Well, here's a project: The first pix show my 61 Imperial convertible. looks great, right?

Well there's some steelworm under there, and it needs to be fully reliable for a cross-country race next summer (2006), so here goes:
The interior comes out:




Then the body comes off and gets stripped to bare metal for weld repsir of any rot spots:

That leaves a rusty old frame (OK, the engine and suspension were pulled, too), but it's quickly restored:


Now the body gets a color-matching undercost before painting:

Well, the shop that was doing the work ran waaay over budget and refused to manage the project properly, so I pulled it and moved the car to another spot. It turned out that the first shop also butchered the bodywork! Here's the progress at the new place so far:
The new restoration guys and i went to pick up the car from the first place. IT looked like this:

We had the engine rebuilt and reassembled like this:

The body turns out to have been done VERY wrong. To save money, I had agreed to lap-welding where patches were required, but they just slapped patches OVER old rust, then built up THICK bondo to cover it. The finished surfaces were so far off, the chrome trim wouldn't fit!

So the new shop made some proper patches and refinished the whole body - the right way:

Now the reassembly can really begin. HEre's two shots of the dash build-up. It's a COMPLICATED beast:

That's all for now. With the start of the Great Race just 9 weeks away, the pressure is on. The first shop has cost me a bundle in time and money, but the new guys are doing a great job!