last February I purchased a 74 Gold Duster that was a runner but had a bunch of dents and the interior was totally shot. It has a 318 in it that ran fairly well ,but has well past its prime. The 904 Automatic Trans was rebuilt like a year before and presented no problems, but he car drove like a truck, the front suspension was in need of help. I wish I had taken some pics of it in its original condition, but my son did that and they were deleted from his camera. Well, I got started on getting the parts together for this restoration like in March and had decided to remove the broken down bench seat and replace it with buckets and a center console. The car was very light blue with white top and trim, honestly is was REAL UGLY! The interior was medium blue and all of the plastics were faded and cracked in some way. In the end I found it much easier to get black interior parts instead of blue, so we went with black. I had to purchase all of the wheel well covers, door panels, dash cap, carpet, head liner, Sail Panels on line as I wanted a new looking car when finished. E_BAY was great for finding new and NOS parts although some think they are made of gold.
Once the interior was out I made a change of plans and decided to go with a 4 speed. I found a 833 overdrive unit on Craig's list for a reasonable price and went down to L.A. to get it. Once the engine and trans was out of the car, I felt that the car could be much more if I just put a Little more time into it. Last August we had the car ready for paint and off it went to the paint shop. Luck would have it that a past customer of mine was a body and paint guy, so he hooked me up with a killer $5000 paint job for just the cost of materials. That was awesome, but I did not get the car back until after Christmas!
After the car came back from paint, the real fun began. I have posted pictures from that point on in this thread and you can see the progress.
Today I officially finished the job. The car had been sitting in my drive way were I was doing the work. My garage is occupied by my 68 Road Runner, so I have no place to work but in the open. I had the car painted white and it look cool , but the white paint stains real easy. I used the Car Bar kit from Mother's to remove the stains, and that stuff is AWESOME! After the clay bar stripping operation, I applied a coat of Nu-Finish wax and it looks great. I had posted some completion pictures.
