Bodywork

We took the red car to the body shop, and after a careful assessment we decided to totally strip the car. Not a decision to be taken lightly! The car had a lot of filler in places. Mike (my auto body guy) stripped it out, hammered the sheet metal back and prepared to fill it correctly.

We also found some other surprises while we were at the stage. Like bondo applied over rust! I’m glad we caught that. I didn’t want to have bubbling a few months after repainting.

Nothing like Bondo over rust

An odd patch

Down to bare metal

Deconstructing a fender

Now the car was going to start to cost significantly more than I had budgeted, even with my contingency. So, my next decision was to determine the level of restoration I wanted to do. I had originally planned to have a fun car to drive around in, take to the train in the summer, go to the beach and the occasional car show. Given the expense I was about to incur,  I decided to swing for the fences and do a close to “concours quality” restoration.