'76 Body Restoration

[saridout]

at the advice of zed2 (whose restoration thread yall may have seen here: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34490), i have enlisted tony's body shop here in dallas to restore my 76 280z. i bought the car in january of 2009, and after burning up the engine and having to completely rebuild it, i'm now moving on to the next step. i've already done the engine bay, so tony's going to do rust repair on the rest of the body, and then paint it BRG at my request. here are the first photos of the disassembly.

sorry for the poor lighting in the photos, and as always, look at my flickr account for more!

[saridout]

Though there was a hangup regarding the passenger quarter panel, things have gotten moving again and the body should be painted within the month. Here are some photos of the progress.

these areas came out looking really nice, especially after the way they looked originally (http://www.flickr.com/photos/76280z/3850802953/)

passenger floorboard

rust repair under cowl cover

you can look larger versions of the above photos and more photos from that shoot here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76280z/tags/august31/

[saridout]

well, the car was painted last week, and it's just beautiful. i gave them the rubber kit yesterday and they said it should be ready to go by the end of this week. i'm sure they're as tired of working on it as i am excited to get it back. i took some photos of it before they reassembled the body panels, and it's under fluorescent lighting that makes it look positively teal. the photos of the car after reassembly are much truer to actual color.

sorry for how blurry these are. my iphone takes crappy indoor photos.

[olzed]

Nice job. Mine took 12 months to get to that stage. Lazy paintshop

Edited September 29, 2010 by olzed

[saridout]

thankyou! it's taken the shop about 6 months for the rust repair and paint, but i'm one of only a few resto jobs they have currently.

[esmit208]

SARIDOT

It looks really nice. But since you had all the panels off a good cleaning of all the old undercoat and a fresh complete coat would have given you piece of mind concerning future rust issues. Check out this link 37861.goinetusa.com. After I took and contiue taking it completely apart I plan to sandblast and then rustproof everything I can get sand and sealant on. I dont ever want to have to worry or disassemble body parts ever again. I plan to spend another 3 or 4 years on it if I don't keel over and die before then. HAPPY MILES.

[saridout]

it's done! now i can finally get back to work on it

Note: that's not me driving it, that's one of the shop guys.

[grnsky]

Love the green!