I hesitate to call it a restoration, so let's call it a "refurbishing"
I've been posting a bunch of questions recently, so I thought I'd put up some photos.
I bought this car about three weeks ago in the Bay Area. The overall sheet metal and body condition were outstanding being an original California car. The paint was very faded, and the interior has some sun damaged areas, but overall the car was extremely straight. Not a lick of rot, no damaged panels, and the car drives great.
The only downside is the car currently has an Oldsmobile 455 in it, but the PO was at least sanitary in his install - reconnecting the Air Conditioning, replacing the frame mounts with Olds mounts, and doing a pretty sanitary wiring job as well. The car came with the original 400 engine block, which I will at some point rebuild and replace (the current motor runs awesome, so I'm going to save that expense for later)
I have the original window sticker and the car was very loaded. PS/PB, tilt wheel, Speed Warning sensor, Fuel Warning Light, Air Conditioning, Map Light, 4-way power seat - a well optioned car. I have all the PHS documentation for it as well.
I've spent the last few weeks making sure the mechanical condition was good. Had the transmission serviced, put a 3.36 POSI rear end (to replace the factor 2.93), added a TACH, got the wiring straightened out and other general maintenance. I replaced the leaking steering box with a fast-ratio unit and did some body panel alignment, as well as many Peformance Years orders to get things back in order.
This has also given me some time to enjoy the car before I stripped it down this past week for paint.
My plans for the car are to keep it *mostly* original. I am going to have the exterior painted Verdoro green instead of the April Gold. I'm going to keep the gold interior, but the dash and center console are faded in weird areas due to sun damage, so I'm going to repaint the dash and console black. I'm going to mimic the color scheme of the Parchment interiors, actually. Black Dash, Black Console, Black Carpet - but door panels, seat covers, headliner, etc. all Gold. I even called Legendary Interiors last week, and I'm having custom-made door panels in April Gold, but with Black Carpet along the bottom. It should have a very factory look to it, and I think the black/gold combination will offset very nicely.
Here are pics of the car from the original craigslist ad, and a couple I shot as I drove the car back 800 miles from northern CA to Washington state.
