The first big step was to get the car to a professional body shop where the experts can look over my shoulder, and where I'll have access the putty/primer/paint system my favourite professional body shop uses. A friend of mine owns an independent, eight bay, fully modernized collision centre, and it happens to be the premiere shop within a 100 km radius. After a bit of bartering, he set aside a bay for my car this winter, where I'll be able to work on it myself.
I spent the last two weeks preparing for the move since it seemed everywhere I looked, I found a loose end. When it was finally ready for the shake down, I loaded it up onto my 16' flatbed trailer, took a couple "before" photos, and was on my way:
Dave's Collision Works is about 15 kms from my place... enough of a road trip to remind me that I had forgotten to tighten two of the six big bolts that hold the front sub-frame to the chassis. Luckily both were just sitting on the deck of the trailer when I pulled up.
A couple hours later I made a second trip bringing the fibreglass body over in an enclosed trailer. Here she is nestled in her new home for the next couple months:
Within a day or so I jacked the car up off all four corners and replaced the springs and shocks with threaded rods to hold the suspension at ride height no matter whether it was on the ground or suspended in the air:
Then I set about the tedious task of levelling the chassis on the jack stands. I used a laser level to be certain the car was within a hair of being perfectly level side to side and fore and aft:
Then, I was finally ready to start looking at the body panels.