This is what I'm aiming for with my Monte

The Story

Starting off I bought my car a 1975 Monte Carlo (for those of you who don't know) from a guy in Forest City, IA. He did a real good job of taking care of it, if you consider letting it rust out in his drive way with a crappie paint job on it, taking care of it. It looked good when I got it but that turned different about 4 days after it had been setting in my lane. After I had played with it for about a month I decided to get serious, I tore into it every night for about 2 hours. This to most normal people is about a 2-3 year restoration. But since I have nothing else to do with my spare time and I live in the country I shaved that number down to about 5 months. Anyway here is what I have accomplished so far.

One part is wrong is the paint not just normal boring red; it will be 1987 Monte Carlo Medium Metallic Red. Actually it looks like a purple, dark black/brown, and a dark cherry red when the light hits it in different ways.

The Rust

This isn't what the car looked like when I first bought it. It had about 120 lbs more chrome on it and the silver spots weren't there. I magically painted them on there with a can of spray paint, just so the bare metal wouldn't rust out any more than it already had.

The first thing that I did to the car when I bought it was strip all of the 450 pounds of chrome off with the exception of for the door handles and the window chrome around the front and back windows. Then I proceeded to grind, sand, cut, and beat ever little bit of rust off of the car. One thing that I really wanted to do above all else was to strip off the chrome on the doors FOREVER! There were little knobs holding them on and we gowned them off, and then I beat on the freaking things until they needed bondo and smoothed them off. Next I painted over them with some dollar general spray paint to keep it from rusting again and filled in the spots that where bad enough but yet still good enough to fill in with bondo..

The very next thing I did was taking the trunk off of the car. In doing so it shined the light in there revealing more RUST. Using the Internet and some people around here. I found out that I had 4 options, Grind it away, Sand it, Cut it out and replace it, or kill it. Being the one that wants to get it done right and do the easiest thing I can to finish it. I chose to kill it. I bought some Navel Jelly at a NAPA store and proceeded to kill the rust. After you leave it there for a while it eats the rust away and kills it. Since it is acid you can get burnned (don't ask). It turns the rust into some kind of element that I can't say yet type out. Since that is an acid you have to kill it with a baking soda paste. That is the messy part! After I killed it I took a rest on it for a week and tried to figure out whom I could sell a car to!

Subsequently I needed to paint the already bare metal. Mr. Simply Broke didn't have the money to pay someone to paint it so I bought some more spray paint and 3 min. later there you go. After I had painted the trunk it looked so good that I decided to paint the frame to. I had enough paint to do it and it would look good, and prevent it from rusting more than it had.

I started in the engine compartment just to see what it would look like. It looked better than the rustic red it had been before. If you can't tell what i painted, your not the only one. No Im kidding its the big black chunk of metal right next to the rusty engine.

I then painted the 126 lb bumper guard under the front bumper and then finished it off. Since then I have painted the whole frame under the car, and parts of the engine black. It is going to be a show car, so I will eventually paint the engine ORANGE, using expensive Chevrolet high heat resistant spray paint. That's a little easier than taking the whole engine out and putting it back it.

After a while of working on NOTHING I started to take the whole back end of the car apart. Doesn't it look great? Note the rust in-between the mufflers now, cause your aren't going to see that in the next picture.

I took it on over to Eagle Auto Body where they primed the trunk and tail light covers. They made me paint the hood. That's why I took a picture of it from the back. Really it doesn't look that bad but it needs a little finishing bondo work. I finally put the backend of the car together, about a month after I had taken it apart.No that isn't an ornament on the bummer brace, that's just a light. All of the other stuff hanging down is my bulbs, which i burnt out everyone of them when i put it back together.

Again after a little rest from it I took the drivers side door off. While my grandpa and I where taking that off he grabbed a hold of the mirror, just after I told him not to touch it because it probably would bust off. Guess what happened next? I now have a new sports mirror not the square chrome mirror like in the first picture. Most old cars like that where built with one mirror on the drivers side I plan to get a passengers side and drill the holes in it and put one on that side to. That was off for a month before I stripped it of its paint and that's the freshly striped product with a little bit of my own bondo work. All the wite streaks are primer that i didn't get off when i was stripping it.

Here is a pic of what a 1975 Monte Carlo looks like with out a door and hood, including some patched (bondoed) rust spots. If you look close enough you can see the hoods hinge right behind the latter.

One day just before I was going back to school to help take down a concert I noticed something, there was BONDO ALL OVER THE CAR. So I quickly grabbed a sander and started sanding the crap out of it. It kind of hit me in the face. I knew I put it there it was just a delayed reaction of when I should sand it off. I though what the heck and sanded for a half an hour and when to work. Of course I was covered in dust and my school close needed to be washed for the 3rd time that day but I did accomplish something.

The car is finished check out my link for updated pics of it. All thats left to do on it is fix a hole in the seat and carpet the trunk area. Then buy a CD player and hook up my subs and amp.

First pictures with my NEW digital camera

I put bondo on the newly welded in chunk of metal (didn't get a photo of that). Had to grind all of the welds off and fill it in. That guy that had this car really didn't know what he was doing. He bondoed over a dent in the back fender that you could get to if you opened the trunk. I hit it a few times with my hammer and there it was freshly out, so I sanded the bondo that he put on there off. What an Idiot.

This is also something that I got accomplished last night. I feather edged  some of the door and all of the front right fender. The first arrow is showing what it should look like and the second one is before I start. That's what it normally looks like anyway.

This is the first actual picture of my engine 2 bbl 350. All stock but soon to change. I repainted the Air filter cover, frame holding the radiator, brake fluid box, and Master cylinder. Next to paint in the engine compartment will be the ENGINE!!!, hopefully I will get that done before I paint the car. Picture kind of sucks, I took it in our garage with just the lights on. It was almost 8 P.M.

This pic is of my.... You guessed it! Door! The only reason I took it was because I finished wet sanding it and feather edged a lot of bondoed spots. Those little bondo spots are where the knobs used to be that held up the chrome on the door. I didn't like that stuff, although I will put the original chrome on the bottom of the car and the wheel well moldings.

For those of you who lust to sit in my car, here is what you would see on the door. An interior door panel. Pretty technical name huh?? It looks good, bearing in mind that the door was off the car for 2 months and the panels where in my back seat which one of our cats used as his personal pillow/ litter box. The cat is stuck to my wall in my garage! I really should scrape it off remains and get rid of the gun. Just kidding, :-) the cat is fine, its just sore and so is my foot for some reason!

Things to do yet

Now for the best part, this picture is of my NEW windshield wiper blades!!! During power and auto class, we removed some windshield wiper blades from a car that was sitting there for us to take apart. Well they happened to fit, so there they are. This is the first picture of the hood actually on my car. With the help of a Mr. Mattox that shouldn't have been there....what am I talking about he wasn't there; we got the hood adjusted right.

Doesn't that just say, fix me all over it? This car is really starting to come together. I will leave the grill out and bumper fillers out and in my back seat until I get the car painted. Then I will take off the bumper again and put everything back in right. You can really see my painting job on the hood now! See it doesn't look that bad does it.

This is one of the few pics of the right side of the car. I always take the left because that's the easiest to access in our garage. But finally here it is, a full picture of the left side of the car. Its not like I was trying to hide some cocaine or something there. OR WAS I???? Since the paint is really dull now and you can't tell what color it was, it actually improved the look of the car, I like that color almost. You can't tell if it is brown or purple. Its just weird.

This is it; I'm very close to a new paint job! I have all of the bare metal spots primed, and all they need now is a nice sanding/filling in with etching mud. Then the project will be 90% done. I have 5 coats of primer on her, took us an hour to finish! This is the side that looks good. I do have to adjust the door farther ahead to match the other side. I really need to polish those classic rims!

Just another pic of the right side of the car, looks different with half of the car primed huh. Don't even look like the same car in the pics above does it?

Look at the nice job I did on shaving the chrome off of those doors! Can't even tell that there was anything there can you? The only reason I did that was because I seen Al's black '75 Monte on the Internet with it done like that, looked awesome! My first plans were to paint it demon black like Al's, and limo black 2% tint on the back 3 windows with smoked doors/windshield. Now medium metallic red, with limo black 2% tint on the back 3 windows is what I'm going for. Also I will have a 51-inch long 3-½ inch wide window banner on the front that says Monte Carlo. That's just for you know, the ricers to get a burned image in their heads that '75 Montes can compeat with them! I think most of them would be afraid of my car anyway, since I could easily push them in the ditch with this 2 ton monster!

This is the first pic I have taken of the dash. I guess I could have gotten in the car to take it but what fun would that be. Now you can see the big crack in the top part of the dash. Most old cars are like that. I'm fixing that by installing my dash mat. Something similar to the dashmat is going in the trunk, but that will be custom fit by me. Covering the wheel wells and the inside of the fenders. You can also see my mini-tach on the steering column there. New as of 12/17/01!!!

Speaking of trunk, here is what's going in there during the summer months. I figure if you got the sound system on the outside (duel glass packs!) You got to have a pounding sound system on the inside! 2 MTX 450 Watt each 12 inch subs, and a 10 inch competition edition XPL Kicker, all running on a 425 watt  MTX amp (pictured below), might have my 450 watt Jenson amp hidden by the wheel well running the XPL. Then I have a set of Sony 6X9s for the rear deck those will mostly be my tweeters. Coming after paint is a Sony Explode CD player 650X model, has CD Text, and other cool features! This will beat the hell out of the Radio Shack Rampage tape deck and 6x9s that were in there when I started on her. Everything here is dirty because its in my Buick which has some dust problems on my gravel road! That's why it looks like crap, but with a little polish everything will look new.

Painting the Engine

This is was my project for today 12/18/01 paint one of the valve covers. Here it is un touched no love put in it at all. Looks like crap! Lets fix it :-) Sorry about the brightness, had my 700 watt halogen bulb on.

Well the first step in painting is to get it clean, after about an hour of cleaning and leaning over the car I got sick of it. I proceeded to take the valve cover off. When I got it off I noticed that there where quite a few bare spots on the thing with a lot of rust on them. I quickly started to sand off the rust. After I had done that I noticed that if I would just grind all of the paint off it would look nicer, so that's what I did. Then I went in the basement and started painting. Same thing with the brightness from the last picture.

This is a pic of it on the floor after it was off. It looks bad doesn't it? The horrible, terrible, dreadful, appalling thing will look better in the next pic, but it took a long time of sanding and cleaning to get it to that point. Most of the black spots are either rust or dirt, the paint was just flakeing off since some of the spots had chips in it.

Now this is a valve cover. That's what I'm talking about! Now that its done I'm going to paint the rest of the engine soon, and then it will look like a billion bucks under the hood! That's the hard part detailing that thing will take me a freaking week! Also some performance parts will be added like, comp heads & new glasspakcs. hehe

Since there are almost 50 pictures on this site and it takes forever to load, I have made another site. Check it out

Just to let you all know, these sites about my cars will always be under construction!

Click on the Tach to get to the other resto site!

Really all I can say is DEATH TO FORDS!!!!

Wet Sanding The CAR!!!!!

Restoration Site on my 1965 Skylark.

MORE LINKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS SITE!!!!!!!

Check out this guys ORIGINAL 1972 Delta 88....Nice ride!!!!!! Got it for a great price to!!!!!

I'M DONE WITH THE CAR CHECK OUT THE PICS ON THE LINK ABOVE!!!!!.