New: 1969 Galaxie 500

shimmery purple -- are you serious???

A rat rod type of purple. Not a girly purple. Just an idea I'm tossing around. Also tossing around maybe a flake red or an orange with flake. Notings permanant. Can always change it. Doing all the work myself, so it's not like I'm out a whole lot of money if I want to change it.

I like different. I like standing out. I like when people walk up to my cars and say "holy crap, I never thought that would look good, but you pulled it off. nice."

I didn't buy a Galaxie because it was the only car available or that I could affored. I bought it because it wasn't a Nova, Chevell, Camaro, TA, Mustang, HEMI, or rice - like everyone else around me drives. When my brother got his Escalade, he came to me and said "what should I do?" That thing now sits on swampers with a 7 inch lift. We didn't lower it, we didn't put rubberbands on flimsy heave rims, we didn't put useless lambo doors on it. We put huge tires on it, we did some engine things, an exhaust, I think he finally found some new gearing and he had an "upgraded" tranny put in. DIFFERENT. I like a challenge. You will find that out about me as time passes.

But I can see how you question my judgment on a purple roof with black primer paint job. It may look awesome. It may not. But I'm not afraid to see what happens.

Do you have a cat? If you do Rich will like you better no matter what color you decide to paint the roof!

It's your car paint it like you want some people have Green engine's with frogs on it. You don't have to stay original and if someone buys your car at least it's still there and not sitting in a scrap yard or in a field rusting away.

I like those cars in fastback form alot. I am skeptical of the mpg the fomer owner reports. Most people that claim huge mileage just go by the guage. I would drive it on the freeway and do a good honest mpg count; you know, dont go by the guage. Fill it up. Drive all freeway up to around at least 30 miles. Fill up again and see how many gallons burned. Divide miles by gallons. I have always wanted to build a lightwieght of one of those type cars.

Yeah, I don't take anyones word on anything - especially gas mileage. Math can always be different, peoples driving can be different - my wife and get 250 miles out of a tank of gas on my Dakota, I'm lucky to see 175 out of a tank. The truck averages 14 mpg.

Anyways. We have the Galaxie on the road and insured. We're only going to keep it on the road until Monday, then she's coming off. We wanted to be able to play with her a little before we put her away for the winter. (I hate Western NY winters) She is a lot of fun, but I'm deff going to need to put a lot of work into her to make her like I want.

I can't tell you how many people speed up to see her when we're driving or how many people take pictures of her at stop lights. The kids that want to look and see the cool car, the older people that want to check out the car and talk about fond memories of the Galaxie or other cars like it. We get a lot of compliments. The attention is kinda cool. I just hope it doesn't become too much/disruptive.

Oh, and I kind of wish it was the fastback, but it's still a ton of fun to have.

so we tore the vinyl off the roof and got bad news. There are about 4 rust holes the size of dimes on the roof.

Will a welder be able to patch these? Or will I need to find a donor roof? Luckily it looks like the window frames are good. Anyone know how to remove window trim from the exterior of a 69?

Ok, I know I might sound like an ass, and I get it it's you car and all, and don't take this the wrong way, but...

Please don't flat black this car! Yea the paint might need some work but you are just going to destroy any originality of the car..... and not for the better. Flat black will do nothing for this car other than look like someone that is trying to fit in to the current trend that was cool about 10 years ago.

Unless the roof is way beyond hope of repair you sould never have to cut the roof off just for 4 rust holes! For even thinking that I would suggest you neeed to get in touch w/someone that knows how to do rust repair.

Only reason I'm even saying anyting is that it looks like it could be a nice car, and I hate to see someone ruin a car just to be "different".

from someone who owns a flat back galaxie let me tell ya, yeah they look ok but honestly it takes away from the car, i say this because flat black and fifty pounds of chrome do not mix. Now if you were to persue this idea of painting it flat black i would remove all the chrome outside except for bumpers, grill, side windows and bumpers. that clean black look would be awesome and is what I will most likely do to mine to add to my hot rod look im going for

Originally Posted by drkrvnchld

so we tore the vinyl off the roof and got bad news. There are about 4 rust holes the size of dimes on the roof.

Will a welder be able to patch these? Or will I need to find a donor roof? Luckily it looks like the window frames are good. Anyone know how to remove window trim from the exterior of a 69?

Just cut and patch but it must be done right or you will have hell with the body work if your putting the Vinyl back on it's not as critical as the vinal hides any mistakes!
I almost forgot nice beagle!

Ok, I wrote a huge reply and the site kicked me off and I lost everything when I hit POST.

Thanks for the replies. No offense taken on any of it. Basically, I don't intend to cause havoc on the body of this car. My rat rod idea is temp. while I work on other things like the drive train, braking and suspension. There are some dings and a few dents that need to be taken care off and some bad paint imperfections. Rat rodding it for now is just my way of budgeting things out but making the body look whole, not splotchy with bad paint and primer. I will revisit the body at a later time and probably put a nice paint job on it and refinish the trim. For now all the body trim will come off along with the bumpers and grill. I will be ordering fiberglass bumpers. I have a full grill coming that is in bad shape. It's straight, but the finish is bad. I will just blast it and paint it to match the car. I intend to take all the original trim/bumpers and have them sent out for refinishing over time.

I know rat rodding seems like a trend right now. I see it a lot on tv, but I have been rat rodding for yrs including a firebird, a dakota truck, an issuzu truck, 2 Lincolns, a grand am, a bronco, and a blazer. In my area, people don't rat rod. It's tough to find one here.

I would never chop my roof off. I have access to a good parts car though with a mint roof. I was wondering if a metal worker could use new steel to weld in or if I would be better going and grabbing the top skin off the parts car. Honestly, I'm pretty sure I could do the roof repair - but it's something I'm thinking I just might let a pro handle.