If you could change something on a completed restoration what would it be?
What would you like a do over on?

Two things...I wish I'd have kept single exhaust and I wish I hadn't painted the bottom body color.

Buying same car done for a heck of a lot less money after all the headaches conquered by some other poor guy!

Would've left the Hooker's alone...

Extrude-honed a set of straight cast-iron manifolds...

And been done with it...

Color for one... My 69 superbee, It was suppose to be painted f6 green and when I went to pick it up it was painted sublime
Now, I was only 23 (1993) when I had this car painted and it was a older "Car Guy" who did it out of his home-made booth and only charged me $2000.00! but, at 23 thats alot of money! Anyways, he talked me into it saying how much it would "Stand Out" at show's and blah, blah, blah! So long story short I took it home and was soooooo disgusted with it that it sat for about seven years till I finally thought I have to finish it as Nobodys going to buy it in piece's, so I was dating a new girl at the time who thought it was the coolest car ever and before I know it SHE"S buying parts for it and within a year or better we got Married and had it done just in time for the wedding......and that was 7 years ago last Monday

So color is one regret and the motor is another. I should have left that more stock than built up...>Terrible mileage, too big of cam and Old school forged 12.5 TRW'S. Funny how your taste's change the older you get. So it just sit's 99% of the time.....I should sell it but I do enjoy taking it out once or twice a year.

That's what happens when a restoration is done slowly over a long period of time. You make choices early on that you regret down the road. I came to really like the stock restored cars while the car was at the body shop. I had already made the choice to put the dual exhaust valance on the car at that point. Parts had already been purchased and fitted.

The same goes for the body colored underside. I had to make a quick decision and I chose body color instead of primer/overspray. I regretted it almost immediately. You never see completely stock restored 318 cars. I think I got close but messed up on two key areas.

Probably from the stand point of correct on the bottom side.

Made sure my painter "didn't do me a favor" and painted it base/clear. I specifically told him DOZENS of times I wanted a stock acrylic enamel paint job, the color turned out totally wrong and it was WAY too shiney! Funny thing is (if you can call it funny) the car burned in my garage fire, so it requires a new paint job now, among hundreds of other parts and hours...

Question for Rhino & High Impact, why wouldn't you make them redo it the way you requested or withhold payment until they did?

I was readign an old thread the other night about bad reproduction parts and a lot of people said they through them on a self and reused the originals or bought different ones. In that case I couldn't understand why they wouldn't send them back for a refund. Why make better parts if people except and pay for poor quality???

He is a friend of mine. The problem was it was a VERY good quality job, and it took him 7 years to get it to that point, I was tired of waiting. He did a complete rotisserie restoration and he did a great job. He moved to three different locations while he was working on my car, twice I had to track him down. I learned that there is no such thing as a good bodyman, they all snort too much dust and paint fumes. I was just glad to get the car back, but it took me another 7 years to almost finish the restoration before the fire took it. In retrospect I believe it took me so long BECAUSE of the paint job, and you are right, I shoulda made him do it the way I wanted, as I am a national show judge and was worried about taking it to a show and having to make sure I didn't park next to another Q5 car.

Let's see
1. Used full AMD quarters they were not available at the time.
2. Made sure the body guy didn't bondo over the VIN # on the cowl.
3. Made sure the body guy didn't fill in the antenna hole on the Quarter panel(AAR)
4. Made sure that the trunk extensions are welded in so the marker lights can be installed.
5. I would not paint the bottom of the car body color.
6. No paint runs on the rear valance.
I wished I had waited to buy reproduction parts, BE&A were not around when I was looking for parts.

Nothing really, I'm happy with my car that I did in 2005 in 10 months.

Now my 74, I built a motor for it in 1985, huge cam, huge electric fuel pump and all kinds of racy gauges and junk. It ran so terrible and vapor locked that I parked it for 18 years. I went drag racing during that time and learned a lot.
2003 I had a serious drag racing accident that took me off the track for 8 weeks. First time in 12 years that I had July and Aug off from the track.
I came home and opened my garage and looked at my 74. Wow what a mess I made of that car 18 years earlier. I swapped out the huge cam, put a mechanical pump back on it. Got rid of all the gawdy gauges and put a street tuneup in the motor.

Wow it ran great, the best a challenger has ever ran for me. Got all hooked on muscle cars again and here I am today. Took me 25 years to get a good running challenger.

I would drill the holes for my emblem straight. Must not have had my V8 that day.

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car is GG1 forest green and has been apart so long I cant remember what color primer was used....... im thinkin red oxide, am I wrong?

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Yes, you are wrong. However, the correct color would depend on which plant your car was built at. Los Angeles cars had a VERY dark gray (almost black) dip coating (not really primer, but a corrosion preventative dip) and other plants used the same product but it was an elephant gray color.

My car had lots of red oxide on the body. The bottom is currently painted with oil from years of leaky gaskets

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My car had lots of red oxide on the body

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Yes, that came AFTER the dip coat and generally went in the same areas as the body color paint went, not on the underside. Keep in mind that this is a "general" statement, we still haven't discussed the year of the GG1 car, but since that color was used from 66-68 the statements I made in my previous post would be accurate to (at least) those years. The rusty colored areas ae just where the coating had worn away over the year and allowed the bare metal to surface rust.

Here's my Los Angeles car less it's undercoating (steam cleaned to the original dip coating) this shot is a bit over exposed (full afternoon sun) so it makes the gray look lighter, it's actually quite a bit darker than it appears.