I went by and did a wax and polish on the car as the customer has almost finished the assembly. I must admit the customer did a great job on the reassembly and the restoration of all the parts. Here are a few pictures of the almost complete car.
The owner decided that he would rather run without flairs. This meant that both rear quarters will need replaced along with the wheel tubs to return to a stock appearance. Having a cage welded into the car is a double edged sword, it is in the way and you bang your head on it while working, but nothing needs to be braced as it is all welded into one structure.
The front end of the car is completely spotweled in place as the factory did. Bot door steps are welded in along with the A-Panels. The A-panels and door steps were butt welded in place rather than the typical lapping over in the door jamb, this gives a seamless appearance as the factory work.
This car has been waiting in the wings for it day under the knife. It has had quite a few body modifications, repairs, and patching. As this is a custom build the customer taped over the holes that needed to be welded up (green tape in photos). The goal is for a clean vintage style mini, with a dash of early 60′s coachwork. As of now the car is receiving a new front end and lower doorsteps/ quarter panels to bring back body lines and fix damage/ repairs.
The Cooper S is finally finished and ready for delivery. The body has been wet-sanded, polished and glazed. The owner has already assembled the frames and engine, ready to drop in and finish assembly. It is going to be a beautiful car when finished with a red and gold brocade interior.
In the restoration industry everything that is painted is polished. If it is a show car then it is cut and polished. The “cut” refer to wet sanding the surface down top remove the orange peal for a glass smooth finish. Here are some of the parts and the body after the final cut and polish.
Roof was scuffed and painted black. Black has to be one of my favorite colors to pait as it show that you did the prepwork right, it will also show if you skipped a step or got lazy at any point. After final polish it will be a mirror finish as all black roofs should be. You will notice that the rear number plate was also painted gloss black to match the roof perfectly.
After final sanding the body, it was wiped down to check the reflection lines. Then came the final masking for paint. The final masking off was done once the car was in the paint booth. After spraying the red the roof will be sanded down and the black roof sprayed. Notice how the factory numbers come out nice and clear because they were masked off during priming and only received the final coats of paint. The final color is much darker than the pictures as the reflections in the booth make it appear orange.
Interior has been sanded and painted, the cross-member had to many defects and needed to be redone. The cross-member was masked off, prepped, re-masked and repainted for a flawless finish. Interiors are tough to paint as no matter how clean you get them debris comes out of all the cavities and gets in the paint, you just have to repair what is unacceptable.
The underside of the car has been undercoated and painted. You will notice in the first picture that the brackets/ mounts on the underside were not undercoated, just received the final coats of color. The masking on the final pictures is to prevent over spray when the interior is painted.
