Restoring 2000 model cars

[jrbartlett]

My daily driver "beater" may offer some insight into the hobby's future. '94 Cadillac Seville. 138,000 miles. Paint (a clear coat) is still shiny, the interior is holding up well, and it runs perfectly. Does not burn oil. 25 MPG on the highway. Just think -- this car is only 10 years away from antique status. It's so well engineered with the Northstar V-8 that it's bulletproof. So the quality of the cars available now is so high -- thanks to the electronics that make them so drivable in all conditions, the fade-proof paint, etc. -- that low-mile originals kept out of the sun are still going to look great. And with the electronics, diagnosing problems will be relatively easy. These cars are going to have some appeal in the future.

[Guest ZondaC12]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Steve_Mack_CT</div><div class="ubbcode-body">is there anyone out there who is doing a restoration on a car newer than 1975 that is not a sports car? Anyone doing a frame off on one of the last full frame cars or even a K-car convertible?

</div></div>

Ooh! Ooh! I know somebody! http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com/showthread.php?t=17304&highlight=project+bedrock

Though the car is not in need of EVERYthing, the extent of the rust damage on this car is quite horrifying (a testament to the power of salt in WAY too large quantities). This guy is evidently a skilled body-man otherwise he wouldn't take it on.

I would hazard a guess that most of the members on that forum intend to keep their 83-88 Thunderbird/Cougar for quite some time. Everyone there has a passion for these cars in <span style="font-weight: bold">specific</span>, and given that they're interested in what are 20 year old "beaters" to most people in the first place, they must feel some extra degree of attachment to them. I'm no exception, mine will be with me as long as the Buick, that is, until I'm not around anymore. www.coolcats.net If you're looking for someone with a helluva passion for cars in the era that's not in the spotlight, he's one for sure. Check out that site, I know a *little* of what he's in possession of, I can ONLY imagine the piles of NOS parts, brochures, order sheets and all kinds of other paraphenalia from those cars' heyday. (He actually WONT tell how much/what he's sitting on).

Though there's only 2300 members there (about 400 active), for sure there are more that don't know of that forum or "EricCoolCats"'s awesome site. So there are shockingly some people that do want to preserve these cars that most have forgotten by now, at least consciously. And they are FAR from sportscars (though a lot of us, myself included, do not like the utter lack of power and have done everything from simply upgrading to the H.O. spec on our "5-oh's" that is if you aren't stuck with the 3.8 v6, to even as crazy as a twin-turbo 351 as one member has done!)

Just my silly little .02, maybe a glimpse into a mini-world of enthusiasts who like something most wouldn't give a second glance. I just really enjoy reading discussions like this, I wonder myself. I'm amazed at what I've found being in this hobby for just 2 years, all the things people talk about, ISSUES and things like that I mean, not just a bunch of guys enjoyin' old cars. What a surprise, I honestly thought it was so much more simple. I agree, the BIG interest seems to stop after the muscle era! No love even for the crazy graphics and nothing-less than opulent cockpits of the 70s. At least not as much for the stuff just a few years prior. In the summer though I'm on the road all the time in the '38 so I try my best to take the cougar out too besides just daily driver duty, as it's the only one I see in my town! And in the future no matter what happens I'll still flash it around plenty to keep the spirit alive, as weak or strong as it may be. Sure stinks not being psychic!!! So I guess I might as well do my part to help make sure their population doesn't dwindle too much!

As a side note, personally I rubberneck even for an unmolested 1989 white Mercury Grand Marquis, complete with the "granny hubcaps" and whitewalls. They really stand out and sick and tired of current auto styling as a whole, honestly it's almost as much a breath of fresh air as seeing a car that's another 20 years older!

[Dave@Moon]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> On the new cars you have fuel pumps that are swaged together, upholstery that is made of vinyl molded with heat in giant presses, cheap chrome made of pot metal that pits and crumbles in a few years. Unlike the great classics these cars will be totally unrestorable in 10 years when the factory stops supplying parts.</div></div>

It's a long way from imagining the difficulty in embossing plastic door panels (<span style="font-style: italic">in 1957 for what was yet to become a multi-billion dollar hobby/industry</span>) and imagining today the difficulty in reproducing thousands of multi-mile wiring harnesses and tens of thousands of micro-circutry apparati for each and every model year of vehicle produced after 1990.

The first two Ford Mustang originality guides for restorers (both covering 1964-1973) were published in 1978 and 1981 (<span style="font-style: italic">Mustang Does It</span> & <span style="font-style: italic">Mustang: A Source Book</span>). There are similar dates just in my personal library for originality guides in either the Evergreen Press or Bookman Publishing lines for Ford Falcon, Thunderbird, <span style="text-decoration: underline">every</span> Chevy, Plymouth Barracuda, Dodge Charger, Challenger, <span style="text-decoration: underline">every</span> American muscle car, Jaguar XKE, and the Triumph TR6--<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline">all</span> of them published within 10 years of the cars' manufacture!</span> There are many more of them, but I'd have to leave this room or open a new Windows page to look them up.

Where are the Dodge Spirit or Chevy Corsica originality guides?

[Dave@Moon]

Fixing up a car into a nice driver is not a restoration in the same sense as it has been defined for the last 40 years. Also saving unmolested originals isn't a restoration either. Both activities will continue indefinitely, of course. But what most people would consider a "real" restoration..., highly doubtful.

Will this '84 Cougar have a new wiring harness made to original specs, or is it still perfect after 33 years? Will <span style="text-decoration: underline">every</span> hose have the proper markings? Will the CPU? Will the CPU be set to original factory specs, one of the updated settings spelled out in a TSB, or uprated beyond stock? Will the numbers on the CPU match? Will all of them match on other items on the car? Will the car have new copies of the <span style="font-style: italic">dozens</span> of appropriate decals and labels it arrived at the dealer with? Will it have perfect reproductions of the odd-ball size 375 tires it came with? Which assembly plant's specs will it be built to, since all of the above will differ depending of where it was made?

It's not that I object to this. In some ways I think it may be preferable to what we've done to the hobby with the obsession on perfection that's been cultivated by the current situation. I especially rejoice at the renewed emphasis on HPOF-type cars that will surely come about. But I do think that it should be faced head on and prepared for, because it could be construed that when the stream of perfect-restored cars begins to dry up that the hobby is drying up as well.

[Guest ZondaC12]

Yeah for sure a lot of that stuff such as the wiring might have to be preserved as is. I do know some members there also (my example about being stuck with the wimpy 3.8l v6) have swapped engines, and though a lot of people will go the carb route, some do keep em EFI, and so actually a couple different harnesses have to be swapped in. Though, I think everyone who's done this has taken them from donor cars. I'm really kind of surprised how lightly it's thrown around. I mean, no joke, some of them have REALLY torn their cars right apart in some of those areas. Wow you want to make your stomach turn? Look at one of those things with the whole dashboard off!

I'm not 100% positive as to interchangeablility but it seems like at least a good portion of the wiring and ECU side of the engine to the 5.0s swaps readily between basically anything that had it. In the case of the Standard Output vs. High Output the high output had better heads, injectors, camshaft, a couple sensors are different, higher flowing intake with bigger throttle body, and a different ECU. The HO ECU exists in Mustangs and Lincoln Mark VIIs, each getting the job done 100%, just plug it in, I did. And there are printed labels on them to ID them as to what they came from (even the year!) Granted you have to know what each part of the 16-ish character string means but the info is there.

I don't know if that answers the question at all. All I know is I've thought about this before and looking at what I see fellow members doing with their cars kinda makes it seem not so hard anymore. Still looks like he double hockey sticks to me but not impossible. Again back to your point about <span style="font-weight: bold">finding</span> the parts, maybe they won't be reproduced! In that case you depend on scrap.

And at the same time I freely admit this is a TINY example, these cars *DO* share something with a much more popular model resulting in more resources for it....the Fox chassis, and possibly more important...the 5.0. Fox mustangs are worth absolutely nothing right now so all kinds of people mod the heck out of them and make everything from street machines to 9-second all-out nothing but drag strip monsters. What <span style="font-style: italic">about</span> everything else? Corsicas, Reliants, Escorts, <span style="font-style: italic">Yugos</span>. I'm not claiming to have the answers, as I said, just grasping at straws I guess.

---EDIT---

Sheesh always gonna miss something.....you mentioned emblems and decals. Decals I would say good graphics shops could take care of. Emblems....yep got me there. Though one member on that forum has an injection molder (yeah right what are the odds????) and recently showed off some replications of the originals he'd made. Funny, they actually looked BETTER than the originals. Funnier still, he can't make his own designs, for whatever reason, only a shape that already exists (the shaved originals he duplicated). Not surprisingly other expressed interest I think he might start selling em soon. Like I said, grasping at straws, but maybe where there's a will there's a way, maybe there won't be major support for these things but grassroots will be where it's at, and we'll just have to look a whole lot harder to find the stuff. Maybe the Internet will give us a leg up with that! I can only hope anyway...

[joe_padavano]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ZondaC12</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

Sheesh always gonna miss something.....you mentioned emblems and decals. Decals I would say good graphics shops could take care of.</div></div>

Already done. Phoenix Graphics is one of many vendors already doing this.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Emblems....yep got me there. </div></div>

Again, already done. The technology is called stereolithography. This machine accepts a 3D computer model of a part and "prints" a solid plastic part using an LED and UV-hardening plastic. There are companies offering this service currently for custom emblems. There are also companies who can apply real copper-nickel-chrome plating to these plastic parts (as opposed to the more common vacuum deposited aluminum used as "chrome" on plastic parts).

[Guest AlK]

RE: The rusty Cougar. My 1962 Dodge Dart 440 4dr sedan was worse than that and it extended to the rockers, trunk and rear quarters. I found a good body/fender man who was hungry after interviewing several who would not even tackle the job because they were more into parts replacement that parts fixing and/or manufacturing. If you can find the right guy it won't be as expensive as you think if you do the parts scrounging yourself. After he was done you could barely tell that he had practically replaced the entire floor, plus the entire drivers side rocker, plus the passengers side rear 1/4 and repaired the drivers side rear 1/4. The rest of the car all it needed was paint. The two front fenders were replaced from the parts car. Definitly not for the timid, but let a small hole bother me, i doubt it. The basic premise was the more we looked at the car we saw how unique the car was. We have never seen to many of them on the road. True we could have stripped it and more than tripled our purchase price, but it was worth saving so...............

[Dave@Moon]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: joe_padavano</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ZondaC12</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

Sheesh always gonna miss something.....you mentioned emblems and decals. Decals I would say good graphics shops could take care of.</div></div>

Already done. Phoenix Graphics is one of many vendors already doing this. </div></div>

Phoenix Graphics does make a few decals for post-1975 cars. Excepting about a dozen for various Mustang models and about twice that for Trans Ams (<span style="font-style: italic">most of which are stripe kits</span>) you can count them <span style="font-weight: bold">all</span> on two hands.

A 1984 Ford product would need about 50 to be "factory correct", most of them very banal in content. Most of those would be different for a 1983 or 1985 model, and some of them would even change month to month. A 1994 Ford would need about half again as many.

Not a very hopeful scenerio, no matter how you color it.

==================

Does anyone have a cost on stereolithography for a car emblem? A google search could not find a single commercial outfit doing this.

[Guest Skyking]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: AlK</div><div class="ubbcode-body">RE: The rusty Cougar. My 1962 Dodge Dart 440 4dr sedan was worse than that and it extended to the rockers, trunk and rear quarters. After he was done you could barely tell that he had practically replaced the entire floor, plus the entire drivers side rocker, plus the passengers side rear 1/4 and repaired the drivers side rear 1/4. </div></div>

Again, you're talking a 1962 car that has a heck of alot more steel to work with than a 2000 car of any make. A guy doing this in 25 years in his garage as a hobby will be <span style="font-weight: bold">impossible. </span>

[Twitch]

Everyone is simply assuming that in 2025 people will have relative interest in 25 year old cars simply because they did in 2000. You may go gaga over 1982 Granadas but I don't and lots of people never will simply because they know that by the 1970s true uniqueness in automobilia was long gone.

They know that 100s of 1000s of one year and model of car produced compared to perhaps 30,000 makes the lower production car more valuable across the board in most cases.

The simpliest viewer knows the relative rareness of a 1934 Lincoln over a 58 Chevy. They know a 1966 Dart can't compare to a 1950 Cadillac 2-dr HT in any definition of "cool."

If all of you are planning at least for your cars to be around then why is a 2000 Toyota going to be an attraction when people can drool over virtually the same cars at shows and cruise ins today?

My Packard has 77,000 on the clock and at less than 500 per year should make 2025, though I won't, with the original engine still ticking. Around here 1-2000 miles a year is extreme on collector cars or rods.

So who's gonna care about 2000 Mustangs when they can look at 1965s still cooking in 2025?