Crown

After posting up the pics of the third 246GT I recently purchased I thought it was time to start a thread on car number two that I bought back in January. I spotted the car back in early 2011 when it was being advertised as coming up for auction. It was in the very rare colour of Rosso Dino which is a deep orange an was the colour of the 246 L series Tony Curtis drove in the early 1970’s tv show The Persuaders. I’m a huge fan of orange cars and always wanted a Dino in this colour so I kept an eye on this particular example. It eventually came into my possession via a very convoluted route which I won’t bore you all with. Suffice to say that just as I thought I had reached the point of tracking down the owner I was told it had been sold. By a twist of curious fate I then found out I knew who’d bought it via a mutual friend and persuaded them it was better off in my care.

When I viewed the car it was looking tired and showing its age with worn paint, rust in the usual areas - lower rear wing corners, faded dash, incorrect coolant system hoses, various blemishes on the body including a badly touched in scrape on the passenger door and some fairly nasty looking corrosion to the lower door skins with actual holes through them and some serious bubbling corrosion to the lower front wings. None of this mattered as it was a two owner car and I could see it was extremely honest and had the potential to be a truly magnificent example. I fell in love on the spot and the deal was done. I also bought two extra original Cromodora alloys that were still fitted with their original 40 year old winter tyres from the original seller and he gave me the original Ansa exhaust back box which he'd taken of the car due to severe corrosion on it. We figured it was worth looking to see if it could be salvaged.

Here is how the car looked when I first saw it.

The next stage was getting it collected by my dealer who was a mere 405 miles away at the opposite end of the UK. As usual their service manager Mark could not have been more helpful and the collection was organised. Another friend I have in the specialist/exotic sales arena gave me the name of a specialist bodyshop he uses for preparing any of his stock that requires paintwork and who has over 25 years experience of doing complete bare metal Dino restorations. He was also having a 246 worked on by them and suggested I go and take a look at his car. I then spoke to two other dealer principals I know who have also used this bodyshop and their reviews were glowing. Armed with this glowing endorsement I contacted the owner of the bodyshop and we ended up chatting for an age about cars in general, the Dino in particular, and the people who had recommended him. I arranged to drive over to see him and look at the 246 he was working on. When I got there I could see straight away that this was the man I wanted to do the body restoration and repaint for me so we agreed a rough target date for him to start work on it.

I was warned in advance that his premises were not the most impressive but the quality of work he produces is absolutely the best. Having used many bodyshops over the years I've learned that it is the person not the premises that makes the difference.

Here is the Dino he was refreshing that convinced me he was the man for my car.

After the car arrived back in the workshop I went to see it and go through the work I wanted done with the head tech. Once it was up on the lift and the wheels removed we were able to get a better idea of what we were dealing with. 

The chassis was in great order but had surface corrosion. Back in the early 70’s long term rust protection was left to the aftermarket and companies like Waxoil and Dinitrol so the factory id almost nothing. It’s also important to remember just how much the various products used to prepare and paint cars have improved in the intervening 40 years since this car rolled out of Maranello. Overall the body was in very good shape with no signs of an accident damage during its life other than the 15cm scrape along the middle of the passenger door . The steering rack was worn and allowing too much play in the front wheels. The radiator looked ok but a bit rusty as were the cooling fan motors. The suspension bushes were worn and the wishbones in need of tidying up. The shock absorbers and springs were also looking tired after 40 years service and the engine sump had a fair accumulation of oil and road grime. The car was fitted with an aftermarket stainless steel exhaust which was in fairly good condition but didn’t make the “Dino” sound that the OEM Ansa system does. It was still fitted with its original Ansa manifolds (headers) though.

Some pics of the inspection.

Rust along lower skin of the driver's door.

R

Rust on the lower rear front wing.

Rusted lower rear wing

Another view of the driver's door.

A poor repair of the glass fibre undertray.

40 years of road grime on the suspension, fuel tank and engine.

Another shot of a grimy fuel tank (there are two, one on either side of the engine).

The spare wheel well and radiator etc. with a nasty crack in the plastic front "batchboard" visible beside the screen washer bag.

The hand brush painted scrape along the passenger door.

Pretty as a peach though with great potential to be a truly outstanding car once a bit of tlc has been applied.

The interior was looking quite tired with the leather on the driver’s seat having dried out over the years and cracking. It had also shrunk and split along one seem as a result. The dash covering had faded as normal but there were also more ominous signs of water stains in each front corner which would need further investigation. The carpets were actually in great condition as the previous owner had a set of replica floor mats made and had taken out the originals to preserve them. The windscreen wipers were not working so needed checking out at a later date. The radio also didn’t work but this was down to the somewhat bizarre fact that the car had never been fitted with an aerial from new. Apart from one item of footwell trim the interior was completely intact and original.

Some pics of the interior taken by the previous owner.

My goal with this car after my learning curve with my first 246 was to keep it as original as possible and refurbish parts as opposed to replace them. The exception to this rule was any serviceable item that would have been reasonable to have been expected to have been replaced at some point in the cars 40 year life.

The car has been maintained for the past 17 years by a small garage which specializes in old British marques – MG, Triumph etc – and it was evident from our initial inspection that they really weren’t up to the task of dealing with the 246 and evidently had not known where to source certain parts for it. One example was the ignition system where the original Magnetti Marelli Dinoplex electronic system had been removed and replaced with a Luminition system to cure a problem where the car was cutting out when running hot. They had wrongly identified the ignition system as the culprit. They also appear not to have known that the V angle of the engine in the Dino is unique and that the ignition timing needs to be very precisely set up as a result.

We decided the best course of action was to strip the car down and remove the running gear, engine, gearbox, fuel tanks, exhaust, dash and seats and put it on a cradle to allow the body shell to be put on a truck and driven the 220 miles to the bodyshop.

I tried to source a suitable cradle to put the shell on and drew a blank on finding a ready-made solution. I was offered the loan of a trolley system but in the meantime the tech at my dealer came up with a simple but ingenious solution to the problem and he fabricated a pair of cradle beams for each “axle” of the body which utlised the wishbone mounting points on the chassis to bolt onto. To save cost to me they utilized a set of braked castor wheels from a large engine winch they had on site. The resulting cradle was simple but extremely effective and allows the body to be easily pushed and steered by hand around the workshop yet allows great access to the side of the car as there are no side beams in the way.
 

With the cradle solution now sorted the strip down could begin. It took three days in total and left an impressive large jigsaw of parts on the workshop floor ready for refurbishment/replacement.

Seats and dash removed.

Engine and gearbox out.

Suspension components removed.

When the body was stripped and the windscreen removed we found that the cause of the water markets on the bulkhead edge of the dash top were due to severe corrosion of the lower corners of the windscreen frame. Prior to removing the screen there was no external sign of anything being amiss other than the stained dash top.

The chassis frame revealed for probably the first time in 40 years. The chassis is built from very thick gauge steel so although the surface has corroded it is actually in exceptionally good condition. Dinos very rarely required new chassis sections.

The exhaust manifolds were a bit rusty on the outside but the real story was on the inside.

Front bonnet off and radiator removed.

The previous owner told me that the windscreen wipers had stopped working. He thought it was a blown fuse but hadn't got around to checking it. When we stripped the car down we found the reason for the failure was down to the fact that the plastic fixing on column stalk switch had snapped at the  end where it attaches to the hub mechanism. Thanks to the wonderful Dino section on Ferrari Chat I found out that a chap called Verrell offers a column stalk repair service in the US so the offending item was carefully packaged up and sent to him for repair. It has since come back virtually good as new.

With everything that needed to be removed now off the car it was time to put it on the cradle ready for transport to the bodyshop.

Front "axle".

Rear "axle"

Ready to go.

I met the delivery truck at the bodyshop and went through the car with them to assess what needed to be done. The original intention had been to try and do as little paint as possible to preserve the original factory paint but it had quickly become apparent this was not going to be sensible or viable if the intention was the long term preservation of the car. There was evidence of micro blistering on almost every panel indicating future troubles if not dealt with. In combination with the various areas of rust that needed attention plus 40 years of fading to the paint at different rates on various parts of the car the only way forward was a complete bare metal strip down.

I have visited the bodyshop every couple of weeks since the car arrived to witness the work first hand and have been both amazed and delighted at the level of craftsmanship and attention to detail they have shown. It is only a small two man operation but the owner has restored in excess of 30 Dinos and knows everything there is to know about how the cars were built and how every little detail should look. It has been a real labour of love for them as they think it is probably the best Dino they have ever worked on as it is 100% original with no cheap bodged bodywork repairs or restorations of the year. They didn’t even mind the many, many hours of sanding the paint off as they constantly kept reveal the original body number on every panel and body fitting that had been placed there by the Sciaglietti workers when the body was built at the Modena coachworks back in 1972. This proved the car was 100% original as Scaglietti marked each part with a body number during manufacturer as each shell was handbuilt so each part made was slightly different and will only fit that car.

The shell stripped of paint.

The discovery of a lot of rust on the sill sections. Fortunately these are not structural so new parts can be fabricated to replace them.

Rusted lower front wing cut away to reveal rust on the inner section. You can see the wire frame which the front wing is carefully hand beaten around to form the wheel arch opening.

More of the rusted sill.

The body was in remarkably good condition with only two very small patches of body filler found on it.

With the shell stripped bear it was fascinating to see the level of workmanship put into the making of these bodies by the workers at the Scaglietti factory. The panels are all hand formed on wooden bucks (not industrial presses used) and each section is joined using lead to smoothe out all of the seam welds. It was possible to see all of the file marks where the lead had been ground down and shaped into smooth curves. You can see the lead in this next photo as it is lighter than the steel and evident around the leading edge of the rear side panel where it meets the door and all around the engine air intake below the rear side window. It was fascinating to see it revealed.

The door sill on the opposite side was in a similar bad state once the stainless tread plates were removed to reveal the steel section beneath.

The windscreen frame lower corner revealed.

The driver's door. The rust doesn't look so bad with the paint removed....

....but up close.....

The passenger door also had a nice selection of holes in the lower skin.

There were a few small holes above the headlight apertures where water evidently gets trapped between the wing panel and the headlamp surround.

Both lower rear wings were rusted through. These are double skinned so new inner and outer sections would have to be hand fabricated for each side. It doesn't look so bad from the outside...

... but the rust has taken a grip from the inside.

In spite of the pics above there was surprisingly little corrosion on the car overall. When the doors were bare the actual holes in them were far smaller than they looked before stripping. Conversely the side sills which had looked ok were found to be badly rusted through once the stainless finisher plates were removed. Some of the door closer panels were also holed with rust. The lower rear front wings and lower rear wings were cut out as were the lower door skins.

New sections were fabricated, welded in then lead filled and ground using the same process used to build the bodies when new. This is where the real craftsmanship is evident in the restoration. New windscreen channel corners were made in the same way and some of the body apertures such as the front grille and air intakes and the fuel filler flap were reshaped to ensure perfect lines. A lot of time was spent getting the doors to line up perfect with the body so that there were consistent swage lines running the length of the car. The aperture spacings around the doors and boot lid were all lead worked to provide a consistent gap and the result is stunning.

Here is the side of the car with new lower front wings, new lower door skin and new sill sections fabricated and welded in but before the lead filling and shaping process.

New section fitted to the leading edge of the rear wheel arch.

New lower rear wing outer section made and welded in place.

And the inner section of the same lower wing.

The door skin and side sill of the passenger side of the car following replacement of the rusted sections.

A close up of the new sill section before the welds were ground down.

The all important "vertical sill seam" just towards the rear of each door. If you see a 246 without these it means the car has either had incorrect sills made or has body filler applied.

Attention to detail is everything. The front nose clip is fixed to the front of the chassis legs by small vertical plates. These had rusted through and needed new sections fabricated. Here they are welded into place with the three pop rivets reapplied to replicate the original factory finish.

The holes in the headlight apertures after lead filling.

OMG, what a lovely restoration thread! Thanks so much for updating us on your new project mate!!

This was truly an amazing find, in such good condition given the age and 100% original. It just had to be fully restored and deserves nothing less than your level of attention and detail to bring it back to showroom condition. The project is coming along quite nicely and yes that color is just stunning on the Dino.

What are your plans with this? Resale, auction or keeping her? I wonder also what has pushed you to do more of refurbishing of parts rather than full new replacements. Is it the time to locate and source good quality replacement parts? A visual quality issue compared to the original parts? Or perhaps just a financial decision as i imagine some refurbishing jobs to be more cost effective (ie. definitely not cheap either) over new replacement parts. Of course since this example was in such good original shape, it makes sense to refurb parts other than some mechanical bits since that is what a true gearhead should do in such a case. But perhaps it is also in mind of finances keeping resale price objectives in mind.. Since this is your second restoration it'll be interesting to hear your decision on the various questions.

Also, how are you attacking the interior, ie. the leather seats? The car is so rare, i'm guessing a full refurb job by a professional is required here. What about the various chrome bits on the car, can you return the original parts to showroom condition?

Mate, this is a fantastic thread, thanks for the pictures and updates. I love how passionate, honest and knowledgeable you are about such a big project. It makes me happy knowing there are people doing such quality work to preserve some wonderful history cars. Hope all goes well with this project and keep us updated please!

PS. How's that 911 coming along?

Kind regards,
Aaron
 

Hold on Aaron, I'm still typing away

The windscreen frame after repair.

I consider myself to be extremely fortunate that Graham who owns the bodyshop and his colleague Jason are both highly talented perfectionists whose eye for detail is amazing. I have genuinely found kindred spirits in that respect and they will not settle for second best on any aspect of the work they do to the car. Graham has restored in excess of 30 Dinos over the years and is amazed by how original this car is and said it is the most honest body has he ever worked on as there have been no cheap bodged repairs to undo on it that there were on all of the other cars.

Whilst the body repairs have been going on my dealer has been working away on the engine and organised for several of the major components to go out to third parties for overhaul and refurbishment.

Here is the engine prior to strip down but after a thorough clean.

You can just make out that the block was painted black originally by the factory. This paint will be reinstated.

Once the cam covers were removed the camshafts were found to be worn and will need replacing.

Once the camshafts were out and the valves could be accessed there were signs of washing on some of them which indicated potential issues with the pistons.

Sure enough the rings have worn on some pistons causing excessive bore wear.

The block is being rebored and new pistons and rings will be fitted. Fortunately the crankshaft is in good condition. A new timing chain will be fitted as part of the rebuild along with a new clutch pack.

The stripped down block.

The refurbished parts have started to come back from the various outsourced specialists.

Here is the refurbished steering rack, alternator and starter motor.

The re-cored radiator.

The newly powder coated air box cover.

The newly powder coated air filter cannister.

The refurbished and re-bushed suspension wishbones.

The re-powder coated cabin heater unit components.

The fan pulley from the engine freshly powder coated.

The repainted oil vapour canister.

Rebuilt shock absorbers.

I mentioned earlier that the original very rusty Ansa exhaust had come in useful. Well here is the result. My dealer gave it to a local specialist exhaust fabricator with the explicit instruction to make an exact replica, right down to the painted finish, internal baffles in the silencer box and inside finish of the tail pipes but using durable stainless steel.

The manifolds.

And the back box section. It should sound exactly like the original Ansa system

The bodyshop made steady progress with the car and carefully sorted all of the panels gaps and surface imperfections through a lot of skilled lead filling and sanding. The attention to detail on this element of the work is what will pay off once the top coat is applied.

Here is how she looked after her initial coat of primer which has not been flatted at this stage. She's starting to look like a completely different car already.

A close up of all the careful reshaping of the front grille aperture and cooling intake openings.

A perfect windscreen frame corner.

A beautifully made rear wing lower section viewed from the exterior...

... and the inner side.

The only hole in the door now is where the lock will go

The new sill panel.

Achieving perfection on the trailing edge of the front wing through lead filling.

All body surfaces running as they should.

Replacement door closer panels fabricated as repairing the rusted originals would have been a waste of time. The fuel filler cover is also primed in this pic.

The replaced lower front wing and new side sill sections.

The front trunk and engine deck lids.

Both doors.

Whilst all of this work was in progress I began to source a variety of items for the car from around the world with parts coming from the US (Florida & Ohio), Holland, Italy, Australia , Germany and the UK. 

A trim specialist in Holland supplied the correct material for the dash and it was sent to a trimmer near to my dealer along with the dash to be recovered. Here are the various materials I sourced from the extremely helpful Henk Van Lith who runs HVL Interiors in Holland and specialises in restoring Ferrari interiors.

The seats and door cards have been sent out to a company called Tappezzeria Luppi in Modena, Italy for retrimming in the original Connolly hides. Luppi carry out all of the interior retrimming for cars that Ferrari put through their factory Classiche restoration service and they came highly recommended. The hides themselves were sourced in the UK from a specialist who has the rights to the original Connolly tanning process. I owe a debt of gratitude to Tony Willis of Ferrari Northern Europe as he helped organise this for me. Tony deals with the Classiche Programme in the UK for Ferrari and is also involved with the owners club.

As you can see from this comparison pic the original leather was badly dried out and cracked on the driver's seat and repair simply wasn't an option. To get a consistent finish I had no alternative but to re-cover both seats and both both door cards so that everything matches in the cabin. They should come back from Luppi sometime within the next two to three weeks if all goes to plan.

A closer view.

Epic build thread!

And now for my latest update following my visit to the bodyshop last Wednesday. I couldn't have picked a better day to go as the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

When I arrived the anticipation was almost unbearable as I knew the car had been repainted in the top coat. It has been painted using the correct direct gloss finish it had when new as opposed to the modern base and clear coat. The direct gloss is a lot more durable and will respond beautifully to polishing. When I last saw the car it was in primer and hadn’t been flatted so the surface was quite rough so that any imperfections could be clearly seen.

The sight that greeted me was literally breath taking . Graham had fully painted the car in its new top coat and the chassis and underside of the car had all be repainted in the correct mixture of satin black and Schultz protection finish with all of the underside of the front trunk, engine lid and rear trunk lids all correct repainted in satin black with all of the corresponding body shut areas finished in the same satin black. The perfection of the masking lines for these areas is really something to behold. The paintwork hadn’t been de-nibbed or flatted since being applied as it was still curing but it looked fantastic in the sunshine. I couldn’t see a single spec of dust in the finish so once flatted and polished it is going to look absolutely superb. I thought my first Dino looked really good but this car is on a whole different level. My third car will being going through the same treatment and I will likely have my first one redone by this bodyshop as the difference in quality is so startling that I’ll always see flaws in that car now. Here she is resplendent in her new coat of the fabulous Rosso Dino.

Graham wiping her down.

The vertical seam detail in the side sills.

The front nose cone openings.

The windscreen frame.

Spare wheel well re-blacked along with all of the under bonnet areas. Satin black reapplied to closure panels of the bonnet shuts.

And some close ups.

Masking line perfection on the satin black to the trunk lid shuts.

The front bonnet and engine deck lids.

Underside of the front bonnet.

Underside of the engine lid.

Close up of the centre section of the underside of the engine lid with the correct schultz applied to the centre section only to give a rough textured look and added heat protection.

The front grille "egg crate" section repainted in satin black.

The passenger door.

The fibre glass undertray repaired and ready for painting into satin black along with the newly made steel inspection panel doors which have been painted.

Various door closer panels and fuel tank cover lid.

The fuel tanks washed down and cleaned ready for re-painting into the correct beige schultz finish.

After looking through all of the work done it was time to move the bodyshell outside into the sunlight to see the true effect of the Rosso Dino paint. I absolutely love his colour as it changes so much depending upon the lighting conditions. In duller light it has a stronger reddish hue but take it in direct sunlight and........

Remember at this point the paint on the car is as it came straight out of the spray gun with no machine polishing to enhance the shine or correct any flaws (there really aren't any to correct IMHO!).

The driver's door had been fitted back on to check alignment but as there is no weight in it (glass is out, no locking mechanism, electric window motor removed, no inner door panel) it won't sit 100% flush but will when built back up. I can say that it fits like a glove and the panel gap spacing around it is absolutely perfect.

You can see the perfect surface finish running down the side of the car from this angle.

The rear panel.

The replaced rear lower wing from the inside showing the black schultz protection coating.

The repainted chassis.

Jason spent an age carefully removing the old paint from the engraved numbers on the chassis number plate so that it would be clearly visible when given it's new coat of satin black.

There is still a bit of detail work to be done before the bodyshop can build the car back up. They still have to reinstate the satin black to the lower sills, front nose cone and lower rear wings, repaint the magnesium road wheels in the correct dull silver finish, repaint the satin black inner sections of the stainless steel wheel finsher trims and a few other bits and pieces. Hopefully they should have it all completed within two weeks and ready to go back to my dealer to be built back up.

The target at present is to have the whole car completed and back on the road by the end of June and ready to go to the Ferrari GB Owners Club Concours event in early July. I don’t normally bother entering such events but feel compelled to do so with this car if it is ready in time.

Iain, simply amazing. Your dedication of time, resources and commitment to the original intent is unbelievable. Based on your narrative, it is a labor of love. This car will be a gem and the buyer will be a very fortunate.

One of my concerns with older cars is the smell of age and mustiness which despite all efforts to eliminate are ever present. Since you basically are replacing and refurbishing just about everything will it still smell its age?

Atzporsche:

What are your plans with this? Resale, auction or keeping her? I wonder also what has pushed you to do more of refurbishing of parts rather than full new replacements. Is it the time to locate and source good quality replacement parts? A visual quality issue compared to the original parts? Or perhaps just a financial decision as i imagine some refurbishing jobs to be more cost effective (ie. definitely not cheap either) over new replacement parts. Of course since this example was in such good original shape, it makes sense to refurb parts other than some mechanical bits since that is what a true gearhead should do in such a case. But perhaps it is also in mind of finances keeping resale price objectives in mind.. Since this is your second restoration it'll be interesting to hear your decision on the various questions.

Also, how are you attacking the interior, ie. the leather seats? The car is so rare, i'm guessing a full refurb job by a professional is required here. What about the various chrome bits on the car, can you return the original parts to showroom condition?

Mate, this is a fantastic thread, thanks for the pictures and updates. I love how passionate, honest and knowledgeable you are about such a big project. It makes me happy knowing there are people doing such quality work to preserve some wonderful history cars. Hope all goes well with this project and keep us updated please!

PS. How's that 911 coming along?

Kind regards,
Aaron
 

Aaron,

Now that I've finished my marathon post I can answer your questions

The car is a definite keeper along with my other two Dinos and my old 911 targa. I'm restoring them to the best possible condition so that all I'll need to do going forward is routine annual maintenance. They are all being given rust protection treatment and will be garaged to ensure they stay in good condition. I'll only start to think about slowly selling them one at a time if I reach a point where I feel too old to drive them so that will hopefully be in 25 - 30 years time at the earliest.

The decision to refurbish as many parts as possible is more to do with keeping the originality of this two owner car that really hasn't been touched over the years. My other two examples have had up to 8 previous owners in comparison and had/have undergone various refurbishment work over the years, some of it very poorly done. This car hadn't so I wanted to maintain that impeccable history. I know the story behind each owner of this car and can pass it on when I eventually come to sell it. The decision was also made a lot easier as since doing my first car I have learned a lot more about the model and the market and have made a lot of very good contacts for original parts and now for restoration work. That makes a huge difference to how you approach such a project. My third car is currently in a very poor state thanks to years of neglect and a very poor quality restoration. I'm now in no doubt that once Graham and Jason have worked their magic on it it will equal my orange car in terms of finish.

The "chrome" parts on the car were actually in really good condition with the exception of the front and rear bumpers. Those were sent to a specialist for re-chroming.

I covered the leather in the post but just to recap it is being done by a specialist in Modena, Italy.

The 911 goes into restoration in September

nberry:

Iain, simply amazing. Your dedication of time, resources and commitment to the original intent is unbelievable. Based on your narrative, it is a labor of love. This car will be a gem and the buyer will be a very fortunate.

One of my concerns with older cars is the smell of age and mustiness which despite all efforts to eliminate are ever present. Since you basically are replacing and refurbishing just about everything will it still smell its age?

Nick,

After the money I've ploughed into this project I fully hope and expect the interior to have that lovely smell of new leather The engine should run like a new car as well with everything being done to it and, with all coolant hoses and fuel lines being replaced plus the new exhaust, I'm hoping that the Dino exhaust fume and petrol smell is somewhat reduced. I'll let you know how that dream turns out

Amazing thread Ian. The 246 Dino is my dream car but in orange  (I'm Dutch) it's like a wet dream ....

2012 Cayenne S White/Espresso 

Ex: 993 Targa, 986S, 986 and 964 C2

Hell, what a thread, what a car and what work that went in it.

Kudos to you, Iain.

The secret of life is to admire without desiring.

Prost Stefan

I'm getting hooked on this old timer restoration as it's so satisfying putting them back to as new condition. It's funny really as on most forums owners of new cars are looking at swapping out  wheels, exhausts, interiors, trim etc to change the look of their car whilst on the old "classic" model sections we are all trying desperately hard to track down all of the original parts required to return the cars to factory spec and are often having to pay crazy money for them   

Respect for taking the time and effort to restore these cars.

i enjoyed the report last time, this one even more, and am already looking forward to the other ongoing project(s)...

Just finished reading through this wonderful thread. What an ongoing transformation! Thanks so much for sharing with us .

Congratulations! Very nice job!

There is no try. Just do.

Wow, what a fantastic project!  So good to see such expert workmanship and attention to detail.  

Unbelievable project, good for you .

i have no words to express myself, this is unreal.

ISUK:

 I'll only start to think about slowly selling them one at a time if I reach a point where I feel too old to drive them so that will hopefully be in 25 - 30 years time at the earliest.

I tell you what, In 25 - 30 years I'll be the first one knocking at your door in hopes of becoming the 4th owner.

This thread gave me goosebumps it was unbelievable to see the process and the progress being made, the care put into every single inch of rusted metal and the respect for the integrity of the car. The color alone and the way the final paint came out made me completely forget about my comments on black being the best color for the Dino. The guys working on the car deserve the highest praise for the unparalleled level of detail. And not only that, you can tell a lot of love is going into this. But of all the pictures in this magnificent thread the one of the body in the bare metal was IMO the most impressive, it gave me chills, such perfect curves and such an impeccable design.

The fact that you've gone through this process with this car makes it so much more valuable than any new car you could buy. Its a joy watching such a beautiful car end up with someone as you Iain, someone that can really restore it, drive it, and care for it the way it deserves.