Now that the freshly painted 1973.5 911 is back in our shop, we can start working on its reassembly.
We're starting the process by figuring out what needs to be installed prior to other pieces. Make sense, right? It sounds easier than it is, as it can be a little confusing. We know that the turn signals are easiest to install while the bumpers are still off the car, so that was one of the first things we remounted. We're using new gaskets and bulbs, but polishing the original lenses.
Of course, some things, like the badges and other brightwork can be installed at nearly any time, and they provide us with a little motivational boost. Here's one of our orange-bar hood crests to replace the incorrect red badge that came on the car.
This car came to us as a largely original car with some fundamental flaws—the pedal box issue and a rusty gas tank that was probably the original cause for its dormancy. It had a mediocre paint job, but was otherwise original—much of the trim and rubber was as the car left the factory.
Now that we've undertaken the bare-metal, windows-out repaint to a very high standard, the question becomes how much do we replace and how much do we just clean, polish and install? We're replacing some things, like the fragile rocker decos and end caps, but keeping other parts, like the engine grille, as it came. Our goal is to finish the project with a very original-appearing car with as few flaws as possible. In short, we want it to look like what it is—a 1973.5 911 with just 50,000 miles on the odometer.
To that end, we're doing a lot of cleaning and polishing, rather than replacing. The turn signal and tail light lenses, for example, are being polished, rather than replaced. The sugar-scoop headlights are being cleaned and polished instead of just replacing them with the arguably better H4s.
