95% of the people who saw the movie 'Joe Dirt' remember the orange Hemi he was given,... but have no idea what type of car it was. It was supposed to be a 1967 Hemi GTX, but was in fact a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere cloned into a GTX look-alike. Lets overlook the fact the the racing stripes are from the wrong year....

I fell in love with this car, the history and styling. I wanted one, and it had to be a convertible. I started looking around for one in 2004 that I could turn into a Joe Dirt replica, and what I found was this ancient 1967 Plymouth Belvedere II convertible.

I planned to perform the Joe Dirt treatment with some performance modifications. However, once the car arrived....

Someone got creative with a rivet gun and drill, and snapped very flimsy metal (maybe 88 gauge for all I know, looks like tin foil) to the rusted quarters. After inspection, I think it might have been air duct flashing....

That duct tape was not a joke either, by the way, that's what they used to insure their rivet job would hold on, then capped it all off with a nice thick coat of bondo.... (I am being serious, you following me? tin foil, staples, rivets, duct tape, bondo.... try to keep up).

We were fortunate to receive this car at all. The transport arrived late at night and as soon as he settled in the parking lot, the crossmember (completely rusted through) gave loose and splintered into shards,.. (maybe there was duct tape on it too that blew off somewhere on I-10. Keep an eye out ....) So the driveline jackknifed and wedged it onto the trailer. I had to hook a chain to the rear end and yank it loose with my Tahoe. Then the block of wood that someone had wedged between the subframe and lower control arm to make the car appear level fell out due to all the tugging and the whole car laid frame...

Well, we still had about 100 yards to go, so it slide on its belly most of the way....

On the plus side,.. the dash was MINT and the top worked fine. (I had to win somewhere).

I finally had a clear morning to finish my inspection, and it was worse than I thought. This car needed a full nut and bolt buildup, not really what we do for TV and Movie replicas. This project just went from $20k to $120k.

I decided to scrap the original idea and for now just do some patchwork. Make it a driver I can play with while I make up my mind what to do with it, and if need be save up some money and parts.

We'll take the car down to nothing, start from scratch, and we'll still use the Joe dirt theme, because I think it is fun. But if I am spending this much time and money, we are going to go all out. I'll store the matching 383 in exchange for a 550HP Max Wedge 440 setup, the Dana 60 I love so much and all Firm Feel suspension. If I am going to do that then I'll need to make major reinforcements to the chassis. I don't want to leave anything out, because I estimate this to cost around $80k not counting my own labor. I should mention, that's my costs, and I own the shop. If you want to run with the big boys, you gotta spend like the big boys.

Almost every joint on this car is rusting or already rusted through. Both shock mount joints were trash... looking at this now I can't believe I put it on the road. I'm lucky to still be here.

I'll start in the engine bay, so let make some patch panels.

For now, I blasted the engine bay by itself. One thing at a time since I am doing most of this on weekends and evening hours.

There are not many replacement panels available for this car, so I'll be making most by hand. Here you can see where I have removed bad sections in order to replace.

Here is a good example of what I am having to do. Being good with a sandbag and English wheel helps.

I have handmade the patch pieces for this fender, and also test fitting part of the reinforcement cage for the engine bay.

Here are the patches made and installed.

The bracing in and around the engine bay is very important, especially with high HP engines. Over half of the 'body roll' or 'sloppy suspension' felt in these cars is actually due to the engine bay twisting under the weight of the engine.

With the car on the rotisserie and the engine bay finished for now, I turned my attention to the floors. Before anything is removed, we use these jamb braces to stiffen the body. This is VITAL on convertibles.

These are our subframe connectors. There are two main styles sold through aftermarket suppliers and used by most people, and that would be the square braces, which is one solid square tube, and the new 'laser cut, made to fit the floor' braces. Both of these are trash. What you see here is the best type of bracing to use for subframe connection.

The tube shape is much stronger than the square shape, and in this case it is doubled with two tubes. Also, the made to fit models offer the least protection because of their design. This style also has several short welds instead of a long solid weld, which is for increased reliability. A weld can crack, then then it works like a zipper, the entire length of the weld. With this method, should a weld fail, it does not compromise the integrity of the rest of the brace.

With the floors done, we'll finish the blasting and start working on the main chassis. I am seriously surprised that my car didn't collapse under its own weight. I don't have much of a frame left.

You may notice in this photo we welded 2x4 thick wall steel brace under each rocker the length of the car to help support the rusty old girl while on the twirler.

1) Below is a completely rusted frame section. We start cutting away metal around the rusted area and get us a clean opening to patch.

2) Patch panels are made based on the area to repair In this case, being a frame we went with thick gauge steel, double the size of the stock material.

3) We are then able to grind the weld until there is no trace that repairs were done.

4) Here you can see the finished repair.

These little extension panels under the trunk are unavailable and have to be made by hand, like most everything else. That is a handmade panel.

This is called fabrication. Other 'restorers' would have you believe cutting out a square piece of metal and welding it over a hole is fabrication.... now you know.

Off the rotisserie and onto the body cart while the chassis repairs are made. While we are at it, we'll finish the front apron reinforcements.

Now lets look at these quarters, all five of them.

Repairs were done at several different times in prior years, and instead of replacing anything someone saved a few bucks by taking quarters from a donor car and welding them right on top of the rusty ones. We have three deep on one side....

The new trunk pan is installed, that's a new piece that just became available.

We have started undercoating areas as we finish with them.

Back to body repairs.

The doors were finished and installed in preparation for surfacing and blocking.

Since I am having to do this car here and there in between customer jobs, I don't get to do everything at once as I would like.

That being the case, the door jambs were primed, blocked, wetsanded and painted.

Another few weeks pass and I finally get time to paint the doors and decklid. Here you can see them getting installed.

What a brilliant color!