This is the way the car looked for about 12 years. It was in need of a fresh paint job and an updated look very bad. This is the way it looked before I started. It had a Choo-Choo Customs El Camino front nose I put on in about 1991 after I had a minor fender-bender.

I started by taking all the interior out and sanding on the rear portion of the car.

Here's the primer applied to the rear quarter panels...

MAJOR rust in the firewall. BAD news for me.  I've come too far to give up now so I'm about to embark on a mission I never planned or have EVER done...

OK...soooooo how hard can  it be to replace the whole firewall?  It looks like I'm going to find out!  The next photo is the donor car. It's a Pontiac Bonneville Station Wagon. It was very nice car but I needed a rust free firewall and this one had it.  I started by drilling out all the spot welds one at a time. It was VERY time consuming but I succeeded!

Everything attaching itself to the old firewall had to be removed...

Here's the firewall completely gone and so is the rust!

Here's the donor firewall welded in and secure. It fit perfect!

Now it's time to reinstall components back onto the new firewall. This time, I'm going back with a lot more options. These include Digital Dash from Dakota Digital, Twilight Sentinel, Electronic Touch Climate Control, Factory style Security System,  Power Windows, Power Door Locks and Concert Sound II will be added from a donor car.......an 84 Buick T-Type.

The firewall was a major set-back. But I feel much better that I fixed it right instead of patching it and putting bondo all over it. Well worth the time and effort in my opinion. It's time to get some paint on the "Yalibu"...lol   Single stage paint is being applied to the door jambs and other areas like under the trunk lid and on the inner fenders.

Here's the hood just sitting on top and the header panel...

Here's the front Intercooler...

Here's the inner door's painted and back on the car.

After taking a couple of weekend's to totally rebuild the front end of the car (tie rods, ball joints, control arm bushings, body bushings...etc) and to get the paint booth ready, I finally got the primer sprayed but not without complications. The primer lifted some of the old paint I feather-edged. So to totally eliminate that problem I sanded the old paint off to the bare metal.  That solved any problem with incompatible paints. It looks like on July 4th I'll be painting it YELLOW!

It's July 4th and the Malibu is yellow!  I still have to do some sanding because in some places it didn't lay very smooth.   The bad thing is, I run out of base coat paint and it still needs one more coat...at least that's what it looks like to me. Sorry for the low quality pictures.

Finally!  It's painted and clear coated YELLOW! Now it's time to put it back together!

Finally....it's back at the house and looking stunning.

It's getting to look like a car again with a few things installed back on it. I have to get the rear end of the car down some more. It sits way too high in the back.