This is about 3 hours of work, well only about 1 because I let it dry for a long time before I came back to it. When i took the picture that was the only thing panted under the hood, besides a few other black things you cant see. Hopefully I will paint the block, other valve cover, water pump some brackets, and air conditioner housing.

This is one of those guys that just has the money to do anything. I wish I owned that Monte. This one has a supercharged 454, but that isn't shown here, this is his custom trunk work. That picture was my pattern and inspiration for mine. I made cardboard cutouts by using this picture, it was difficult in figuring out what he did with no information provided.

I was planning on just covering the whole trunk with carpet. I didn't think about something like what is pictured in the pic above. I seen that on the Internet and said I have to do that. This is a before picture of my left side of the trunk.

Got the first boards cut out before dinner. That took me some time to finish! I had to keep going back and guessing how much to cut off around the corners. Since this is my first custom upholstery job it isn't the best looking, but I'm planning on cutting the carpet to fill in all those empty spaces. It should look fine. The largest boards will be removable so I can get to my tail lights if they burn out.

I'm not to sure what he did there on that large board but I think it is a dome light. I have the inspiration to put 2 of them in there, take the buttons out of some junk car doors. You know the ones that turn on and off your lights when you open and close your door. Put them in the hinge housing at an angle, so when the hinge comes down the lights go off. Maybe hook them up to the spare battery with my subs that will be comeing after a nice paint job.

Finally a pic of my 6x9s in the car, they sound pretty crappy since they are hooked up to a RAMPAGE tape deck. That will change with the addition of the Sony ExPlode Cd player installed in a while, depending on when I get paint on my car!

I hate this guy that had my car. Didn't he know this car was a classic and needs to be treated with respect? Or did he just think that his $20 Rampage 6x9's would sound better if he punched holes in the rear deck? That's why I have to cover it up with the carpet. The Sony ExPlode 6x9's will be on top of the carpet Since in my Buick has boxes for the speakers to sit in and I like them.  I am going to get some of them from a junk yard car, and screw them down to the under part of the rear deck. I will super glue my old weather stripping around the top of them and that will prevent the Subs from pushing the cones up and ruining them.

What happened here? When you get boards in there it really fills it up. When I put my sound system in the amp will be covered behind the biggest board and the extra battery will exist enclosed under the hinges behind that board! No wires to be seen as they will to be behind some boards and under the carpet. Sorry bout the darkness. Sorry about the pictures it is really dark in our second garage and you just can't see anything even with a flash. That picture looks like it was taken at midnight under some street lamps. I guess when it is 15 degrees i don't take the time to get a good picture!

Hits since 1/6/02

Here are the last few spots of rust on my baby, little by little I'm working on it. I got some kitty hair. Its like bondo but this has fiberglass hairs in it, so its about 50 times stronger than bondo, made for filling in holes & preventing rust from reoccurring. If you have questions about that then E-mail me, WHOOO NASTY STUFF but it works great! It almost looks like a hairball in a can! This is a before shot of the rust, those aren't aerodynamic curves (almost in the middle of the pic) bottom of the door those are the spots that have disintegrated! They will be fixed!

This is after the coat of kitty hair, its basically filled in but not sanded in this pic. Started sanding later but didn't have time or energy to sit there & sand so I called it a night. It sands down smooth like bondo, so after one more coat of this there will be a coat of primer.

Well here is the first pic of my new dash mat, its better than the cracks and matches the carpet nice. Still isn't installed just sitting there menacingly waiting for me to install it. The sticky Velcro stuff they gave me isn't that sticky so I'll use liquid nails on the backside of the tape. I know what you are saying, "That will ruin the dash!" but since the dash is all ready ruined with the cracks it won't make any difference to me and that will insure a tight clean fit. Hey do you like all my decorating on the seat? Plenty of crap there, mostly my screws from my interior panels and sandpaper.

Hey been a while since the last update but its been winter for like 3 months! I pulled the beast out of the other garage last Saturday when it was 60 degrees, past week it has been around 20! Well this is what I started in on at 4PM today 3/05/02 and got done around 8:30PM, try to locate my bolt and little clip thing for my valve cover, which I lost last in the frame weekend while I was painting my other valve cover. Found it & gave the valve covers one last tight snug looks better don't it? Now u can see the paint on the break fluid box, and some of the frame. The frame will be re-done after the car is painted. The frame will get a treatment of POR-15 so it should look nice! Later after the engine is painted i will clean each hose & wire/rearange everything so it will look bran spankin new under there!

Since it was 52 degrees outside when I got home today (3/28/02) I decided its time to work on my car again and get something done! My goal was to paint the intake manifold on the engine, for those of you who don't know what that is its right between the to valve covers that are painted in the picture above. I sprayed oven cleaner all over it then let it set for 30 min. I proceeded to drive the car out of the garage and over to the power washer by the pump house. I put a cutting tip on it for a head and started washing. Surprisingly it worked nicely, some oil left but not as much as when I started! I did get mighty wet though!  I then took the air compressor with a metal blowing tip on it and started scratching the rest of the caked on oil off. This is what it looked like after I washed it. You can see all the water in the holes, I'm glad it started right up again!

Here is what 3 hours of cleaning, 2 hours of painting and masking got me! It looks nice, I started off painting the intake manifold but I got to thinking while I'm here I might as well paint the rest of the top part of the engine! So that's what I did all that needs to be done now is paint the rest of the block and detail the metal parts, with my specialty. Look at the next photo.

This idea came to me after polishing some welds during welding class at school. I polished some metal and it looked like chrome after I was done, I thought why not try it on my alternator and some of the metal things in there? I did it on a spot and it looks nice enough that I'll do it to the rest of the metal on the engine! I think I will get clear coat and paint over the top of it after I polish it. The clear coat will prevent it from rusting and keep it looking new.

Custom Trunk Interior

Painting the Engine

Move mouse cursor over picture for the right side picture

Here it is, the engine is painted, and some hoses are cleaned. All that's left to do is polish & clear coat the alternator, thermostat, and the vacuum line plugs that are in the intake manifold, and put on my new chrome headers. Over the weekend 4/13/02 I changed the spark plugs, and rebuilt/cleaned the carburetor. This is what it looks like as of now.

This is the first picture of both of my cars together at once. The blue one on the right is my 1965 Buick Skylark and the one on the right is the Monte.now if you don't know what the Monte Carlo looks like by now well then you need to start at the first site again and REVIEW!!!! If you can't tell the Monte is now wet sanded and should be going in for paint on 4/15/02. I will post new pictures when I get it back trust me.

This is just a better picture of the car from the left side. You can see that its sanded down and ready for paint with this picture.

Here is a picture that was taken out of the second story of my house in my room. I remembered that I parked the Monte Carlo outside on the lawn in front of the house and decided that I haven't gotten an aerial shot of it yet so there you have it

Ready for PAINT!

Naked Monte Carlo and more Engine Detailing

On Friday 4/12/02 I striped the bumpers off the car, and disassembled the rear end of it. This picture and the next are what it looks like being naked of all its chrome :-( but it will all be back later :-). All the plastic pieces and some other metal ones are in my trunk ready to be painted. The bumpers are in my garage next to the car and if all goes well tomorrow morning (which would be 4/15/02) I'll pull it into the shop and let them start working on it.

PAINTED CAR!!!!!!!!!!!

AHHHHHHH finally! After 9 months of owning this car I have it painted. When I took this pic the car was still sitting out at the paint shop and it was done April 29th 2002I now need to get to the bank and borrow the money I need :-o! I went a little overboard on paint hehe, got a paint that is really expensive, worse than the original color I was going with. This color is much better though since it's a dark maroon, and it looks purple during the day and BLACK at night hehe. This picture was taken on May 1, 2002 it was raining all day and the clouds were out so you can't see much of the paint but it is a red there is no doubt about it!

I should have the car by this Friday (May 3, 2002) And I will start putting it all back together and maybe take it for its first drive completely restored May 6th. One problemits supposed to rain Saturday- Tuesday and it was raining today, while I took these pictures. Hell my car was sitting outside in the rain today :-( I didn't like it but its been waxed and there is very little chrome on it so I'm not worried YET! I'll get more pictures as I put it together this weekend.

Back Together

Ok after 9 months of sweet and blood, I have something to show for. Yesterday night (May 4th 2002) I finished putting the car together and washed it down a little bit then went into town for a drive. This morning (March 5th, 2002) I remembered a few bolts that I missed and stuck those on there and washed/detailed it for about 3 hours. I cleaned out the interior and gave it a vacuuming.

All I have to do know is get some insulation for under the hood, detail a little more under the hood..mostly just clean things up. Carpet the inside of the trunk. Then get new chrome for the wheel well moldings (DON'T HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY RIGHT NOW!!) They can wait till something comes up. Then finally transfer the sound system from my Buick to the car. I will have to buy a CD player off the Internet and also get a self-rechargeable battery from Jegs. I also have to get weather-stripping in the trunk. haven't ordered that yet. I need to stop at the junkyard and get some about 20 of the little knobs to hold my weather stripping on the doors (along the bottom). Finally to finish it off I'm going to tint the rear 3 windows about 2% tint, maybe later on smoke the front door windows (if I can find someone who will do it around here.

Here are some shots of it outside in the sun.took a few more here at 6:00PM today after the clouds went away and the sun was shining bright. Got it in the shed before it rained like hell here! LUCKY ME! Then I started carpeting the rear deck, since the pics of the carpet were taken I spent 2 hours putting trimming it and putting the speakers back in the thing. Found out I had the wires reversed on them before and they sound much better now!

Front left pic of the car

Front left pic with the lights on. I will have to get them adjusted right,since the only way i can see anything is if i have them on high! Weird thing about it....on low they are uneven, but on high they look fine!

This pic was taken only 2 hours after the other ones, as you can see the sun broke threw the clouds the chrome is looking a lot newer HEHE!!!

Told you the car is purple!

This is what I was doing to it at 6:00 and I have it cut out and it fits in there like you can see, but I still haven't gotten the edges trimmed and the holes cut for the speakers. The speakers (6x9 Sony Explode) will be flush mounted on top of the carpet.

This is just a better shot of how it looks against the seat; I just tucked it under the seat not to show an edge. Probably just do the same thing along the edge of the seat were the quarter panel moldings met the rear deck, I'll just fold it under there. Then on the rear window I'll take something thin and pointy to push it under the molding so you cant see the seam or at least the white under matting on it.

Here is my latest project, detailing the engine for the last time. I worked for about 5 hours last night and a few today, now that I'm out of school I can work a lot more on it! I polished most of the aluminum parts under there and painted them with heat resistant clear paint. I also did some of the engine just because it looks better later down the road. I'll eventually get better pics of the alternator and what I did to that. I also cleared the air filter housing and tube running to the front. Basically anything that really shines in this picture is what I did last night.

Just something that I stumbled upon today while playing with the computer. Kind of cool way to look at pictures! I was going to use the pic that's on Al's site that looks like this, but I KNOW HOW YOU DID THAT NOW AL! hehe

I could swear that my counter is broken....oh well!

Monte Carlo DAMN RIGHT!