RESTORATION QUICK VIEW FOR MY 1967 E-TYPE 2+2 COUPE I know my listing of over 40 articles (and growing) can be a little intimidating. Here is a quick view of my restoration effort. Hopefully it will whet your apptitude to dig into the full set of articles.

Here is the car as I originally purchased it from a fellow in Duirham, NC. He had a wife and young child and had gotten tired of trying to keep up (and pay for) maintenance issues with the car. He told me he bought the car out of New York City. I didn't look bad from 20 feet. The clutch was frozen and the brakes were not operating. I started it up and listened to it run. I poked around at the sheet metal. It seemed OK to me so I bought it.

Fast forward a lot. I broke the clutch free by driving it around. I replaced the front brake calipers with Volvo calipers. I took it out for one test drive. It scared the hell out of me when the brakes failed. I limped home and licked my wounds. I decided to drop the rear end (the IRS). Half of the bottom of the car came out with it! I was to find that rust was everywhere. Massive sheet metal repair was required. The car sat for a couple of years while a built my 2 car garage. Finally, I moved the car into the new garage and tore into it.

New floor boards (both sides). New "boot" floor (under the spare tire and the gas tank). Extensive work on the sills, although they were actually better off than other parts of the car. Work around the rear wheel openings. For sure, I did a good job of fixing all of the rear suspension attach points. Partial door skins.

The rotisserie is home made, fabricated from several Harbor Freight engine stands. It is pretty much a requirement if you need to do a full set of bodywork without killing yourself.

I used the red pressure tank type sandblaster to work the body into shape. What you don't see is the Bel Aire 2 stage compresser, which is the minimum size that will keep up with the sandblaster or the bead blast cabinet. The black powder is abrasive media I purchased from Northern Hydraulics. Besides being unsightly, it seemed to have the odd oversize particle that clogged the nozzle of the gun. I switched to a white sand product that I got from Capital Lumber Supply in Raleigh and it worked much better. BTW Home Depot playground sand will clog the nozzle too.

Eventually my attention turned to the framework assembly in the engine compartment. The "picture frame" was trashed. So was the bonnet support. The left and right frames had some issues but I worked through them. I had the suspension members zinc plated with a clear coating. A few trick items from Classic Jaguar in Austin can be seen including the Alden shocks and the pretty green steering rack hard mounts.

Eventually the day comes where you get to start painting. I used all modern Dupont Automotive paints, all of which are either epoxy based or urethane based. No enamal. No laquer. The good thing is that these products are forgiving to the amateur painter, as at all stages blems and screwups can generally be dealt with via sanding and buffing. But they are toxic so I sprung for a supplied air hood to give my lungs a break.

I decided to paint the car Old English White. It is a classic color, cooler in the NC summers for a car with no A/C, and easier to make look good then some of the flashier colors. This picture was taken right after blasting it with clear coat.

I'm starting to go gray. Probably a result of this project! I am a happy man here because I have finished shooting paint, buffing, and polishing. It shines so bright I had to wear shades :)

Finally on to the mechanical arts. Still a lot of painting and plating required but at least I got to turn some wrenches too. Here is the IRS. Note the in-board disc brakes. Very racey for any car produced in the early 60's.

There are a million sub-systems to deal with in an E-Type. In this picture we can see the CoolCat radiator, the header tank, the Aldin shocks, the cross drilled brake rotors, the Wilwood calipers, the rebuilt steering rack, the brake master cylinder, slave cylinder with vacuum booster, the fluid bottles, the windshield wiper motor, and much more that can't be seen.

Somewhere along the way I installed the rear hatch glass. Only exceeded in difficulty by having to later put in the front windshield! My wife stepped in and provided the finesse required to complete the job.

Being sufficiently impressed with the Lucas Prince of Darkness reputation, I redid the entire electrical system, with some modern upgrades to increase reliability.

The engine was sent to Coventry West in Atlanta for rebuilding. I had wanted to do this myself but after finding severe issues with loose parts in the combustion chambers, I decided to turn it over to Dick Maury and crew. Attached to the rear is a JT-5 five speed tranny by Paul Cangialosi at 5speeds.com.

My, isn't that stainless steel exhaust system pretty!

Here is the bonnet as it goes back together. It was in bad shape. I will probably have several hundred hours invested in it before I am done.

A shot of the Kool Mat heat and sound insulation that I put into the passenger compartment. Thanks to Pat at D&H Heat Technologies in Morrisville, NC for her help.

And with that we have caught up to current times. The hood is painted. As others have said, there are a tremendous amount of manhours between this one and the last picture!