Classic Car Restoration

Chapter 1: You Can Finish This: The Restoration Mindset and How to Use This Book

There is a moment that separates every person who has ever restored a classic car from every person who has merely thought about it. It is not the moment you buy the car, and it is not the moment you roll it into the shop on a trailer with a dead battery and four flat tires. It is the moment, usually about six weeks in, when you are lying on your back under a rusted floor pan with a wire wheel in your hand, and you realize that the car is now completely disassembled, the parts are in forty-seven labeled bags, and the only way out is through. That is the moment this book is for.

I have been through that moment more times than I can count. I have restored a 1967 Mustang fastback that was hit in the rear hard enough to push the trunk floor into the rear seat. I have restored a 1970 Datsun 240Z that had been parked in a field for nineteen years, with a tree growing through the floor pan. I have restored a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air that had been "restored" twice before by people who used bondo like it was spackle and paint like it was a bandage. I have made every mistake you can make with a grinder, a welder, a spray gun, and a checkbook. This book is the result of those mistakes, and