After a 15 Month stall, but back to work

[CHS]

All good advice when restoring a car. Now for my TWO Cents. Before sending the car off to a body shop for painting take pictures! This is important if you have a two tone car. When I went to pick up my car something did not look right. I took out the pictures and sure enough, the paint line that seperates the colors was off. I showed the body shop and they corrected the problem. I had removed all the chrome before sending it to the body shop. If I had picked the car up the way, it was the paint line would have met above the chrome.

[chetbrz]

The car will be back in another 2 weeks.  In the meantime I stripped my pot metal and got it over to the platter yesterday.  I also ordered rubber gaskets from Steel Rubber and they came in yesterday.  Hopefully I will be back on the road in the fall.  The picture below are the parts I sent to the platter.  I know that there are two stainless parts but he will polish them up for me.  Very reasonable pricing for triple chrome plate.



Chet...

[RC Drown]

Chet, did you get the car back as of yet, since the first week of Sept is basically gone?

[RobertKB]

When I restored my '38 Chrylser I took a few pictures and am glad I did but wished I had taken more. I did label the wiring which really helped installing the new harness. However, a lot of parts I set aside thinking I would remember how they go. 15 years later it was hard to remember some of the items. Fortunately, I enjoy jigsaw puzzles and that is what the car had become. Everything went back together but it would have saved a lot of time using more pictures and labelling everything properly. Good advice given in this thread. I learned the hard way; you don't have to!

[CHS]

Good luck with your paint job. I know it is not easy to find a good body shop that has someone that will take the time to do the job right. Thanks, for the idea about taking pictures and lableing the parts. I made that mistake once. Now when I take something apart, I lable, and put small parts in a zip lock bag such as molding clips. I then write on the outside of the bag what the parts are and where they go. Makes kife alot easier at reassembly time.

[chetbrz]

Good to hear that you are finally going to get her painted.  I was wondering if you had fallen off the face of the earth.

Did you buy a tape labler:):) after all the hunting for parts :)

Keep us posted and thanks for checking in,
Bob

Bob,  I'm going to try very hard to only touch these parts one more time.  That's when I put them back on the car.

[RC Drown]

Good to hear that you are finally going to get her painted.  I was wondering if you had fallen off the face of the earth.

Did you buy a tape labler:):) after all the hunting for parts :)

Keep us posted and thanks for checking in,
Bob

[chetbrz]

Sunday   07/18/2010

I was determined to get the car painted this summer so that I can spend the fall and winter months putting the interior and trim back on the car.  I dedicated a weeks vacation to finding a painter that was willing and capable of fine tuning my body work and painting the car inside and out.  Finally I found a shop that had the right price and the right attitude to finish my now 6 year odyssey.   

I will be dropping the car at the shop on Saturday August 7th.  The expected turn-around time is the first or second week of September.   Now I needed to put back a few items so that the painter can easily move the car around.  The first thing was to install the proper gas pedal and the parking brake cable so that he doesn't have to jump out of the car with chuck in hand to stop it from rolling. 

Since I disassembled the car in 2004 I moved it from Virginia to Delaware where I completed a great deal of work.  At the end of 2009 we moved once again and finding tools as well as small parts was a nightmare.   All the parts that were not installed on the car wound up in a shed in the backyard.  Now this shed contains the parts from my project car as well as the salvageable extra parts form my 47 parts car.   I am sure you can imagine my frustration looking through countless bags of miscellaneous small parts inside a shed where the temperature must have been near 110 degrees.  Looking for the bracket and clamps as well as the cable itself became almost an all day job.   Well the good news is that most of the stuff is now sorted out or at least I have a clue as to what's in most of the boxes.   

Some advice for someone thinking about starting a restoration.  Try not to move more then twice during your project.  Also Take plenty of pictures of the car and everything you disassemble because no matter how good your memory is, it might be years before you get to put those parts back together again.



For more pictures & info see link below:

http://www.chetscoins.com/1948p15/2010/07182010.htm

Chet...