Body & Frame Question

[SageCuda]

I have a 71 Cuda that I'm slowly working on.  The body seems pretty solid, there's been some work done to it already by the guy I got it from.  What I'd like to do is strip it down to the frame and build up slowly, do the job right.  From what I can tell though, theres a subframe that holds the front end up to the firewall, but I don't see a way of taking the rest of the body off the rear of the frame.  Having never done this before, I figured you folks would be the best place to find out what the deal is.  Thanks in advance.

Sage

[Rev-It-Up]

Well, there's a reason you haven't figured it out yet.  You can't.  E-bodies are unibodies. The frame and body are one.  

By the way, welcome to the board!  Post some pics of your project if you can.  We'd love to see it.

[Chryco Psycho]

These cars are properly restored by putting them on a rotisserie & properly blasting & painting the underside of the car  

[SageCuda]

That was my next question.  I guess I'm going to have to find a shop that will do that, or figure out a way to rotate the car onto its side in my garage.  And barring the invention of an anti-gravity device, I don't see that happening at the moment.

I've heard of a place nearby that dips the car into a tank full of chemicals to remove rust, then seal it.  Is that method preferred to blasting and sealing?

[MEK-Dangerfield]

  If you're talking about dipping the car into acid to remove everything, then I'd stop right there. I can't speak from experience, but I've heard enough bad things about acid dipping. It seems you never quite get all the acid out. So a couple of years later, your nice new paint job starts to bubble. Yikes.

  Mike

[70Cuda]

Look at the new Car Craft that just came out - shows what a guy can do in his garage with an AAR no less.  All of his suspension is off and the car is on rollers.  He did however get everything blasted too.

Rotisseries really aren't that expensive at $1000 - $1500 (compared to what you would spend having someone else do alot of the work or a few rare parts).  Speaking from experience, do everything at once.  My car is on a rotisserie right now but I did the blasting in stages.  You are much better off just stripping it all down (including the glass) and then getting it blasted.  I had mine blasted with the suspension on it so I could trailer it myself and then at the body shop they took the suspension off which is being rebuild and powder coating right now.

You can save a lot of money by crawling underneath and scraping any undercoating off in advance of blasting too.  From what I hear, the blaster just melts the undercoating and they spend a lot of time scraping themselves.

[b5blueaar]

I stripped my aar down to just the body shell, placed it on blocks and jackstands so I can get under it and then sand blasted every inch of it down to bare metal with a sand blaster I got from Harbor Freight tool for under $100. Also used about 1200 pounds of sand from Lowes Home Improvement center. I turned out great. Very nice to work with clean metal.
Yes, scrape off the rust proof first. Takes too long with a sand blaster (waste of lot of sand).
Nasty work yes, but for 3 weeks every night and about $200 total its done. I made a plastic enclosure around it to contain the sand, sifted it and used it twice.
Careful, you can damage sheetmetal if you hit it too hard with sand. I sanded the flat sheetmetal (roof and doors) with in line sander to prevent possible damage.
Once rear frame rails are replaced, I will put it on a rotisserie for final body work and paint.
Good luck, this is the fun part
Any body know how to get all the sand out of the crevices? Every time I vibrate the car with my body saw, sand falls out of of every crevice. Hopefully when I rotate it I will get it all out.

[bilug]

120mph down the freeway should take most of the leftover sand out

Mike