restoman

Very nice job. I really like it!

I bought a couple Dodge pickup grills and some bumpers from them last year. Might have bought a Dodge tailgate too... No complaints at all. Nice castings.

Nice!

I'd be interested in this... the '66 Coupe DeVille is my favourite Cadillac and I've got a friend who has two of them for reference.

Nice work!

For me, it's this one... Though I built it as a base model 383, bench seat, column shift Bee, it invokes strong memories of my first introduction to muscle cars in 1970. In grade 1, owned by a teacher at the two room school I went to, the Turquoise machine left an indelible imprint on my impressionable young mind.

That's frigging awesome! Female or not, automotive trades need more young folks entering it, with passion and commitment to life-long learning. It can be a good life. There's nothing quite like being able to fix what's broken, or designing something that didn't exist before, or creating something better. It's what drove me for over 30 years. Tell your Baby Girl we're all rooting for her!

Very nice! I re-did a glue bomb of this kit last year and had fun doing it. Yours looks fantastic!

Very nice work!

Fair warning: Do not look at those fotki links unless you're ready to spend some money. Placed my order last week...

I love it!!!! I've got something similar in the planning stages, hope it turns out half as nice as yours!

I bought the '69 300, as well as his '78/'79 Chrysler, and while I haven't started the '69 yet, it's close to the top of the heap. I owned a '69 Chrysler that I cloned into a 300 back in the mid to late '80s, and the resin kit is pretty much spot-on as far as I can see. Mine will be a bit of a custom, the way my 1:1 was. Never finished the 1:1 version but the resin one will be! The '78/'79 Chrysler is very nice as well, and is active on my bench. IIRC, I think I spent close to $300 CDN for both kits and shipping to Canada. I don't regret spending a nickel of that.

Nice, clean build. Very, very nice!

Very nice! Lovin' the bodywork and paint, and the six cylinder is a great touch!

What a difference! Nice work, as usual.

Very nice! I'm a sucker for Pontiacs of the 60s and early 70s, GTOs in particular.

Ayup... I feel the same. To me, it's all about having fun and relaxing. The need to be seen or recognized has never been with me, the need to be creative has.

Thank you. Nice to hear that from another car guy. I miss the work greatly, but it's beyond my abilities now. Every once in a while, I'll drop by my buddy's shop just to get the feel again. They're primarily a collision shop but the sounds and some of the smells are the same.

'69 Charger. My last full-on body job. I started this in '07 and finished it to this stage in the summer of '13. Not as slow as it sounds, as it sat in storage for 4 of those years. Another from another "shop", I ended up replacing the left front frame rail, the torsion bar crossmember, both complete rockers, front fender aprons, both rear rail sections, taillight panel, lower rear panel, both quarters, right front fender and the hood. US Car Tool frame connectors were added. Oh yeah.. both doors were welded up and the decklid got a new right lip repair. The fiberglass, duct tape (yes - duct tape) and tar weren't good enough for the $14+ the owner paid the other guy. Surprisingly enough the floors and trunk floor installed by the other fella were usable. This pic is when it left my house for the long ride back to the St Catherines area. It's owned by the same guy who owns the '71 New Yorker. One of the best customers I've ever had. It's not finished beyond what the pics show yet. A 440, bucket and console automatic, with A/C, power windows and seats car, in the original F6 green. It'll have a white vinyl top some day. And last, and sometimes, least: My '74 Super Beetle. We've owned it since 1995, been driving it since the late summer of '96. This is the first of maybe a dozen VWs I've done, and Boy!, was it a learning curve. I never should have bought this particular car, it was so rusted and cobbled. Covered in bondo and flat black paint, it fooled me completely. Wasn't till I started taking it apart that I started feeling embarrassed for having been snookered. Everything except the engine and transaxle has been re-done, and it's refinished in Honda Milano Red, and Chrysler Cool Vanilla base clear, with a white interior. I've owned a lot of cars, from big block B bodies, to Volvos, to Toyotas. but even though this is the slowest of the bunch (if you're in a hurry, take the bus!), it's the most fun to drive car I've ever owned. It's due for a freshening after 23 years - hidden hinges, roll back roof, different wheels, etc, but it's going to be the same old Bug we've come to love! Comments always welcome!

Last ones... The '34 Ford shell... it was pretty much scrap when he brought it in. Way back somewhere in it's life, it had been rolled and left for dead. I think it came from the US high plains area. Rough doesn't begin to describe what I started with... Straightened it up, converted the deck lid, put a floor in it, as well as most of the firewall, lower front panels, and lower quarters. I can't for the life of me remember what the colour name was, but it's done in single layer urethane, matched to a small bit that was still glossy in the cowl vent opening. The owner put it together - I re-did the fenders, boards, hood, etc. - and it looks gorgeous the odd time it's out in the sun. Jaguar. I spent two days aligning the sheet metal after another *shop* did some *work* on it. I had to wait till the owner left before I could begin to manipulate things to fit. He was pretty adamant that he did not want to have to paint anything. A lot of gentle bending, some not-so-gentle bending and a good bit of brute force got it all back to acceptable standards. He let me drive it around the block a few times. Nice! Unlike anything I've ever driven before. '71 Westy...locally owned, brought from Wisconsin for his daughter. Wisconsin should tell you all you need to know about the shape it was in. IIRC, the bodyshop bill was around $20k, in 2005 dollars. The mechanical bill was close to half of that. A new Scat crate engine, dual Kadrons, header/extractor, all new brakes with rear discs, etc... She still owns it and it still looks great. It was originally orange and white. Hell Blau and white now. The two '56 Mercurys belong to the fella who owns the Lincoln and the Merc woody. A nice set of bookends. Another shop had done the convertible for him, in yellow and white. When the colour literally fell off in sheets, he brought it to me. This is the only car he ever complained about the price with me. Understandable, since he'd already paid someone else to do it. The Sun Valley is stunning! These pics are taken in the owners yard, after he put them back together.

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

I once worked in a shop early in my career where most of the guys spent as little as possible on their tools and a visit from the MAC dealer was sporadic. Being the tool slut that I am, I was the exception when it came to buying. He often made it a point to drop in or call just to see if I needed anything, even warranty. He didn't bother with the non-buyers. That was the ONLY place where the tool guys were hit and miss, and that was 30 some-odd years ago. My good friend, who also happens to be my last Snap-On dealer, explains his philosophy: "You spend money with me, I look after you, because I want you to keep spending money on my truck." Simple, direct and easy to understand. I think I put his kids through college...

A couple more... The red Nova SS is a western Canada car, 350 4 speed. Very solid. The fella who owned this car was one of those customers every shop owner dreams about: A genuinely nice guy who was thoroughly appreciative of the work his car needed, and the effort involved to get it to look this good. He didn't even moan and whine about the cost, just left a bottle of rye on my desk and two very straight black marks out of the parking lot. The huge '71 New Porker... owned by a friend. It's not really worth anything but he loves it. Passes everything but a gas station, as he says. 1969 Beaumont. Or, rather, a collection of '68 & '69 parts that someone put together. This car had all the typical GM A body convertible problems and a few that weren't typical, and has to be near the top of my list of cars that turned my shop white. There was soooooo much filler removed from this baby. The '69 GTO still looks very much the same today as it did when I finished my portion of the work on it in 2006. A father-and-son project that stalled when Jr. went off the university. The Ram Air engine built to IV specs is bolted to the Muncie and waiting for someone to pay some attention to it. A wavy, wavy, wavy car, and fitting that Enduro bumper was a nightmare, like most of them are. I think I spent most of a day pulling the twist out of it and getting it to line up without distorting everything around it. Gotta love Verdoro Green! Parts of my dream car live on in the '74 Swinger. A local car, originally a 318 slug. I sold him the nicely built 360, 727, and 3.23 SG geared rear I had planned to put in my '69 Dart. New quarters, a set of rally wheels I had kicking around and a set of oooooollllllld 'glass fenders to go with the rims ended up here. It's a pretty peppy little bomb. I've always had a thing for Mopar A bodies... Comments always welcome.

Yup. Same here.. and before you know it, those guys who looked down their noses at your tools, are asking to borrow them. I've worked with more than a few guys who spent more time cleaning and beaming over their tools than actually using them... I will say that I've got an old set of S-K SAE combo wrenches that have served me extremely well. I'd put them in the same league as my much-more-expensive Snap-On sets. A lot of the fault of rounded fasteners today lies with the quality of the fasteners themselves. That's where the flank drive excels.

I'm one of those Snap-On snobs... except when it comes to their roll cabs and tool chests. I've never been able to justify to myself spending that obscene amount of money on tool storage. The roll cabinet assembly that has served me well since the early 80s is two Craftsman cabinets - a 12 drawer and a 9 drawer - bolted together and sitting on a 2" angle iron chassis with HD Snap-On casters. A 12 drawer Craftsman top chest sits on the 9 drawer cab, and a 1/8" steel plate sits on top of the 12 drawer cab and the 2 end cabs that are bolted to the side of the 12 drawer. It's huge, even by today's standards. Drawers are sliders and they still work ok, though the lower ones are balky sometimes. I don't think I have more than $1000 invested in the whole shebang, and have gotten 30+ year out of it. I rolled the whole thing to be beside every car I was working on. Sometimes it might move 4 times a day, back in the day. Thought many times how I should put a motor and steering mechanism on it. It weighs a ton! I looked at the General and Icon boxes at the Port Huron HF. They looked pretty decent to me... If I was in the market for a new storage system, they'd be a definite contender.