The deadline is written right on the screen: “This car will be finished by October 31st. Yes… Halloween.” That promise closes a 59 second progress update from @ratherberacing62, whose opening title card spells out the project: “Turning my Wife’s 2001 Monte Carlo into Dale Jr’s Oreo car.”

The car is a silver Monte Carlo SS, with the “SS” script visible on the door. There is no voiceover. The work is told through text overlays on clips filmed in a home garage hung with racing banners and a big number 62 on the wall. The caption sets the tone: “As usual, we start these projects with patience, then quickly start to lose that patience and come up with a crazy deadline.”

Spoiler off, rust out

The first job was the rear wing. “Took her spoiler off, replaced with a more NASCAR style one. Might do a custom one in the future,” the overlay reads, as two people lift the factory spoiler off the decklid. Moments later the taller wing is held against the trunk with a two word verdict: “LOOKS GREAT.”

Most of the clip is rust repair. “Lots of rust repair (driver side so far),” the text says, followed by “cut most of the bad rot out,” “had to have custom pieces made,” and “welded pieces on, had to make changes so skirt fit as normal.” The footage matches: the builder sits on the garage floor beside the open driver’s door with an air tool, the rocker area below the door is opened up, and later he works along the bottom of the body in a welding helmet. In one shot he is on his back under the car with a grinder beside him.

Then came filler. The overlays read “skim coat of filler to smooth out all body lines,” then “sanded it down, then off camera sprayed filler primer,” and finally “driver side rust repair complete.” He wears a dust mask and runs a sander along the rocker, the repair showing as a gray patch under the door.

Hood pins and the molding holes

“Added some horsepower by installing hood pins and trunk lid pins,” the next overlay jokes, over clips of pins going in at the front of the hood and on the decklid. One commenter played along, writing that the pins “got to add at least 150 hp.”

Pulling off the body side molding left a row of holes in the doors. “After removing body side molding, had to weld up the holes it left,” the text says, over shots of him welding along the door in a shower of sparks. The next overlay lists “ground down the holes I welded up,” “added more body filler and sanded down” and “sprayed filler primer off camera,” and the door shows round filler patches where the holes were.

The last shots move to the other side. “Starting the passenger side NOW! We are halfway there,” the text says, ahead of the Halloween promise. The caption adds that primer and paint will come “by next week 100%” and calls the build “quite the learning curve.” The finished car is not in this video.

The rust question

Two commenters zeroed in on prep. One wrote that the replacement panels looked tacked on over remaining rust without any rust treatment. Another said the paint was not removed before welding and filling, and predicted the repair would not last. The clip skips the steps done “off camera,” so it cannot settle that, but 3M’s own directions for Bondo Original Filler are clear: sand the damaged area with 80 grit “to remove all paint, primer, and rust down to bare metal,” and go one to two inches beyond the damage. A viewer in Georgia wrote that rust is not a problem there and that these cars are cheap to find.