Well, it’s official. Ms. J is off the road for the winter (it’s 31 degrees F which works out to -1 C for those of you across the pond, and likely to get colder rather than warmer for the next several months) which means it’s time to start the restoration in earnest.

First order of business is to start prepping the panels I took off of the parts car I picked up from Ernie West earlier this year. Fortunately, those appear to still have the original paint so hopefully removal down to either bare metal or a good base shouldn’t be too much work. I’ll be replacing the front left, rear left, and rear right fenders, the boot lid (maybe, haven’t decided yet, depends on whether I want to go with or without the luggage rack she currently has mounted), and the rockers.

Looking forward to drilling out all those spot welds fastening the rockers to the inner sills. Since I’m not planning on replacing the sills, I just Sawzalled off the whole rocker and sill assembly from the parts car along with a bit of the floor pan, so those spot welds should be friendlier to drill out (I can just put the whole assembly on my workbench and use my drill press) though the ones on Ms. J will be fun. Is there such a thing as a portable horizontal drill press?

Once all that’s done, then I get to prep the rest of Ms. J. Lots more fun there. At least one badly done Maaco-style paint job to remove from the bonnet, doors, and other parts not mentioned above.