Once I got the car home and in the garage, I proceeded to start ripping it apart. Since I am doing a complete frame off restoration, I needed to strip it down completely.

I started by removing doors and the interior. The floors were as I figured, mostly rotted. No problem, new floor pans will take care of that.

One problem looks to be the area where the rear seat left side structure meets the floor pan. Apparently the rear window was leaking, and water would settle down in the corner of the structure and do its thing. It will take a bit of fabricating to repair this area, since the replacement floorpans don't cover this area.

Door are OK, I haven't decided if I'll go with skins, or replacement shells.

After removing the windshield and rear windows, I found some rust in the area of the lower rear window channel. I'm not sure if the replacement panel behind the rear window includes this channel. If not, I'll do some fabrication. The panel behind the window is in good shape, so I don't want to replace it, only the window channel.

Next, I removed the front clip. Not much here that can be reused. The front fenders have the typical rot on the lower rear corners. They're also dented, so I'm undecided whether to fix or replace them. I'll hold onto them just in case. Bumper is damaged, so that will be replaced, along with the grill and trim. Since I'm making an SS clone, the hood will be replaced also.

After getting the front clip off, I found a little rot on the frame where the right front bumper support bolts to the frame. It appears that a previous accident had driven the support into the frame, damaging it and the time and the weather had taken its toll. It should be an easy fix, just cut it out and weld in a new plate.

Now that the car was basically stripped down, it was time to take the body off the frame.

The body mounts came apart easy, so I hooked my engine crane up to the cutouts to the front mounts with a chain, and used a long 4X4 under the back of the car to lift it off and put in on jackstands.

With the body off the frame, I turned my attention to the chassis.

After pulling the motor and transmission, I ripped off the front suspension, the rearend, and the brake and fuel lines, leaving the bare frame.

Disassembly complete.