Edit... Resto mod FIRST DRIVE

[Ptoneill]

Looking at your doors it looks like you have speaker cutouts in them, did you do this or is this something they put in the fuel injected cars? Looking good wish I had body working skills I am thinking off having Scott replicate your license plate cutout.
Did you fabricate it yourself or did you cut in a doner panel?

[SoFlaFiat]

Pat, not sure about the early cars but I know my 77 has the same hole. Whether it was designed for speakers, not sure.
I just put the tabs in on Friday



They will get threads tapped in so that the speaker can mount after the door panel.
Unfortunately I am missing the door looms and they are back ordered at AR. I'll have to figure something out on that front.

[SoFlaFiat]

Looking good wish I had body working skills I am thinking off having Scott replicate your license plate cutout.
Did you fabricate it yourself or did you cut in a doner panel?

Way back at the beginning, I found a license plate frenching panel and fit it while welding up the whole back end.



This is where I started to learn how to weld! Ha

[Ptoneill]

Pat, not sure about the early cars but I know my 77 has the same hole. Whether it was designed for speakers, not sure.
I just put the tabs in on Friday



They will get threads tapped in so that the speaker can mount after the door panel.
Unfortunately I am missing the door looms and they are back ordered at AR. I'll have to figure something out on that front.

What a good idea!! Looks very nice. The door loom? Are you referring to the plastic tube that the wire runs thru between the door and the body? I bought a nice setup fron Jegs it was stainless braided but I screwed it up....I will probably go with a metal tube and just shroud the wires in a protective heavy duty shrink wrap.

As for the license plate thanks for the info! Amazing the amount of work you have done!

[SoFlaFiat]

Yep, it just took some looking and I found some nice stainless braided ones on Amazon.
I have to say, going back through the pictures I have taken is always motivation in the slow progress times. I know full well that I have brought this car full round but still fun to look back and see how bad it was when I started.
Today was a great day as I got the jambs and backs all painted early enough to strip the masking and start putting some stuff on the car.

[toplessexpat]

Hooray! Spring Thing is looking possible!

What have you used on the underside of the hood as insulation? (And why? I'm pondering on removing all under hood insulation given we want to keep the engines cooler!)

A

[SoFlaFiat]

It is dynamat hood liner. From what I have been told it helps dissipate heat, protects the hood from high engine temps and helps with sound. As with many things on this car, it is an experiment, so we will see.

Meanwhile, I am putting the new door cart to use reinstalling doors





One baby step closer to "spring thing"!!

[vandor]

Black door hinges! Very nice.

[toplessexpat]

And the dash.... I'd forgotten the dash!

[jrjr5000]

Very nice build! You mentioned cleaning crud off the bottom of the car. With your obvious eye for details, I'm curious what method you used to remove that pesky undercoating. And how did you recoat and paint it? I'm currently at that stage of my restoration and a bit hung up...

[SoFlaFiat]

I'm a little on the fence about the black hinges. It's such a dead giveaway that the car is not original!

With the car covered in masking for months, I had almost forgotten that dash as well. It put a smile on my face uncovering it for sure!

When cleaning the bottom, I used a scraper for the bulk of it and a wire wheel to clean it. I found many little holes hiding under the undercoating so was very happy to be rid of all that crap. After patching holes, most importantly around the trailing arm brackets, I simply painted the whole bottom.

[Redline]

Over here, there are places that can clean/strip the whole underbody with CO2 (dry ice blasting). It is (apparently) safe for the rubber and hard lines. The cost is not too extreme, so worth investigating if the time saved is worth some extra expenditure.

[SoFlaFiat]

Now that looks like something worth looking into!!
I made the decision to avoid blasting because I read too much about the media being impossible to clean out after the fact. This method, on the other hand, seems like it would leave nothing to clean up.

[toplessexpat]

Is it too late for a change of color?

[DieselSpider]

I also found dustless blasting interesting using water vapor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... CehkkTTeMk

Even Classic Car show host Dennis Gage is on board with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... vtI0qBL1Bc

They wash the raw metal down with a product they call Hold Tite to prevent rust as the final step before blow drying it and applying primer.