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Keep it as is, restore it, or somewhere in between?
So here is a great car to serve as the subject for the question, should you keep it original, restore it, or do something in between. I know what I would do, but I'd be interested in hearing from all of you. Here is our subject:
It is hard to tell how bad the current state of the car is, but it looks pretty bad. Those cars had no rust protection and usually rusted in all the vulnerable places. The top looks to be gone. The low mileage on the 4.2 might make it possible to get a good result with a thorough but partial restoration. But I think I would want to go all the way and do a full rotisserie restoration down to the last bolt. What a great car!
Mechanical restoration where necessary. I would have to do something with the interior. I would leave the paint and body alone if it is as solid as it appears.
In my opinion, once fully restored, the very low original miles are meaningless.
Buy it and take it to auction. First off it's not a color I care for. Secondly even with just 8k miles it's ratty interior isn't too my liking. They claim it was recently running; but for how long and how far. Not far with those looks. BTW, I love early E-types but not that one.
I'm in the so-called sympathetic restoration camp. Fix only what is broken, use as much of the original as possible and leave what is still working alone. I agree that if there is serious rust or rot that you need to fix it and that can take you down the road of a complete restoration. From the pictures, I see both some positive indications that the tub is ok and some negative indications that the underside could be rotted. It would require a full inspection and maybe even the use of a borescope to get into otherwise unseeable areas. The under the hood pics bother me the most. Look at the front control arms. They seem to be heavily rusted. Those arms are cast steel, so they can be sandblasted and refinished, but how did they get like that in the first place? Given that amount of rust, how well have the structural tubes ahead of the bulkhead held up? The interior is the biggest cosmetic problem area. I would remove it and then determine if any of the materials can be re-stiched or otherwise repaired, but a lot if it will need to be replaced. I agree with Emil that a good washing and waxing would be the best thing to do on the paint and then leave it be. I love survivors but this one presents a real puzzle. No right answer.
Few photos show signs of hidden rust in bad areas. Not sure I'd tackle this car, unless I had a bunch of used body panels in storage. If the chassis is bad, you have a lot of metal & welding work to do. Have to know the engineering behind the frame and body design to maintain safety and reliability. That would mean an expert restoration is needed. May double initial cost (including a beaucoup $$$ paint job).
If the body and frame is bad... I'd personally walk away from this one.
The areas you have focused on look pretty good. Minimal surface rust. Mostly a cosmetic issue. I would certainly poke around with an ice pic, but I've seen '66 Jags that were a 100 times worse than that 30 years ago.
03-26-2018, 05:54 PM
Keep it as is, restore it, or somewhere in between?
