A small primer on the paint and body - no pun intended.
I have loved the GM A body for as long as I can remember. The Cutlass Supreme body style was always my favorite. I have owned several A body's throughout the years, but have never had the financial resources to take one this far. Paint and body is like my Unicorn. It is the one thing on an automobile I cannot do myself - and have never had the money to have someone else do the work for me. This car is going to be a driver. I won't be driving it in the rain, but it will never be a trailer queen. Therefore some of the paint and body isn't going to be done quite as well as it could be, or as well as some others think it should be. Having said that, I do believe this car will turn out to be the best looking, best condition A body I have ever owned.
Click on a picture for a larger version.
June 28th, 2002. Almost one full year since I last did any work to the car. Now I have to make a 2 hour mad rush to take everything off/out of the car, pull the car out, remove any last minute items and get the car loaded. Scheduling conflicts suck :( The first 2 pictures in this set are of the car as it sat in my garage - anything that sets for a year becomes a storage shelf.
Just arrived, outside the shop.
July 18th, 2002. Visit to the body shop reveals some progress. The driver's side quarter panel on this car has been replaced once before I ever owned the car. The upper seam had busted shortly after I purchased it. My original plan was the to have the quarter replaced with a used original one, but the body man wanted to see what he could do with the existing one first. In the pictures below he has already re-welded the seem and added some metal on the back side for stability. *I* can still tell the quarter is a bit shallow (it was just made wrong - cheap aftermarket panels) but it definitely looks the best it has since I have owned the car. Check out the alignment job they did on the doors!
August 8th, 2002. More progress! I wish you could see how smooth they are getting the body. All the little nicks and dents are gone. In the 5th picture you can see the new window channel. This piece is an aftermarket panel available just about anywhere. It fit really well. There was one extra hole that had no apparent purpose they had to weld up, but other than that it fit beautifully. Sorry for the weird angles, the shop is pretty small and there isn't much room to get really good shots.
September 23rd, 2002. Progress stalled out a bit as the owner of the body shop's assistant suffered kidney failure. He had to go back to Mexico to search for a donor. Below you can see the hood after some initial prep work. This is a heavy fiberglass reproduction hood from Year One. Both fenders are being fitted and both quarters are done.
December 11th, 2002. Progress has been greatly delayed trying to track down and correct a fit problem between the hood and the two fenders. The hood just didn't line up with the fenders, but we couldn't really tell which part was the culprit. Finally we decided to try a different driver's side fender. That helped, but not enough. I don't have any pictures of the fit problems, but basically the hood was about 7/16" of too low for about 3" on the front edge of the driver's side fender. Ultimately the body man had to break (yes break) the corner on the W-25 hood and reset it. Now it fits almost perfect as you can see below.
Also during this time, the body man expressed dissatisfaction with the driver's quarter panel. After working with it for sometime, he finally saw what I had been seeing all along - it is too shallow. We considered what to do about it and decided he wanted to look at the original used quarter I had. After he removed the quarter from the chunk of car I had, I decided it was too rough to mess with. The body guy was able to pull the quarter panel out just a bit. It is still too shallow, but it looks a lot better than it did.
January 11th, 2003. Almost anyone who is into older cars and restorations have undoubtly heard the tales of "bodyshop hell." I can't really say that this experience has been "hell" for me, but here's some advice for wouldbe restorers. Don't go through someone else to have your work done. Deal with directly with people who are going to do the work from the beginning. I'm at that point now, but this deal has taken way longer and cost much more than it should have because I was being "hooked up" by a friend. The "hookup" hasn't done anything for this project thus far.
On the good news, PAINT! Well paint in progress. The pictures really do not do it justice. The paint work should be done in the next week, then the car will need 2 weeks to cure so the stripes can be added. Hopefully my car will be home by the end of the month.
February 22nd, 2003. After 8 months the car finally comes home. The pictures were taken outside the shop and just as the car got home to my garage. The hood and decklid aren't quite finished yet, but both fenders are already home. Look at that shine! It is hard to tell in these pictures, but the paint job is not perfect - and that is exactly what I wanted. I wanted a really nice looking car that wasn't so perfect I would be scared to drive it. Originally I had planned for this car to be a mean mid-11 second street car that would only be driven in nice weather. Recently however, I have decided that this car will be built out to be a daily driver.
This will be the final update to this page until the car is completely re-assembled.
