I noticed the car sat crooked (higher in the rear right, lower in the front right), especially when I put the new wheels and tires on it. I assumed it was an issue with the suspension just being worn, so I ordered drop springs for the front and reverse eye leafs for the rear. After installation I was both surprised and disappointed that it did not level the car out. This is when I started to think perhaps the unit body was bent. Not much of the car had been sanded by this point so I could only guess.
Then we started sanding. Really sanding. Every moment with DA revealed more of the horrifying truth. All-in-all we took about 3 gallons of filler off the car (the entire thing was skim coated and a lot of it was unecessary), but it wasn't until we got to the rear scoops that we realized what had happened. After stripping all the bondo it was obvious the car had been sandwiched so bad that it buckled the car at the lower scoops. A substantial amount of body work was done to hide it, but with the car in naked steel, let's just say she looked awful. Surprisingly, I don't have any pictures of that stage. I think I was just too bummed to want to take pictures.
We stripped her down and before throwing a coat of primer on to see how bad she was, I took this opportunity to shave a few things. The standard stuff, door handles, locks, badging and runners, mirror, etc. During this process we also shaved the drop rails. I'll take this time to suggest that unless you're fairly experienced with a welder and have a solid understanding of the way the roof is attached to the car, don't do this yourself. Fortunately we're all quite handy with the MIG and TIG and I had armed myself with the Reactor build book from Ring Brothers which outlines the process of shaving the drip rails enough so that you know what you're getting in to. It's a lot of welding, and lot of grinding.
We sprayed some primer on one side to see where we were at.
