Re-skin or Aftermarket?

[ScotI]

I constantly surf various places looking for the 'right' 67/68 fbody. I've read through several threads where a clean car was thought to have been purchased only to find issues that were hidden.

Of course, my 1st choice is a relatively untouched plain-jane patina'd survivor (optimum pro-tour canvas IMHO). That being said, do guys pay these well known site supporting guys more to re-skin a car vs buying an aftermarket body? I don't know what the going rate is to basically re-skin an entire car (properly) vs alternatives.

[coolwelder62]

I bought everything needed to build a completely new 69 Camaro from scratch from Dynacorn & OER. From the frt bumper to the rear bumper(less glass) for just a little more than the price of a dynacorn shell only. Also Found a ks tilte and vin#. And when I had a Camaro in the shop for some mini tubs I built a really nice body assembly jig off of it. If you have have some fab skills you could put the body togather your self.I will post photos when I start assembly soon.

[mach1stang]

I'm basically building a dynacorn 69 fastback body to replace what's left of my hack jobbed pro street car. Of course it would've been easier to just buy a dynacorn body but I don't need the floors or firewall cuz it'll all be cut out anyways in my case so I'm just getting what I need.


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[hersheys69z]

I don't know about the other shops out there that do a lot of f body cars what their labor rates are.
I work at a antique car restoration shop and we are $95 a hour for paint and body work.
It amazes me how quickly it adds up.
Seems to me like someone would be money ahead buying a brand new Camaro body.
I know on the old Ford bodies people can buy a new Brookville body for less than paying us to do rust repair and straighten panels.
We recently had a customer that bought a 1931 ford slant windshield 4 door sedan model a off eBay sight unseen.
Looked rough before we had it media blasted. When it came back it was super rough. Car got wrecked in the driver side cowl door post area at some point in its life and was never fixed right. The media blaster left a chunk of bondo there for us to see how thick it was. It was a 1" thick. And the rest of the car was rotted everywhere. Needless to say the guy had $30k in just body work when we were done fixing that mess.

[Rick D]

I constantly surf various places looking for the 'right' 67/68 fbody. I've read through several threads where a clean car was thought to have been purchased only to find issues that were hidden.

Of course, my 1st choice is a relatively untouched plain-jane patina'd survivor (optimum pro-tour canvas IMHO). That being said, do guys pay these well known site supporting guys more to re-skin a car vs buying an aftermarket body? I don't know what the going rate is to basically re-skin an entire car (properly) vs alternatives.

A couple of things to think about.

First what is your budget? The Dynacorn body's are not cheap, (13K plus) or so.

Now once you have the body you still need EVERYTHING!! Lots more $$ plus those body's are not just scuff and shoot some primer and paint, they still require a lot of work to make all the panels line up nice (think aftermarket sheet metal) same panels just put together for you in a shell form.

So now that's more $$ in labor unless you have the time and skill to do it all your self??

I would say try to find a (1) clean body or (2) a nice complete driver that you can enjoy and make changes to as you go along.

Unless your looking to do a full build?? If you are doing a full build with a shop, have them check out the car BEFORE you buy it. Well worth a couple of tickets to make sure the car is what it is said to be?? Or at best a short afternoon drive.

Now if you have the time and space and skill to build it yourself then I would do what Scott said, buy all the parts and put it together yourself??

[71RS/SS396]

It costs about $17,000 to take a car to AMD's installation center and have it completely re-bodied. They build the body off of a jig and spot weld it just like GM would have done, the panel fit is significantly better than a Dynacorn body is, and you won't have the titling headaches. I had Craig do 2 cars for me and was very pleased with the results, he also did the mini tubbing and installed the quadra-link and frame connectors while he was doing the sheetmetal installation.

Here's a link to their price list: http://www.amdinstallation.com/prices.html

[Sales@Dutchboys]

I just made this post in a build thread of mine, Kind of explains the point I was trying to get across. Its Not as easy as some people think to just go find a perfect rust free camaro anymore. And like stated. The dynacorns are far from perfect. Its not like your going to just scuff and shoot them.



Post I made in another thread******




We haven't gotten into to many that the inner structures were bad..Usually its your basic Floor pans, Qtrs, Rear body panel, Upper dash etc.

I think I speak for my customer and myself that I would rather stick with my original investment and put the money into the car that I've already purchased. Going out and (trying) to find another "rust free body" isn't as easy as some people might think.

Say a customer bought the starting roller for 15k, (in most cases more) The shop sandblasts it and finds out all the issues that it has. Customer says im not going to build this car, We should try and find another one. I don't really want to invest all the time and money into replacing all the panels. So the customer has his initial 15k, plus sandblasting, disassemble time, etc.

Lets just say Hes knocking on 20k plus.

Unless he can sell that sandblasted car with a bunch of rust holes that are easily seen now that the car is sandblasted. He will be lucky to get half of his money back.

Finding a really nice unmolested 1969 body is getting pretty hard. Minimum it seems like your putting quarter panels on a car. Say you found a super nice 69' for 25k thats a close to original driver car. The customer buys it. Car gets to the shop. Shop disassembles the car, sandblasts it, epoxy prime etc. with the car and labor hes Knocking on 30k plus..

So the customer now has 50k (or more) floating out between the two cars in just the START of the build phase. No cool hotrod parts,no engine/trans, wheels etc. New clean 69' needs a qtr, maybe both. here we go again. It just snowballs from there.

As far as a dynacorn body. I think its a great concept if that's the direction YOU want to go to start with BEFORE buying a first starter car.

But Ive seen and heard of some horror stories with them that don't seem to put you to far ahead if you are paying a shop to do all of the work.

I have seen in person a shop that is working on a dynacorn body car, panels welded on poorly, misaligned. Major gaping needed to make everything fit. Mini tubing the car the tubs were off side to side. Windows fitting very bad. looked to be that the roof was crooked along with the a-pillars. Maybe it was an early body and they have improved since. But I think I will stick with replacing panels on a GM body before I go down that road. The AMD sheet metal is so nice to work with that it isn't worth the trouble.

[ScotI]

First..... Thanks for the thoughtful insight!

This is good info for myself & others w/similar questions. I've used some aftermarket panels so I'm aware of their "quality". I assumed the Dynacorn cars would be similar & have lots of issues. The key for myself (& others I'm sure) is I don't want to spend 15-25K on a nicely painted car that "appears" fine only to find out it's just a pig w/lipstick & polish.

If the cost is around 17K range to rebody a car correctly, it seems finding a rougher car that's complete & SHOWS the damaged areas is possibly the better starting point because of the lower initial cost.

A fresh or decent paint job is just a waste of money (initial investment) if it turns out what's underneath is less than solid (which after +40yrs can be assumed). Correct? We're talking the law of averages vs the occassional rare, clea, barn find.

[DETON8R]

On thing that is getting glossed over.
MAKE SURE THAT THE CAR'S TITLE IS CLEAN!!

Buying a dynacorn shell and attaching a title might be easy in some states, others, well not so much.

Make sure you don't dump a bunch of money into a project only to find out that the state troopers take it from you and keep for a few months while they try to sort out whether the car was stolen or illegally titled.

And if your state lets you do such things, make sure you don't move to another state where it becomes an issue. Kit cars have been know to have this sort of problem.