Nice work. Its good to see someone willing to put so much effort into saving one of these cars.
Supra LS-type restoration
11
Well I parked the Supra a while back to take care of some body rot and deterioration from 10 years of daily driving in South Florida weather. It had problems in the roof, sunroof, doors and quarters that need attention.
I decided to try and find a hardtop roof in good shape and do a sunroof delete by swapping out the skin and center brace. It took a few months of searching but I finally found one from a CS member in California who was willing to cut it off and crate and ship it to me in Florida. It was almost rust free and only got minor damage in shipping.
Once I got the skin removed from the donor roof section I had something to work with.
I went about cutting off the old roof skin from my car.
Here I have most of it removed except for the edge along the drip rail.
I blasted the roof members to get rid of the leftover rust and laid down some epoxy primer.
I also cleaned up the underside of the new skin and laid down epoxy primer.
Many hours and days later it is welded in and ready for bodywork.
I skipped a few details of the amount of work it is to do this but now I have a solid roof the rebuild the rest of the car under!
I will update the progress.
I decided to try and find a hardtop roof in good shape and do a sunroof delete by swapping out the skin and center brace. It took a few months of searching but I finally found one from a CS member in California who was willing to cut it off and crate and ship it to me in Florida. It was almost rust free and only got minor damage in shipping.
Once I got the skin removed from the donor roof section I had something to work with.
I went about cutting off the old roof skin from my car.
Here I have most of it removed except for the edge along the drip rail.
I blasted the roof members to get rid of the leftover rust and laid down some epoxy primer.
I also cleaned up the underside of the new skin and laid down epoxy primer.
Many hours and days later it is welded in and ready for bodywork.
I skipped a few details of the amount of work it is to do this but now I have a solid roof the rebuild the rest of the car under!
I will update the progress.
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Please tell me you did all this over about a year's time and are just teasing us by posting a series of pics in short order like a daily diary. Because if it were me, I'd still be staring at the first filler piece and a flat sheet of metal trying to plot out how I was going to shape it. Do you offer crash course (pardon the pun)? I've always wanted to do Mike Phillips Detailing Boot Camp, he's somewhere in Florida I think. I could follow it up with your sheet metal forming class. 
Making up the replacement piece is the tedious and time-consuming part. I could pay somebody with younger eyes to weld it in.
Making up the replacement piece is the tedious and time-consuming part. I could pay somebody with younger eyes to weld it in.
Now let's put that in perspective. The average hourly rate for body shops is about $59/hour but "restoration" shops typically charge more, sometimes a lot more because those are skills not associated with your typical late model crash repair for an insurance company. So lets figure $70 an hour times 700 hours. Yikes! That's $49,000 at a professional restoration shop!!!! Even if a "professional" was more efficient and could have cut 100 hours off, any way you look at it, its still over $40 grand.
So for the rest of you, think about what its going to take to restore that sub <$3,000 basket-case before you buy it. Heck, think about what its going to take to restore even that pretty decent $6,000 survivor with what you think is only one little spot of rust. If you don't have the DIY skills, you are looking at BIG money.
So for the rest of you, think about what its going to take to restore that sub <$3,000 basket-case before you buy it. Heck, think about what its going to take to restore even that pretty decent $6,000 survivor with what you think is only one little spot of rust. If you don't have the DIY skills, you are looking at BIG money.
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