First, let me say this is a car I'm doing for someone else. It was a pretty clean car and came in looking prety straight and very little rust. Of course after being stripped it had mud and more rust once it's was cleaned/blasted. I'm doing all the work in house and on a rotiserre.

One thing is normally I find factory undercoating pretty easy to remove. Some heat and a scraper and it comes off in chunks. This one had some aftermarket crap and was a real pain. I assume it was used to cover up some of the dents and such from when it was wrecked.

After tear down, then blasting, straightening, replacing a few sections and so on, I'd say the 250 or so number will probally be pretty close to the time I have into the body and putting it in paint.

I really thought originally I could keep it under 300 hours, but like I mentioned, you find more as you remove parts, paint, and undercoating. I've done body work for around 20 years and until the past 5 years, it was always my own stuff or smaller projects for others. So I was curious to see how my pace was compared to others. I go hourly, so I don't have to cut corners. And it's not like the owner had a problem with the time that's gone into it.

Thanks for the replies. I feel much better knowing that I'm making good progress on the time I have into the car. I think 350 hours should get me pretty close, but from all this I guess I could be closer to 400.

And the beer drinking is done on my own time