Jjmoonen

I bought the car with no engine since I have a strong 350 with very few miles on it. The restof the drivetrain came with the car and will need a rebuild. My original intent was to toss in the engine and drive it while fixing stuff here and there as I go. The car clearly had other plans. There were too many issues for it to be safe on the road so it turned into a full on frame off project. Which is fine, I Just have to wait alot longer to drive it now. I already bought a pile of sheetmetal parts for it (still need more).Im not buried in it by any means but the more I think about it the more I look forward to the challenge. Its just metal after all, what could possibly go wrong?

Sam, Im not against that idea. My wife may have a different opinion though. The saving grace with this one is that I don't have to worry about wrecking anything, its kind of a blank canvas since so much needs replacement anyway. The biggest problem would be finding a decent car that doesn't need body work and is "affordable". Those two things don't Coexist as far as I can tell.

This may or may not be the right section for this.... So last weekend I finally got the rusted carcass of a body off the frame. The frame is no better unfortunately. Several of the holes for the body mounts are severely enlarged due to rust decay. There is an alarming amount of the frames surface flaking off in chunks due to being converted to rust (mother nature, dirt roads and neglect). To top it off, the car was hit in the drivers rear corner sometime during its life (I suspected) and there is a buckled section in the frame right behind where it drops down behind the rear tire. So I feel I have 3 directions to possibly go. 1. Call up Art Morrison and get myself an erection inducing custom chassis with their sweet IRS setup. This would very likely end up with me immediately being divorced and homeless though, so its not really on the table. 2. Somehow find a used chassis in good condition and start there. 3. Fix the rode hard, toothless, meth head hooker of a frame I currently have while integrating some of the design elements and ideas I saw on some of the custom chassis from Art Morrison and Schwartz. This is also a good time to narrow the rear frame rails to get a little more meat under the back end. Although its a lot of work, Im liking this idea more and more. Thoughts?

Agree, this certainly could have been made to look more finished without too much trouble.

I know this an old post, but I'm new and "catching up". . While that chassis is cool and the price is great, I wouldn't personally build a chassis from ews (electric welded seam) tubing. This is due to the fact that it can potentially split at the welded seam, especially if the seam is not placed on the inside of bends (then it's pretty much guaranteed to split). I would only use DOM (drawn over mandrel - this has no seam) for a chassis. If I was building something non structural that I wasn't relying on to save my life, then ews is fine and less expensive to boot. Just something to keep in mind for anyone down the road that may find this.

These are some promising numbers. I'm looking at a goal of 3200 lbs or less when I'm done. There is so much rust repair to do I'm just going with fiberglass replacements where I can (even doors). Trunk lid and rear bumper are probably the only ones that will remain steel. After seeing some of these other Montes weighs it should be doable.