Autobody
I can remember the first night. After all the oohs and ahs, I got down to work. As I was pounding on the front fender with a hand sledge to straighten a ding, I can remember turning to a classmate and saying "I didn't ever think that I would actually own a Ferrari, much less, be hitting it with a hammer".
It takes about 2 years of 2 nights a week classes to completely re-do a car. During that time I was driving it in whatever condition that it was in. One day I tore out of work a little fast and whipped around a corner, picking up a local police cruiser on my tail. After the next turn, on came his lights. I quickly pulled over got out, undoing the wire around to door and window posts that kept the door closed (it was summer), before he could see that there might be some mechanical violations to write up. I talked my way out of the ticket and he ignored the lack of bumpers, door locks, windows, etc.
Since the car was stripped when I got it, I don't know the original color. However, from inspecting some paint layers on the radiator overflow tank, I think it's been dark red, sky blue, gold, silver and now bright red.
I finally got it done and painted though I wasn't satisfied with the final paint job but I had nobody to blame by myself. I fixed up a couple of spots on the trunk (thus starting the trunk saga, to be continued) and had to re-lead a couple of areas that were cracking.
Above rear quarter window at the corner of the rear window
Headlight Scoop
The area around the headlight scoop is mainly lead, up to two inches thick. The steel only generally follows the final shape, so all of the sharp edges and flowing lines are done in lead with a thin layer of auto body compound for the final smoothing. The reason that the lead cracked was that there were pin holes of rust in the underlying steel. Since rust takes more space than the steel, it cracked the lead. I had to melt all of the lead, braze up each hole and then re-lead the whole area. When I first started doing leading I could guarantee that for every pound of lead I used, only about a half pound would end up stuck on the car. The rest would run or fall off onto the floor.
When I spot painted in these areas, the underlying paint shrank and crazed. So I ended up wet sanding the whole car and primered it with guaranteed PPG primer that would fix all problems. Then some coats of PPG acrylic enamel and clear coat. Of course, the crazing on the trunk lid came right through. In addition, the clear sprayed on thinner than the color coat and thus ended up running in a couple of spots. At this point, I got fed up with the whole situation and quit working on the car, not even polishing the paint out nor putting on any of the trim, etc.
Here's what it looked like:
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