HOW TO RESTORE AN OLD CAR--Part 1: Getting Started

POPULAR MECHANICS restored a 1967 Chevy Camaro convertible in 1992 in honor of the Camaro's 25th anniversary. But virtually everything we'll show you about this project is applicable to restoring any old car from a Model T to a Lamborghini. And every restoration project provides the same deep-down satisfaction of bringing a dying car back to life. There's no thrill like it.

Before you start spinning wrenches, your first step should be a subscription to Hemmings Motor News; 800-227-4373 Ext. 550; www.hemmings.com. In Hemmings, you'll find not only cars for sale, but advertisements for parts, tools, suppliers, books and the specific marque club for your car. These are all things that you're going to need before you've finished your project.

You're also going to need a place not only big enough for the car but for you to work around it. With a ground-up restoration like our Camaro, we easily filled another bay just storing old parts coming off the car and new parts waiting to go on. Thousands of people have restored old cars under a tree in the backyard, but we'd say the minimum practical space is an empty2-car garage.

You'll also need a minimum amount of automotive knowledge. Happily, old cars are much simpler to work on than today's computer-controlled machines. As you work on your restoration you'll also learn a lot, which is half the reason to do a project like this in the first place.

Any old car can be divided into subassemblies. Don't think about restoring a whole car--that's far too intimidating. Instead, set yourself an attainable goal: "Today, I'll sand, prime and paint the wheels." Once the wheel subassembly is restored, set another goal for tomorrow. If you restore enough subassemblies, pretty soon you've completed a whole car.

How long will it take? Our Camaro was a pretty complicated project, but we're also professional automobile restorers. We put nearly 1500 man-hours in this car before it was finished. Figure you'll spend at least 1000 hours on almost any ground-up old-car restoration--and probably a lot more. That's why the car you select to restore is so important, because you'll be spending a lot of quality time together.

We found our Camaro convertible through the local want ads. It turned out to be a very rare Camaro, serial No. 4524, built within the first few weeks of production in August 1966. For the purposes of this project, we wanted a car with considerable rust-out, so we could show you what's possible to accomplish. Unless you truly enjoy the challenge of difficult bodywork, however, we'd recommend you look for a car with a chassis and/or unibody as rust-free as possible. Anyone can bolt on a new front fender, but replacing the entire rear unibody is a little more complicated.

We knew going in that our restoration could never be pure because our car carried a later 307 V8 instead of the proper 327. We had already decided that we wanted to try Chevrolet's new (then) HO 350 "Bowtie" replacement engine fitted with a modern 4-speed overdrive TH700 transmission. The increased performance mandated optional front disc brakes instead of the drum brakes that came on our car.

Since it could never be totally authentic, we decided to upgrade our Camaro with both the optional SS and RS packages, and change the car to red with a white interior instead of white with red.

Is this pukka? Does it matter? In the end, our car became a stock 1967 Camaro in appearance inside and out, but with 1992 levels of performance. It's not a hot rod, but rather the perfect marriage between authentic looks and improved performance. Would we make these changes in a car with the original matching-number engine? Never. But our car would not have survived at all without us, so we said, "Hey, let's build a really neat Camaro we'd be proud to drive."

Years ago, I started to replace a rotten board in the porch of my Victorian house. Behind that board was another rotten board. And another rotten board. By the time I got done, I'd replaced the entire porch. This Camaro was a lot like that old porch. I drove it home 200 miles with no trouble at all. But once we started to take it apart, each piece was rustier than the piece we'd just taken off. By the time we were done, we had stripped our car until all that was left were the firewall, the rocker panels and the lightweight structure that supports the trunklid.

This was pretty scary stuff. My friend Murph Mayberry came by. He's the legendary auto racing mechanic who built, among many other things, Mark Donohue's Trans-Am Camaros. "I've never seen a car so far apart," said Murph, and left shaking his head. But we had confidence. Why? Because we were incredibly systematic and we always thought in terms of attainable subassemblies, not of the vastness of the whole project.

Step One: We put down a huge plastic tarp that covered the whole shop floor. This kept us from losing small parts, kept the freshly-painted floor much cleaner and made it easier to sweep up each night, too.

Step Two: We recorded everything. As each part was unbolted, the part itself was labeled and then placed in our empty storage bay in the approximate position it occupied on the car. Each set of bolts was put into a clear plastic sealable bag with an identifying label, then all the bags were safely stored in a bin in the order in which they'd come off.

Step Three: It takes surprisingly little time and surprisingly few tools to disassemble a car. It took us approximately 75 man-hours to carefully reduce a working Camaro to a pile of parts, using primarily hand tools. We also used a lot of penetrating oil.

Step Four: We unbolted the wheels, doors, bumpers, hood, trunklid, taillights, grille and valence, front fenders, radiator, inner fenders and other small parts. The engine, transmission, driveshaft and rear axle came out with surprisingly little work, as most are held in with only a few large bolts. The most difficult items to remove were the rear springs and the front subframe.

The rear spring perches were bolted into blind nuts that had long since rusted solid, so we ended up having to cut away part of the floor to get them out. The four huge bolts that hold the front subframe to the unibody were equally stubborn. After repeated soaking in penetrating oil, it took two men with a 4-ft. extension handle on the wrench to pop them loose. Even our biggest impact wrench wouldn't budge them at all.

Step Five: Then we tackled the interior, carefully removing, labeling and saving the top frame, seats, console, carpets and all trimpieces including each and every screw. Replacement interior trim is notoriously difficult to find, even for a popular car like the Camaro.

Compared to working under the car with a 3/4-in. ratchet and a long extension, interior pieces require extreme delicacy and care.

Step Six: Once every piece that could be unbolted had been, we started carefully slicing away at the unibody. The rear fenders were the first to go, chopped off with an air hammer, metal shears and a rotary cut-off tool. This is dirty, potentially dangerous work. You must wear goggles, hearing protectors and heavy gloves. Expect to come out absolutely filthy at the end of the day.

We thought of the unibody as an onion--we tried to peel away each layer without damaging the next one down. Before cutting away, we'd use our sandblaster and spot blaster to look for solid metal. As it turned out, there was virtually nothing solid left in Camaro No. 4524. We peeled away until we reached the core. If we'd gone one step further, there would have been no more car to restore.

As it was, we left the barest skeleton from which we could position our replacement parts as we welded them on and brought our Camaro back from the grave. And that's where we'll leave Part 1. We did the easy stuff, taking our Camaro as far apart as it would go. Now all we had to do was put it back together.

Three tools are indispensable for a restoration shop: a big air compressor, a lift and a pushbroom. A 5-hp compressor with an 80-gal. tank is really the minimum for running a sandblaster, bead blast cabinet or air tools. Once you achieve that air superiority, you'll wonder how you ever sputtered along without it.

The same goes for a lift. A chassis lift like ours costs surprisingly little, and will save not only hours of time but, quite literally, your back. We moved our Camaro up and down a dozen times a day, adjusting the part we were working on to a comfortable height. I promise you, within a week you'll never want to see another jackstand.

The pushbroom is self-explanatory. Our shop got swept and vacuumed at least once a day, and more frequently if there was dirty work going on. Other recommendations for your shop: bright and easily cleaned gloss white enamel walls, epoxy-painted floor and lots of light. We used not only overhead fluorescents, but portable photofloods on tripods to get light where we needed it. Of course, you must have 220-volt, 50-amp service for the air compressor, lift and welder.

Don Breslauer, the master welder who did much of the bodywork on our Camaro, used to work for Jaguar racer Bob Tullius. Tullius, like most mechanics, was an absolute nut about cleanliness. In Tullius's shop, said Don, they even had a word for making things cleaner than clean, neater than neat, more perfect than perfect. Everything had to be "punkin." And to make something punkin was to "punkinize." That became the motto of our shop, too. Punkinize.--R.T.