Still with you man. Been popping in to check on progress every now and then over the past few years. Will be tackling my HVAC system this week or so and plan do do some dash rewiring while I'm in there. Your dedication is inspiring. Keep it up, you've brought her a long way so far.

 

Not too far away from me at all! Pictures will be coming soon. I should have a worthwhile update the weekend of the 15th-16th or during the week after.

 

Looking forward to the update Jerry! Hope all is well!

 

Where did you get the leather covers for the seats?

 

www.leatherseats.com

 

This entire project is nothing short of phenomonal. Coffee table book material. You were smart to buy as much of the OEM bits when you could.

You have another follower to the project

Greg O.

 

Just went thru the entire thread. Nice work on the restoration. I'm in Trinity, Florida. Keep up the good work!

-M

 

Happy Festivus everyone!

First, thank you all for the kind words.
Second, I have some news:



This image is probably big enough that you can see the orange peel. There's some issues, but I believe I know what they are and can fix them for some Christmas Eve painting tomorrow. I'm going to leave the body in its citrus texture state for the time being, fix what I believe are my issues, and then primer the rest of the parts tomorrow to hopefully a somewhat smoother status than this. After that, I'll sand the grapefruit skin deliciousness out of the body, see if it needs another coat of primer or not, and move on to base and clear. The good news is, it's only primer and can easily be fixed!

I leave you with one more shot:

 

Looking good! It's so exciting to see [most of] a car in one color, even if that color is primer.

 

*Cues AC/DC Back in Black*




Yes, it needs wet sanding and polishing. But it's all one color for the first time in many, many years.

 

Just read through the entire thread, great work. You've just motivated me to get back into the garage and get started on the 3 different projects.... lol

 

So, getting the car primed and painted was an absolute marathon that had to be done. I started building the paint booth on December 17th and tore it down after everything was painted on December 30th. In that 14 day span, I still had to work my full time job 7 of those days and didn't do any work in the garage on Christmas. This led to a couple of late nights of sanding after it had been primed and to re-mask the car for basecoat and clearcoat. The priming was done on consecutive days the 23rd and 24th, and basecoat/clearcoat was done the 29th and 30th. After I had finished spraying the last bit of clear that Sunday, I cleaned up some of my things, took off my Tyvek suit, shoes and socks, and walked through the house to the back porch to lie down on the cold concrete and didn't move for about 20 minutes. The last day of painting was unseasonably warm even for Florida and with no cloud cover and an east facing garage, the booth was roasting. Right about then, I swore to myself I would never paint another car in my own garage, because it was probably one of the dumbest things I've ever done in my life. I stand by this statement. If I ever paint a car again, it will be after renting some time in a booth (this was an option I considered at one point as several shops in the area have ads on Craigslist to rent some time).

But now that it's all done, some real fun can begin. I took a few days off, but was right back at it Friday. The rear bumper went back on which meant reinstalling the crash bar, energy absorbing foam, and finally the bumper cover. I had to chase threads for all of these due to rust on some of the bolts, but mostly paint since I did not mask the mount for the crash bar or the studs on the bumper.

 

Got to give you a lot of credit, almost 8 years and still spending hours in the garage, especially around the holidays and normal work hours. Seeing paint on the car may be the adrenaline you need to keep going. As I've gotten older, don't want to do any work on cars anymore. Jeez, my Grand Cherokee hemi has needed the heads to be pulled for 6 months, but as it's not really needed, it just sits there, and will continue to sit. No motivation.

Keep up the work and the finished product will be able to be seen shortly.

 

Paint was always the adrenaline rush I needed to get back to all of the fun projects that I am good at. I've been in the garage almost every night this week at least trying to get a few things done with more work in bigger chunks to come on the weekends. The next update will probably come on Sunday once I finish some more projects. I've moved into the interior for the time being as it's a bit easier with no doors still on the car.

 

So, as I said a couple of days ago, I've moved into the interior for the time being. After taking out all the things I was storing inside the interior, I was left with quite the dusty mess:





Some time spent with some cleaner and rags and we were ready to work.





I bought a cheap Fire tablet to use in the garage with all of my old reference pictures (and damn, are they old!).

First project is replacing the stock sound deadening that was removed to fix some rust with Dynamat.

 

The Dynamat went in pretty easily.






Time to rerun the stock body electrical harness.




After that, the wiring to the fuse box and starter was run. Got some nice grommets to protect the starter wiring from how I ran it in that channel. Put in the stock side pieces to protect all of the wiring. Mounted my distribution block and wired it up. Not pictured is my amplifier is mounted along with the harness I made for it. And then, I replaced the old rear washer lines and hatch drains.

 

Reached the attachment limit, so here's the new drains and washer lines:








And as I close this update, I leave you with a PSA: Buy JIS drivers. They are amazing. You don't realize how better they fit until you use them.

 

Looks like a nightmare-Better you than me, but certainly coming along.
Great to see the updates.

 

Okay, time for a bit of an update. This one will probably span a few posts.

Continuing on, I wanted to tackle the sunroof. Ages ago, I had noticed the brackets on the end of my sunroof cables were cracked and needed replacing - the whole thing didn't operate correctly. Disassembly is pretty easy. Lots of little stainless screws to keep track of, so be sure you know what goes where and take lots of reference photos:











As you can see, there was a bit of a nasty surprise lurking underneath the rails:



Well, that was certainly not any good, so I sourced a frame and associated bits fairly local.

 

Cleaned up the new to me frame and spent some time with brake parts cleaner and everything else and I was ready to reassemble.




There's not many pictures to share of reassembly. Getting everything in the rails and in the right order was tedious and my hands were all greased up, so photos weren't really an option. As j9fd3s mentioned somewhere last year in a thread about sunroofs, this is marvelous stuff:



In not too long, the sunroof was finished:




I managed to get it installed back in the car without dropping it on my head, so that was a bonus.

 

Other things that have happened since the last update include the front bumper, the sound deadening mats in the hatch and storage bin area (with fresh padding installed), and the storage bin frames:








The doors were also installed. Every major body panel is now on the car (while the wing is there, it is not bolted down yet - the car is simply the best storage location for it).

The car as it now sits:

 

You're working your tail off trying to get everything together, keep going, no time to rest.

 

That's the plan. I'm hoping by the end of this month, the exterior will be (almost) finished and I will be well on my way to completing the interior. The number of odd jobs to do as I go along is dwindling - relays for the window switches, some battery tray mounting, and figure out a way to wire in an auxiliary input into the head unit.

One of the big issues right now is getting a windshield. Not fun.

 

Looking great man. I see you're in Tampa, I'm in Trinity area, pretty local.

 

Keep up the good work!