69 Z/28 Day II Project (Air Force Brat)

[COPO]

The Stinger hood and the new wheels will look killer. I continue to be amazed how quickly and with such quality this restoration has come together.

[NorCam]

Yeah...me too actually.

Tearing it down quickly and getting it out for blasting helped to spearhead things, but the big push was from Ron who did the body & paint in a very short period of time. Now that it's home though is a different story. I've been busy squirreling away the needed parts and restoring a lot of them in my shop while the bodywork was going on. I've already started by putting more trim on the car in the past 24 hours than my green Z saw in 3 years of it sitting here after it was painted. Today I'll hang the rear bumper, install the front lighting buckets and the original T3 lamps.

I should mention that starting today, there will be 2 of us working full time on the assembly for the month of December. With that, it should start to take shape really fast. As usual, I'll be telling the story with lots of pictures so stay tuned as we work away at the assembly.

[X66 714]

Looks real good Graeme...Joe

[Chuck_Burg]

Looks great! I'm also amazed with your progress. Stoked you picked up Jason's Stinger Hood. Awesome to have two hoods for the car!

[NorCam]

In the past few days, I've had lots of time to go over the front end sheet metal and I'm not completely happy with the overall alignment or the fender to door gaps. In saying that, Keith and I will spend some time tweaking the gaps to see if we can make things a touch better upfront. After planning those changes, we set out to get the rear bumper installed and had it on and off a couple of times while chasing a 1/8" of overhang until we got it perfect. I have to say that Anthony at Alberta Plating did a phenomenal job plating the original bumper as it was expertly chromed inside and out.

Next, I unboxed a pair of rear guards I had thought were NOS because they were in an old carton? Once I pulled them out and tried fitting them I quickly realized those were a set of repro's that I had thrown into those boxes 4/5 years ago when I found a NOS set for use on the green car. Needless to say, these will be coming off when I come across another set of GM guards. If anybody has a nice set of NOS rear-guards, send me a message would ya? Here are a few shots of today's work including some decals from Don Lightfoot, a NOS trunk seal I got from Leo Pepino, and the bumper after it was fit back onto the car.


Must have gone around and over under the car 50 times today. Where does the time go?


Test fitting the NOS latex weatherstripping I picked up from another sYc member. What a difference this stuff makes in closing!


All of the bumper brackets were blasted and powder coated. All new hardware was used.


Triple chrome plated by our local plating guy at Alberta Plating. I think I'll take the door handles in now. (lol)


Both sides are nice and even after a couple of rounds of fitting this original bumper.


The plating is just killer and now I will have to re-chrome the door handles and the mirrors as this makes nice originals look bad.


The rear end is looking good and I did what I could to fit the repro guards, but they will change out when I find another NOS set.


And the traditional trunk decals as sourced from Don Lightfoot. I took all of 10 seconds to place these without any concern. (lol)

[Crush]

That car looks fast sitting still!

[Zedder]

How can you not love a freshly restored car!

[napa68]

Hell, you are going to have time to build a car for your boy before summer!

[NorCam]

Originally Posted by napa68

Hell, you are going to have time to build a car for your boy before summer!

When I'm done with this one...I'm taking a year off.

[X66 714]

It's a disease....I doubt it...Joe