the transformation has begun

[SunsetHawkSelena]

well, it's been feeling a little bit like Monster Garage at our house this past weekend. we have officially started the conversion process on Skully, our 86 Caddy Hearse. the plan is to do some maintenance (trans flush, oil chg, etc), fix the roof rot, paint him 'rat rod' flat black with skull graphics, get some new wheels, put in a killer sound system... and basically convert him from a creepy stock looking hearse into a bad ass showstopping hearse

here's a before shot:



Scott removed the vinyl top (hard to see in pics, but it was cracked and splitting really bad allowing lots of water to get under it):





bad roof rot at the windershield and under the fiberglass overlay (whenever he was out in the rain, the windshield would leak all over you and give you a bath while you drove):





also down the driver's side A-pillar:





me removing the foam under the vinyl... kinda felt like skinning an animal cuz i had to use a scraper to get it off (and we had kept Skully out of the weather for about 2 weeks before we started this and that foam was still wet... hard to believe how much moisture that stuff holds):



rivets holding on the drip rail:



we went to the junkyard yesterday and found a roof in great shape on an 87 fleetwood. this will be our patch panel to fix the roof rot at the windshield and down the A-pillars:



Scott started Dremel-ing out the rotted sections of the A-pillar (until the Dremel died on him):



here's Skully after i removed most of that damn foam... took me a few hours to get it all off but eventually i did. thank goodness the roof is totally covered with a fiberglass overlay, or we'd have a lot more rot to fix. water must have been seeping thru that vinyl for years:



that's as far as we got this weekend. we'll keep plugging away at it every weekend... so this is "to be continued."

[hotroddwayne]

Good to see you guys are taking the time to tear the coach down & fix all the areas you knew were bad. Also it shows the rest of us what the roofs look like under the vynl & what to watch for (and possibly expect)... so thanks for documenting it & keep us updated!

[Psychoholic]

Jesus that is some rot! Good luck with it, keep us posted and lots of pics

[R U INJRD]

OK, I have a question: with that much rot, what did the top feel like at the top of the windshield before you peeled the vinyl off? Did it feel like you could just push a finger through it, or was it still firm but "crunchy"? I always wonder when I look at hearses how much damage is really under there?

[SunsetHawkSelena]

thanks y'all. that's why i posted... to help others.

to answer R U INJRD, the roof didn't really feel crunchy anywhere... i guess because the fiberglass over it was really what you were pushing against under the vinyl. sneaky rot!

we bought this car in october and the only clue we had was that the windshield leaked every time it rained, and it would drip from where the A-pillar met the roof. also the vinyl roof was cracked and splitting all over and we knew that was letting water in, but we scooped the car for cheap so we weren't too upset about it.

i was driving the car daily for a few weeks and it wouldn't drip too bad while i was driving in rain... but one day we had a bad rain storm move through while i was at work, and when i came out to the car, the seats and floor were SOAKED! that's when we knew it must be worse than we thought.

at that point we removed the headliner and discovered that the whole area of roof where it met the windshield was rusted out, but we couldn't really tell how bad it was until we removed the windshield and vinyl top this past weekend and saw rot all down the A-pillar (previously covered by vinyl) and spreading a good 8-10 inches from the winshield into the roof.

so there you have it. the roof won't necessarily crunch if you have rot. we're having fun with the process though cuz we bought this car for cheap planning to tear it down and customize it anyway... and we even did like Zach suggested and asked the car's permission before we started (lol) so hopefully the car won't fight us too much.

[pyro]

I just put my 63 MM in the body shop. The floor is flinstone style. I'll take pics when I get back there.

[Beast Lee]

Very kOoL... Looking forward to more progress pics...

[LorcinLS1]

This is the donor upper windshield channel ready to be welded in. I'm waiting on rust encapsulator I ordered to put in some spots before closing the car back up.


Also started getting the glue residue off from the vinyl top padding. It sucks that its everywhere, but its coming off. The whole roof will eventually look like the side pictured. The red rusty color is some red oxide primer. I'm not sure why its there since its only on the lower section of the fiberglass top.

[Dead_Society]

Wow that is some rot but I like to see fellow Coach owners taking care of there rides. When I ripped off the top on my 76 I just used some rhino liner, the stuff they use in pickup truck beds to re textured the top and it turned out real nice. It gave it a nice rat rod look.