When I first bought her back in May, 1990, I didn't have a lot of money, and just wanted an antique car to drive around in. First I got it running good (with my old man's help, of course). Put a new water pump, fuel pump, rebuilt the carb, tuned it up and got a set of (used) tires on her. I had a lot of trouble with 6-Volt batteries dieing on me. I had to re-do the brakes too, but by September 1990 it was on the road, and the body work was started. Man, was it a pain. I didn't have a garage, so everything I did had to be done...and done before I went to sleep. So if I sanded a fender, I had to prime it before nightfall, outside, under oak and pine trees. I think I spent more time picking bugs out of the primer than I did fixing it up!

There were a lot of chips, deep scratches and rough patches in the paint. I had to sand the hell out of it, then lay heavy coats of primer and sand that down just to get it decent. The roof was so bad I gave up (get ready to cringe) and BRUSH PAINTED high-build primer over it with only a 4 to 1 reduction. Yikes! Took a while to dry, but I was able to sand it smooth and it lasted 12 years like that.

I didn't do any custom work on the body back then. It was hard enough getting it ready for paint. Since I lived in Jersey then, I couldn't work on it for the whole 90-91 winter, so it stayed primer gray till the spring. In March I started up on her again, sanding, fixing holes, fixing the floor (There was a tin wonderbread box from the 60's acting as the backseat passenger side floor) and getting her ready to spray. The chrome was shot, and I didn't have the funds to get it re-done, so I decided on a kind of out-there color scheme. Seafoam Green for the main color with cream white for the Bel-Air panels and roof...and a two-tone metallic chocolate brown and dusty gold combo for the chrome parts. Believe it or not, it looked great. In October of 1991 I finally got her painted (a friend of my Dad's did it for $125 plus $30 for the paint from Crown Auto), and I was on my way.

In the mid 90's some dumb yahoo kid in a van ran a red light and T-boned me on the passenger side. I was fine, but the car had both doors and the pillar pushed in. (The van was wrecked, of course!) Lucky for me a mechanic friend of mine was using a 54 four door for parts for his 54 roadster. He sold me the doors for $75 and even lent me the hydraulic ram to push the pillar out. I never got it quite right (back door is off just a little bit) but considering I did it all myself I'm proud of how well it came out. Those doors stayed yellow for a long time though, and led to my idea to chop out the top, shave the handles and add the fins!

The second time around started when I moved to Florida and bought a house with a two car garage in 2000. Now I had an indoor place to work on her, so it made customizing a lot easier. I was just going to do a quicky job, sand off the bad paint, shoot some new on, but when I got into it I decided to do it right, or at least as best I could. I stripped as much as the old paint off as I needed to. I broke out all the old bondo (including some the other guy had done 30 years ago) and re-did the rust holes with metal, fiberglass and/or new filler (I stuck to the rule of trying to use as little filler as possible). I tore out what was loose in the floors and fiberglassed them, including the trunk. I bought a welder and learned how to do simple welding, then used that knowledge to fix the quarter panels and skirts. I came into some money, so I was able to build the custom continental kit, plus do the engine mods...see the engine page for those details! I finished frenching in the lights, chopped out the top, shaved the door handles, customized the hood and put in the extra grill bullets. While I was doing on this, I was also working on those crazy fins, and everything finally came together into something decent in 2007!

I still have a lot to do. The next big project is finishing the roof. I had to engineer the whole crazy thing myself, but I know how to finish it. Then the Continental kit has to be finished...It's a combination of parts from a 53 Chevy and a 55 Olds, so I have some cutting and welding to do. There are still a couple of small rough spots around the bottom of the trunk and doors, not very noticeable without paint, but they have to get done. Once all that's done, I can finally get her painted. I'm aiming for a dark, rich purple metallic (maybe Plum Crazy with some metalflake!) with blue ghosted flames and a black top and Bel-Air panels. I'd like to get chrome bumpers for her too, and I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the grill. We'll see...