Help please on a 1971 Vert Purchase

[gatormc9]

Hey guys, I posted a while back about a 1971 Convertible. The owner and I have reached an agreement on price and they have decided to sell the car to me. I wanted to go check the cowl for rust before I purchased it because I was warned by some of the posters on here to check for it. Unfortunately, I did find some rust. Please check out the pictures below and tell me how bad and how much of an impact this will be. Can it be fixed through the opening,. Is there an easy "fix" using sealant or JB weld to get by? This car is going to be garage kept and only driven on nice days, mostly with the top down on Sunday drives. This is disappointing because I really love this car...am I even going to find a car in the 5-6k range without this issue?

Driver's Side looks pretty good...





The passenger side has some issues though...







Please help me out on this. I want to bring this car home tomorrow, but I need to know if that would be a mistake.


After perusing more threads on this issue I'm thinking about just capping the cowl and living with it in the short term. With the new repop cowls, the job shouldn't be too horrible to repair when I finally breakdown and do a full restoration in the future. I'd still like some advice in case my logic is way off here.

 

[OMS]

You should be able to seal the cowl and fix it during the later restoration

You should still clean up the area and spray or brush in some rust killer

You will know more once you shop vac all the debris out. but that doesn't look too horrible. I think a lot of that is the factory coating peeling off.

I've had them where the top hat and a big section of the cowl is gone.

Don

 

[gatormc9]

Thanks Don, I'm glad to hear it. I'm sure I'll be buying a repop cowl from you in the future, as well as a lot of other parts to get this car back on the road.

 

[Don65Stang]

Congrats on the purchase! Post some pics when you get a chance.

 

[caspianwendell]

You should be able to seal the cowl and fix it during the later restoration

You should still clean up the area and spray or brush in some rust killer

You will know more once you shop vac all the debris out. but that doesn't look too horrible. I think a lot of that is the factory coating peeling off.

I've had them where the top hat and a big section of the cowl is gone.

Don

+1 clean it up and then see what you have

 

[JimNiki]

I just cut 2 squares out with a grinder on either side of the cowl and repaired mine.

By the time you seal and paint it and drive it on nice days only, you won't have a problem...

Mine looks exactly like I left it 9 years ago...

Mind you, I've done 3000 miles only on it in that time.