After about three weeks, I reached out to MMC to see how the project was moving along. As you can see from some of the excerpts below that this was probably the beginning of many such updates with news that most owners do not want to hear.
“We really went over the car as you see it in the pictures yesterday and came up with our list of needs and parts for rust repair. Quite surprising was how much damage is present on the area in front of the windshield, also known as the cowl area. Not only is the top layer totally rusted away, but the two layers of metal under the surface area shown in the pictures, is also equally rotted away. Evidently, this is a very common area on GM products and not an easy fix or inexpensive to repair.”
As you already know, the 1968 442 convertible is expensive to restore because many of the parts are a one-year only part. The cowl area is a tough and expensive fix, but it can be fixed.
That really sucks! Thinking what would be a fairly straight forward restoration is turning out to be anything but that. Here are some more updates that leaves an owner thinking, What the hell did I just get myself into!
“The car needs both front fenders. Yours are rotted in the bottoms behind the front wheels where the braces are attached. All the fenders we have found thus far suffer from the same rust issues. That area too is made up of three layers of metal to include the inner wheel housing. At some point in the life of your car, the left fender received a little repair and an attempt to fabricate that area for brackets. It was a very poor attempt so both fenders are really shot.
“The car needs both rear quarters repaired. Both wheel openings are rusted away. Again, it is not just the outside that you see, but also the inner sheet metal. They don’t make a replacement parts for the convertible, so we are looking at buying coupe patch panels and cutting out the area we need.
“The trunk lid (or deck lid) is rusted away on the rear edge and we are looking at buying a good used one to replace yours. We sand blasted it to see if it could be saved, but don’t think we want to use it on your car. Here again, all the ones we have found suffer from the same areas of rust and damage. This is a one-year only deck lid too.”
Here is the entire email:
