Moving from the front of the car to the back, Jim cut out the rust and repaired the car panel by panel – painstakingly putting each panel in primer, filling the holes with a poly-filler and rubbing it back by hand.
“I reckon I spent at least 180 to 200 hours on rubbing and rubbing by hand – backwards and forwards, criss-cross. And if I was unhappy with it – I did it again,” Jim said. The doors proved to be challenging – the rust required them to be reskinned. Each door took Jim a week to complete.
“To weld it up, you would have to weld it every two inches and then let it cool down. If you do it too quickly the metal warps,” explained Jim. “There were a lot of hours of body time preparation.”
With the hardest work done, the Chevy was ready to be rolled into the painting booth. Not happy with the car’s original colour, Jim and his brother Spiro, a painter by trade, debated which colour to go with.
“I started looking at a candy apple colour, but my brother talked me out of it,” Jim laughed. “Then we look at the Lamborghini colours, and decided on a two-tone look in a three-stage Monterey Blue and Balloon White. My brother sourced the colours from Axalta’s Standox range.”
After six-hours in the booth being perfectly and painstakingly painted, the shiny new Chevy was ready to for the finishing touches. The chrome that was in good nick was cleaned up, the rest replaced with new parts shipped in from America. The new dash is in stunning black, with blue carpets to reflect the twotone finish. The final luxurious touch was brand new, custom-made leather upholstery in white and blue. With the engine
rebuilt, this beauty was ready for the road, where it gets plenty of admiring looks wherever it goes.
Photos courtesy of White Line Society
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