Very cool project! Seeing the before and after sandblasting is giving me anxiety for when I finally decide to have mine painted
If you hid those patches under the paint (and it looked good) I can only imagine what’s under mine.
A restomod would be a really cool build. Slap in a 5-speed Tremec TKX/6-speed Tremec Magnum or do the ZF8HP70 8-speed auto swap behind a turbo Pontiac or turbo/supercharged LS.