Sweet KeyLime Progress

To Andrea's delight is it time to start putting the car back together. I must admit I am a little disappointed that most of the metal work is done but there are still lots of things to do.
This is where I left off in the last blog. Engine not pulled but some of the engine bay has been derusted and painted. All the front end body panels removed.
After being quoted approximately $4,000 to professionally paint the car I came across someones blog who was doing a "$50 Paintjob" on his car. This involved rolling Tremclad on the car. I figured for $50 (really probably more like $200 by the time I finish) that I couldn't go wrong. If it didn't work out well I could just sand/strip it off and have the professional job done and barely be out anything. I also figured that I could do a better job using spray paint. This is the result of my $200 paintjob (about $50 in so far). The first piece I put back on is the front valence:

I then remounted the headlights and started re-installing the wiring. The driver's side fender has also been mounted. I still need to get a lip spoiler:

I stuck the old, rusty, hood back on just to get an idea of how it'll look. I might actually use the rusted one sometimes just 'cause it looks sort of cool:

Another view with the fender in place:

I temporarily stuck the kidney grills and the headlight surrounds in place, again just to see how it'll look:

Here is the good hood temporarily mounted, to check the profile of one of the corners. Sadly I dropped it on the points at the back end of the hood and bent one of them up. A little pounding with the hammer later and repainting the corner and it'll be ready for clear coating again.

And...just for you, Chris, here is a picture of the paint showing the reflectivity. It's not quite done being polished since the battery in my polisher died, but, despite the fact that there is still some orange peel, it looks pretty good in my opinion.

The items I'll be working on in the next few days (I LOVE vacation!!) are:

• filling the massive hole behind the driver's side rear wheel
• repairing a couple holes in the passenger side rear wheel well
• drain coolant and replace the o-rings on the heater core
• start re-installing the interior
• painting the front bumper
• more work on the doors

Moving Forward

...in a manner of speaking anyway...still can't drive the car.

It's been a while since I updated the blog so there's been a reasonable amount of progress; mostly metal work, but also some other stuff which I'll get to later.

The numerous rust holes in the passenger front have been cut out, patches formed and welded in, painted and seam sealed.

Before:

After:

The picture isn't great since I took it at night; the flash is reflecting off of every piece of dust and dirt in the car.

I still need to patch the hole in the rocker, somehow I forgot about that and moved on to the back of the car. I started digging at the rust in the well behind the drivers side rear wheel. At first glance it looked like just surface rust but once I really got into it I found several spots where it'd rusted through, so...out came the angle grinder to cut out a big piece - I know you never would have guessed that! Here's where it's at right now:

I've also been working on some body work; I'll go into detail in another post soon, but here's a few pictures to give you a hint of what I've been working at: