It’s been quite the journey. John has waited a long time for this moment. His 1970 Burnt Orange 340 4-speed Cuda is finally complete. The dream he’s had since young adulthood has been fully realized. John is now in possession of and is driving the brand new ’70 Cuda that he tried to buy all…

It’s no longer a dream. It’s a reality. Your car is now fully assembled and ready for the road. Well, not quite ready for the road. It’s important to remember that the entire car was disassembled down to the last nut, bolt and clip. The engine has been completely rebuilt along with the transmission and…

The dream is almost realized. All the previous effort has finally come down to this. It’s time to bring all of the individual restored parts back together to create what has been fantasized about for a very long time. The body parts are like new again, better really. The engine has been assembled and tested,…

The interior assembly is actually a bit more involved than just bolting parts in place. The seats for instance are a mini restoration unto themselves. The seats in John’s Cuda looked like they were total trash but that’s ok because all of the soft parts will be discarded anyway. Usually, only the frames are reused…

Everything so far has built up to this moment! This is where things start to really get exciting. All of the metal and bodywork have led to this moment when the sheet metal gets pretty. Applying the color is of course a critical phase of any restoration and while there have been updates to materials,…

Mark Ehlen- MCR Staff If you ask the typical car enthusiast what is the most difficult part of any restoration project, probably 9 out of 10 would say the paint job. The more informed would likely go deeper and say the body work under the paint is more important because without a good foundation for…

Getting the body ready for the shiny stuff This is where things start to begin to get really serious. Not to say that the previous steps haven’t been. As was mentioned in part 6, the metalwork is the foundation for everything after that but no panels are perfect. As good as the aftermarket panels are,…

Mark Ehlen- MCR Staff The major decisions have been made. The level of restoration has been chosen. The car is at MCR and its turn has come. The beginning of your dream starts today. This is really going to happen; it is happening. The first step of any restoration is evaluation, disassembly and then chemical…

Mark Ehlen- MCR Staff While virtually all of the cars MCR builds are run on the dyno to fully test and tune all their systems for correct function, relatively few get dyno tested at the beginning of the resto. That is simply because very few of them show up in running/driving condition. Most of those…

Mark Ehlen- MCR Staff Dreams by their very nature are personal. Muscle car dreams especially so. No two are going to be exactly alike which is why MCR’s Vehicle Information Survey is so valuable. It’s your dream. Effectively communicating it to the team that’s going to build it is critical. Trouble with dreams though is…