1980 Spider Restoration Progress

This is the place to discuss restoration problems, post questions or projects-complete or partial.
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Kongphooey
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 8:14 am
Your car is a: 1980 Spider 2000

1980 Spider Restoration Progress

Post by Kongphooey »

So this is my first restoration project ever. Thought you guys would like to see the progress.

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0NGqkRUiGIu0dA

I bought a great car in South Carolina for $1650 off Craigslist. Yes...I was skeptical but drove 5 hours to pick it up and was very pleasantly surprised. The ad said the car hadn't run in 2 years but when we arrived we asked if it would start and it fired right up. The body was also in incredible condition. It took removing the entire interior to find a single very small rust hole under the passenger seat. All in all we've started with a very solid car.

So far we have almost completely replaced the front suspension and everything underneath has been resprayed and coated.

Drive line completely updated to eliminate a nasty vibration and new springs all the way around. We lowered it 1.5 inches. Looks great.

Went to put it back on the road after the driveline and suspension updates but during electrical testing we fired up the heater and the valve blew filling the passenger side with nice hot coolant. What a mess.

Completely replace the valve and heater core so should be good to go now as far as that goes.

In the mean time we completely pulled the interior and will be working to freshen that over the next few weeks.

Obviously those aren't all the details but here is a link to my photo album of the project in progress.

Doing this with my dad and having a great time. Wish we had done this years ago. FYI. I'm 44.

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0NGqkRUiGIu0dA

Enjoy the link. If anyone has any suggestion or comments please share. As I said this is my first time tackling anything like this so we are figuring it out as we go.
klweimer
Posts: 550
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:45 am
Your car is a: 1982 Spider 2000
Location: Arvada, Colorado

Re: 1980 Spider Restoration Progress

Post by klweimer »

Looks like a good project car! The rust on the floor pan is very limited, so hopefully the rest of the chassis is as well.
Kirk
Kongphooey
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 8:14 am
Your car is a: 1980 Spider 2000

Re: 1980 Spider Restoration Progress

Post by Kongphooey »

Thanks. So far that's the only rust we've found. Fingers crossed.

Mike
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