The weather was great on Sunday, so I wheeled the car out to give it a wash and colour sand it. When it was washed it looked great and I felt proud of it. There was plenty of dust in it to sand out tho, so I started blocking it down. There are a few little ripples and marks in the finish, and as I found them I started to get more down about them. I gave it a polish with the mop and compound on the passenger side and it started to rain, so I pushed it back inside and went and had a cup of tea. I felt pretty flat about the paint, but then had a moment when I thought “Why am I doing this?”. It’s a cool car, built by me, and it’s not the best finish in the world, but does it matter?

It’s never going to win a show, but that’s not why I built it. I decided to stop worrying about it and get on with putting it back together. I got a box of bits down from the roof, and fitted the door seal on the front passenger side. Then I dug out the new striker plates, fitted them, then cleaned and oiled the lock mechanism which was filthy but OK. The handle has seen better days, but when I put it on the car it looked amazing. I did the back one as well, and then got the “Bel Air” trim out of the box and polished that up as well and fitted it. What a difference now. For the hell of it, I put the new gauges in to see what they looked like, Feel really positive about it all now.