First, you must determine if the shell is worth restoring. If you haven't already done so, remove the rear seat bottom cushion and check for rust in the floor where the rear subframe mounts are. Check under the car in this area, also. Check the front frame rails under the front floors; tap on them with a hammer to make sure they are solid. A hammer tap should make a solid "tok tok" sound, not "thud thud". Thudding indicares soft, rusty metal. Check the rocker panels very carefully to see if a previous owner has covered rust holes with bondo or a sheet metal cover. Use a hydraulic floor jack and try jacking the car up at the jacking points. If the rocker starts to collapse rather than the car rising, there is serious structural rust in that area. If all these areas check out OK, on to your shock tower problem. First, jack up the rear of the car, support it on jack stands, and remove the rear wheels. When you look up into the rear fenderwells, you will note that the top perches for the rear springs are welded into the rear shock towers. Use a screwdriver and poke around where the towers and perches meet. Scrape away some of the undercoating and see if there's solid metal there. In the trunk, I would get some paint stripper and apply it all over the shock towers/inner fenderwells. Remove all the paint undercoating, or whatever other mess the previous owner has put on there, until you are down to bare metal on the towers. Then you can assess whether to correctly rebuild your existing towers, or obtain some rust-free ones from 2002AD or another used parts supplier. Hope this helps.Colin
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