Now that the body is back on and bolted together it was time to dial in the paint but before that I decided to recoat the factory undercoat as it was looking really faded and splotchy.

With that out of the way it was time to polish the body. I started by giving it a good bath and followed that up with a clay bar treatment over all the surfaces. From there I took a light cutting compound and a wool pad on a low speed buffer and started going over the car panel by panel. Using this method removes only the slightest amount of color from the car but the shine factor is huge and as you can see, the results were transformative.

This car was a dead driveway find in AZ where it sat under the sun for who knows how many decades. To get it to come back to this level on the first pass is pretty awesome. I continued to work my way around the car.

If you go to our Instagram page @aircooledvintageworks you can see a cool video in my Reels of this panel being polished out to get a better idea of the transformation.

Now the whole car has been cut and is ready for the final machine polish to lock in the shine for good. Getting to this point was pretty exciting. It is starting to look like more than just a pretty chassis...

Fenders were the last to be cut and buffed.

Next up we will get going on making this thing into a functioning car again.