This car is amazing Justin. I remember back when I rebuilt mine (I will not say restored, as that term is possibly wrong in comparison to what you are presenting to everyone here) the bodywork took nearly 3 years to come together with paint, ready to buff. I allowed myself a 2 week period off work for the final assembly. Granted, I did have some parts sitting there waiting to place on the car, but no where near the extent you have gone to. I take my hat off to your workmanship and skill, and your obvious amount of patience to achieve the final goal of perfection.
My two-week stint got real tight with the last 3 days being sleepless before arriving at the Concours Show in 2002 with some very obvious flaws and missing items....luckily very few were discovered by the judges. I guess presenting some classic American Muscle at a predominantly British car show was always going to throw a spanner in the works. Never mind...ended up placing 4th by a mere 14 points to the winner - and 13 of those were due to age points - to my disadvantage obviously. I'll take a technical second thanks.
If I knew then what I know now....I would probably have taken 3 months off work to perform the same tasks. I mean, we only fired the engine for the first time less than 18 hours before driving the 10 miles to the show.....and the front and rear windscreens only went in on the Friday before (2 days). Wheel alignment was done with a set of vintage manual gauges in my garage on the floor, by an expert aligner. The interior coat hooks above the doors were upside down (thanks to my brother) - but that wasn't spotted by any of the judges.
The judges did spend a lot of time looking down the panel work....and they spent more time on my car than any other - it showed with an extremely high score in that area. They were baffled as to how such a good finish could be achieved on such a hideous American piece of trash.
I suspect we turned their thinking upside-down that day.
Keep it going, and don't ever compromise time for the finished look. You only get one chance to be perfect now.
