finally sold my 1986 GMC after it sat in the driveway for 5 years. Would have loved to restore it but it had to go when I got the Monte Carlo. At least I Sold It to my Brother so I can still visit it whenever I want lol.

 

Mannn that's depressing =(

 

My heart just broke.

 

Well that GTO looks like it has had the drain holes in teh bottom of the door stop up and rusted out the bottoms of both doors pretty badly.... to the point where you'd need another door to patch those. So probably need ot just go ahead and say two doors. Those fenders can probably be bought through some remanufacturing place, so it eneds two of those... and it looks like rust could be coming through both quarter fenders. The hood is so eat up with surface rust that it really would be easier to replace. The surface rust eats small pits into the metal, so it would take many hours of bondoing and sanding to get that thing anywhere close to smooth, so much so that it may as well be replaced. So you're looking at nearly every body panel needing patching or replacing. With that top in such sad shape, I'm going to say the floor pans, front and rears, are probably all gone. That weather has made the seats dry rot, and GM didn't paint the springs on their seats (if memory serves correctly), making them more likely to rust, and thus needing all new seats. Convertibles have so much more to seal, so you're looking at the possibility of the trunk being rusted out. GM had some problems with batteries rusting out inside fender wells on that one side, so you are most likely going to need that replaced since it has been apparently sitting in the open and in the snow for x years. The engine will be lucky if it turns over, the transmission probably has had all its seals dry rot and won't pull anything. I'm going to estimate that it needs at least $25-30,000 in repairs (in materials), plus for an average person, probably at least 2 years of work to restore it. Professionaly restored, it would take probably 6 months.

With all that pessimism aside, it is more than I would want to tackle (becasue I'm not really a convertible man myself), but wow, would it be worth it in the end!!!!