1970 Buick GS 455 Stage One Body Restoration

We knew the quarters were rotted beyond repair, so some large sections were trimmed out to give better access to the inner structure. The body was going to the media blaster, and it is faster and easier for the blaster to clean the structure with “windows” in the quarter areas.

The GS hood came back pretty solid, but with some dents in the outside skin. Not a big deal to fix.

We didn’t allow the media blaster to strip the hood skin, as we like to do these with a dual action (D/A) sander to prevent warpage.

The door shells showed some rot in the structure…

…and also in the skins.

The media blasted body shell showed us what we had suspected all along… this car needed quarters, a trunk floor, and repairs around the window frames.

Surprisingly, the front of the floor and dash were not as rusty as the back half of the car.

There were sporadic holes and rust, but nothing nearly as severe as the rear.

Once the crew got a good look at this car in bare steel, they wheeled it into the paint booth for a coating of black epoxy primer.

The primer is used to protect the steel from rusting, and you’ll notice that not all areas were primed, as much of this sheet-metal will be removed. It did not make sense to wastefully spray primer on steal that would be cut off and discarded.

This project is a little bit of a jigsaw puzzle, as the trunk floor will be replaced as well. The wheel tubs were welded together, and then attached to the inner structure of the car, but not attached to the trunk floor.

We obtained a replacement trunk floor from AMD, but this piece is designed for a 1970 Chevelle and not a Buick Skylark or GS. The difference is in the back part of the floor where it attaches to the floor structure of the Buick, as they are simply different shapes. However, our crew was confident we could install the floor without it looking like it had ever been repaired.

The trick was to remove part of the floor section where it flattened out in the back and adapted to meet the angled trunk floor section of the Buick.

Next came some test fitting of the trunk drop-off panels…

The reproduction lower trunk floor extensions required some re-working to fit.. but Adam was able to make them work. At this point, the quarter panels have been test-fitted on and off many times to make sure all the attachment points are correct.

We didn’t show it before, but the trunk lid, doors, and quarter extensions were all test fitted before the quarter panel welding was done. Here, the passenger quarter panel is being fitted and installed after many test fittings.