Mark's 69 AMX Restore

Mark's 1969 AMX #14035
"Project Restore AMX"

After owning my AMX for 27 years it was time to put a bunch of TLC into the car as it was starting to look a bit ragged! What really energized me or jump started me into cleaning up my car was the 2004 AMO National Meet in Arizona. It's not too often such an event will be held this close to the west coast. I figured I ought to make sure my car made it there, and up until now it was no where close to being show ready.

November 2003 - First thing I did was swap out the rear end for one with a higher gear ratio of 3.15. The rear end came out of a Javelin being parted out by 68 AMX owner Dave Chick.

Out with the old

In with the new
Broken spring bolt being fixed

January 2004, Super Bowl Weekend - Engine, which has been in the car for almost 20 years, had to come out so it and the engine compartment could be detailed. While doing so we discovered the intake manifold gasket had slipped and was sticking out the back. Also found out the clutch and pressure plate was on their last leg, and flywheel needs resurfacing. I had the engine compartment steam cleaned the day before we got started, which helped out a bunch. Even so you can see the red body paint from before the car was painted yellow showing underneath a layer of black paint.

Hood is off.
Hook up the hoist!
Half way out.

Chain don't break!
Ready for stand.
Parked for a while.

Engine area center.
Engine area right
Engine area left.

Front end apart.
In deep now!

February 9, 2004. Sand blasted the engine compartment. Used high pressure water system that really sucked up the sand. Ran out after 150 pounds and could have used more. Looked like 99% of the heavy stuff was off and called it quits.

Ready to blast.
Right side clean!
Left side clean!

Done. Let's head to the
beach for more sand!

February 10, 2004. Had a warm day and got some primer on the car. Still working on the engine, and it's starting to look really good!

My Uncle Joe surveys his work.
Still have much sanding left!
Parts going back on.

February 16, 2004. Car sat for several more days before another warm day came along so we could shoot some paint. Wow, the red hit me in the face when I got home from work and saw it. It will really look good with its white stripes!

Wow, that's red!
Bye, bye yellow!
Looking good now.

Okay, the work on the engine is done. What do you think? Click on the engine to see it in detail.

Engine before..
Engine done! Haha!

February 22 & 23, 2004. The day arrived for the engine to be dropped back into the car. I had to sit on the fender so I could push the trans shaft down so as to clear the firewall and not scratch the newly painted area. Had engine and trans mount bolts in place in no time at all. While my uncle worked on the wiring I cleaned and painted the remaining parts left in the numerous boxes on the floor. Had to dodge rain drops for most of the morning as the water came down in buckets. Here's an Apple (Quicktime .mov) file to prove it.

Ready for engine.
Engine stuffed!
Whoop, there she is..

Guard Dog Dollie
Rainy AMX Day.
Looking mighty fine..

February 25, 2004. Finally got my powder coated exhaust manifolds back from Specialized Coatings in Huntington Beach. They look great as you can see from the pictures.

They're cast iron, really!
No more rust!
Left side installed

First week of March, 2004. Trying to finish up car and get it back on road. Had problem with wrong transmission output seal. Made several trips to trans shop and finally found the correct one at a bearing house. Noticed Saginaw steering gear box was leaking and replaced with a rebuilt box, which took two trips to auto store because they mistakenly sold me someone else's core sample on the first trip. Got a 10% discount on the second trip for my troubles. Also have an exhaust leak on left side which I will look at today. Finally got the car home in its own garage after being outdoors for 5 weeks. Gotta get the car washed for tomorrow night's March 13 Fuddrucker's AMX/Javelin meeting.

March 13, 2004. Took the car to the Fuddruckers show for the first time since January so everybody could check the engine compartment out.

Next on the To-Do-List? Body paint and Interior!

March 24, 2004. The car is back over at my uncle's for body work. Today we stripped off all the chrome and trim pieces, door locks and handles, interior stuff, headliner, and more.

The night before.
Bumpers away.
Rust at left rear window.

Rust uncovered.
Count the layers of paint. 4!
Everything out!

Need new door seals.
Hole in trunk lid.
Inside being gutted.

Where's the headliner?
Get a grip..
No tail lights.

April 11, 2004. Got a good jump on striping the body clean of paint. We tried chemical paint striper, a heat gun, and a fiber grinding pad. All three methods were fairly slow, some less messy than others. Car is about 98% bare now.

Let's get started.
Looking bare.
Hood shot.

Starting to blister.
Last section.
Scrape it off.

Getting shinny.
Half and half.
Onward and upward.

April 22, 2004. I think all the paint striping that is going to be done is done. Had to gas weld shut several small holes in the lower rear window corners area. A "Metal To Metal" compound was used as a final layer in this area to seal off everything. The rust concerns in this area have been taken care of hopefully!
Last year I put a good sized ka-wop in my right door as I was backing out of the garage. The more my uncle tried to fix it today the larger the bondo circle grew. He came to realize that it was worse than he first thought. He remembered that Dave Chick had offered a door from his Javelin part's car, so later that night after a call to Dave it was now in our possession. Thank you Dave! The picture of it is below to the left. It itself had a small wallop under the door handle. We banged it out with a good old fashioned ding puller and applied the bondo.
The trunk lid had a series of bad dings along almost its entire length. A bit of art and skill was used by my uncle to get the trunk keyhole looking good. The worst spot of any was the lowest part of the rear right quarter panel behind the tire, which was real banged up and required many applications of bondo and considerable sanding with an air file. For the most part the car is overall in real good shape with just a few dings here and there. Over the weekend we will put the first primer coat on and see how it looks. More pictures to follow of course!

A 68 Javelin door?
No easy way!
Progress I guess..

Used carpet kit 4 sale!
Pass the bondo.
Point of no return..

April 27, 2004. Finally got several layers of primer on car. It was a record setting hot day of course, around 107 degrees in the afternoon. The primer color almost looks like the yellow we took off. But it's actually a primer color called "Buff." Even as the primer was drying we could already see several dings we missed with the bondo. Oh well, a little glazing putty will fix that.

Uncle Joe the spray man.
Primered up.
It's getting there!

May 17, 2004. After a two week work stoppage the pace has picked up again on the AMX. For the past 4 days we have been finishing the major body work, and prepping the under side of the hood and trunk lid, and the door jam areas where the hinges all meet up. Our thinking is that the more we can do to the car, the less there is for the body shop to do, such as the block sanding, painting, and color sanding. That hopefully might make the difference to get my car in and out of the body shop quick enough to allow sufficient time to put it all back together in time for the 2004 AMO Nationals. After we painted the areas below seen in red we had to re-install the pieces and get them lined up, which turned out "not too bad."

Bondo city!
Primer on bad spot.
Primer still drying.

Spray on, sand off.
Hood ready for new coat.
Twins!

Joe the Paint King!
We have red!
Really red.

New twins
Still tacky.
Got red?

Right door jam.
Left door jam.
Sky box view.

Hinge and door on.
Lines look good!
Ready to paint?

Next, a trip hopefully soon to the paint shop! By the way, below is a picture of what my car should closely resemble when it's finished. Maybe slightly darker red.

While I'm waiting for the car to make its trip to the paint shop I thought I'd share pictures of some of the new parts I've purchased.

Carpet Kit
Seat Foam
Headliner

Firewall Padding
Shifter Boot
NOS Gas Cap

Used Wiper Bag
Bumper Bolts
Door Clip Kit

More Clips
Rivets for door tag
Clips for AMX letters

Interior screw kit
Window trim clips
Door bumpers

Roof rail seals
Door seals
Quarter window rubbers

Cowl seal
Rear reflector
Taillight lens trim

Taillight gaskets
Door handle gaskets
Parking light gaskets

Weather Strips
Also known as fuzzies

June 7, 2004. Hooray, my AMX is finally in the body shop to get painted. I asked the shop manager to take pictures from time to time as the car goes through its various stages of preparation so I can post them here for ya all.

New home.
Nike: Just do it.

June 11, 2004. I stopped by the auto body shop today and was surprised to see how much progress has been made on my car in less than a week. I heard mention of the word paint in the same sentence as next week. Fingers are crossed here!

June 14, 2004. Holy smoke! I stopped by today to see if they were still working on the body. Guess not, they had it covered in its base color, Flame Red. The car still needs to be color sanded, but it may be going home sooner than I had imagined. The way the stripe was done was the white stripe color was sprayed first and dried for a day. Then the following day the stripes were covered up and the base coat applied. As the base coat started to get tacky the stripe covering was removed and a clear coat shot over the entire car for the "Base coat, clear coat" 2 stage paint job. Looks good from here!

June 16, 2004. On the way to the seat shop my uncle and I stopped by the paint shop to see the latest on my car. They are color sanding it already and I'm guessing the car might be ready to bring home by the end of the week or early next week.

Sanded but not buffed yet.
Talking about the good days.
Left side waiting its turn.

June 23, 2004. She's home! This morning I went to West Covina Auto Body and retrieved my car from their lot. Michael from Runco Towing in Glendora had my car loaded up onto their flatbed truck and delivered home for a whopping $35. Chuck K. who owns and runs WCAB took good care of my car while it resided there, and got it looking great. I appreciate him jumping on the car and moving it out the door so quickly, in about 16 days.

A huge contributing factor that made it possible for WCAB to do this quick turnaround was my Uncle Joe. He by himself did all the body work from the rear bumper up to the front windshield, sparing WCAB from having to do the back half, other than fixing a few dings we missed and block sanding. There were several trouble spots that my uncle did some amazing work on, such as the trunk lid and right door. A month ago it was starting to look doubtful that I'd get the car painted and back in time to re-assemble it to make the AMO Nats in Phoenix next month. Now it looks almost certain!

You can see my aunt in one of the pictures giving the car her thumbs up gesture. Red happens to be her favorite color. Right away I started the process of putting the car back together, by switching the "runner" tires to my good tires. That alone made the car look better right off the bat. Most of the day was spent pulling boxes of parts down from up in the garage's rafters storage area, and cleaning and painting parts. Almost didn't even get to touch the car today except for pushing her up to the garage after being off loaded from the truck. I'll be busy for the next week, so probably no more pictures until after everything is back in place!

June 24-27, 2004. Work has been going on daily on the car since it came home last Wednesday. The biggest problem so far has been the doors and windows. The right door, that I got from Dave Chick to replace the door I dented last year, had a bad scissor mechanism and was making the window wobble. We exchanged the guts of my old door into the new one and got it working really good. Everything is adjusted, both stops top and bottom. Also had to move the roof rails out a bit so the windows would seal. Then the left door was rolling up and down real hard, found out it was the bearing of the small gear. So we took the small gear out of the spare right door and got the left working real well. Also had to move its roof rail outward to seal the window.

Carpet kit was real fun, preceded by the sound deadening material. Worked hard on both problems, finally finishing the carpet, with the exception of the wheel well humps, which did not fit well at all. Will probably take the car to a seat shop and have them do it lickity split.

Got all the window trim on expect for rear window, which is still out. Headliner is in, license plates on, tail and head lights in place. I need to mention what isn't done I guess, such as finish the carpet installation, install new door panels, letters and rings on Q-panel.

Window trim pieces.
Trimming carpet kit.
Sound deadening rubber.

A carpet kit start.
Kim stopped by to help.
Who's going to Fuddruckers?

July 3, 2004. Dog Attack! I came home Saturday to discover that guard dog Dollie had attacked both doors in her effort to get inside. You can see in the picture there was a bit of scratch damage, but it appears it is not deep and can be color sanded out. I was already planning on taking the car back to the body shop on Tuesday to blow some more red down into the wiper arm cowl area, I'll have them take care of the scratches at the same time..

Had a guy come over and install the rear window. He said he's been doing this line of work for 27 years and it showed. He had it installed lickity split.

The car is realng finished. You can see the carpet is fully installed. On Sunday the other seat was bolted in. The radio with CD was wired up and is operational. The only things remaining are to install the left arm rest, put in a few screws on the left door panel, and CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN.

Lot's O scratches.
Rear of interior.
Front of interior.

July 7, 2004. The car is pretty much finished so I took it to the monthly Twilight Cruise at the NHRA Museum complex this evening. Kent Harman from my work stopped by with his son and checked it out. You can view the other cars by clicking here.

Ready for the road.
Twilight Cruise.
Picture off center.

Next Stop - Phoenix!

July 8-10, 2004. Hooray, we made it to Phoenix for the AMO National Car Show. Roman rode with Dave in Dave's car, and I followed alongside in mine, while Dave's family rode in the Ford chase/repair car. I had a small problem with my center dash gauges shorting out, and what I maybe perceived to be my radiator running too warm. Ended up changing my timing a few degrees and switched to a lower temp. thermostat, and the return trip home ran great. After I got home I found my short problem. We wished more of our group had been able to join us. Even with the heat it was a great weekend.

Ripping down the road.
Gas stop. Again!
Million gallon pool.

Thursday night dinner.
Cold Stone Stop.
Saturday Show Day.

Dave's Car
Mark's Car.
Dave's wife Kati.

What'a ya know. The car won a "Gold Award" at the AMO National!

So after it was all said and done, my 69 AMX made it through a 5 month restoration project and got completed just in time to make the 2004 AMO National in Phoenix. I was still bolting on the last few pieces the day before we left. There was a lot of hard work by everyone who helped out, with my Uncle Joe shouldering most of the load. I can't wait to win the lottery and reward him for what his time and effort was worth!

The End..

After owning my AMX for 27 years it was time to put a bunch of TLC into the car as it was starting to look a bit ragged! What really energized me or jump started me into cleaning up my car was the 2004 AMO National Meet in Arizona. It's not too often such an event will be held this close to the west coast. I figured I ought to make sure my car made it there, and up until now it was no where close to being show ready. November 2003 - First thing I did was swap out the rear end for one with a higher gear ratio of 3.15. The rear end came out of a Javelin being parted out by 68 AMX owner Dave Chick.
Out with the old	In with the new	Broken spring bolt being fixed

January 2004, Super Bowl Weekend - Engine, which has been in the car for almost 20 years, had to come out so it and the engine compartment could be detailed. While doing so we discovered the intake manifold gasket had slipped and was sticking out the back. Also found out the clutch and pressure plate was on their last leg, and flywheel needs resurfacing. I had the engine compartment steam cleaned the day before we got started, which helped out a bunch. Even so you can see the red body paint from before the car was painted yellow showing underneath a layer of black paint.
Hood is off.	Hook up the hoist!	Half way out.
Chain don't break!	Ready for stand.	Parked for a while.
Engine area center.	Engine area right	Engine area left.
Front end apart.	In deep now!

February 9, 2004. Sand blasted the engine compartment. Used high pressure water system that really sucked up the sand. Ran out after 150 pounds and could have used more. Looked like 99% of the heavy stuff was off and called it quits.
Ready to blast.	Right side clean!	Left side clean!
Done. Let's head to the beach for more sand!

February 10, 2004. Had a warm day and got some primer on the car. Still working on the engine, and it's starting to look really good!
My Uncle Joe surveys his work.	Still have much sanding left!	Parts going back on.

February 16, 2004. Car sat for several more days before another warm day came along so we could shoot some paint. Wow, the red hit me in the face when I got home from work and saw it. It will really look good with its white stripes!
Wow, that's red!	Bye, bye yellow!	Looking good now.

Okay, the work on the engine is done. What do you think? Click on the engine to see it in detail.	Engine before..	Engine done! Haha!

February 22 & 23, 2004. The day arrived for the engine to be dropped back into the car. I had to sit on the fender so I could push the trans shaft down so as to clear the firewall and not scratch the newly painted area. Had engine and trans mount bolts in place in no time at all. While my uncle worked on the wiring I cleaned and painted the remaining parts left in the numerous boxes on the floor. Had to dodge rain drops for most of the morning as the water came down in buckets. Here's an Apple (Quicktime .mov) file to prove it.
Ready for engine.	Engine stuffed!	Whoop, there she is..
Guard Dog Dollie	Rainy AMX Day.	Looking mighty fine..
February 25, 2004. Finally got my powder coated exhaust manifolds back from Specialized Coatings in Huntington Beach. They look great as you can see from the pictures.
They're cast iron, really!	No more rust!	Left side installed
First week of March, 2004. Trying to finish up car and get it back on road. Had problem with wrong transmission output seal. Made several trips to trans shop and finally found the correct one at a bearing house. Noticed Saginaw steering gear box was leaking and replaced with a rebuilt box, which took two trips to auto store because they mistakenly sold me someone else's core sample on the first trip. Got a 10% discount on the second trip for my troubles. Also have an exhaust leak on left side which I will look at today. Finally got the car home in its own garage after being outdoors for 5 weeks. Gotta get the car washed for tomorrow night's March 13 Fuddrucker's AMX/Javelin meeting.

March 13, 2004. Took the car to the Fuddruckers show for the first time since January so everybody could check the engine compartment out.


Next on the To-Do-List? Body paint and Interior!
March 24, 2004. The car is back over at my uncle's for body work. Today we stripped off all the chrome and trim pieces, door locks and handles, interior stuff, headliner, and more.
The night before.	Bumpers away.	Rust at left rear window.
Rust uncovered.	Count the layers of paint. 4!	Everything out!
Need new door seals.	Hole in trunk lid.	Inside being gutted.
Where's the headliner?	Get a grip..	No tail lights.

April 11, 2004. Got a good jump on striping the body clean of paint. We tried chemical paint striper, a heat gun, and a fiber grinding pad. All three methods were fairly slow, some less messy than others. Car is about 98% bare now.
Let's get started.	Looking bare.	Hood shot.
Starting to blister.	Last section.	Scrape it off.
Getting shinny.	Half and half.	Onward and upward.

April 22, 2004. I think all the paint striping that is going to be done is done. Had to gas weld shut several small holes in the lower rear window corners area. A "Metal To Metal" compound was used as a final layer in this area to seal off everything. The rust concerns in this area have been taken care of hopefully! Last year I put a good sized ka-wop in my right door as I was backing out of the garage. The more my uncle tried to fix it today the larger the bondo circle grew. He came to realize that it was worse than he first thought. He remembered that Dave Chick had offered a door from his Javelin part's car, so later that night after a call to Dave it was now in our possession. Thank you Dave! The picture of it is below to the left. It itself had a small wallop under the door handle. We banged it out with a good old fashioned ding puller and applied the bondo. The trunk lid had a series of bad dings along almost its entire length. A bit of art and skill was used by my uncle to get the trunk keyhole looking good. The worst spot of any was the lowest part of the rear right quarter panel behind the tire, which was real banged up and required many applications of bondo and considerable sanding with an air file. For the most part the car is overall in real good shape with just a few dings here and there. Over the weekend we will put the first primer coat on and see how it looks. More pictures to follow of course!
A 68 Javelin door?	No easy way!	Progress I guess..
Used carpet kit 4 sale!	Pass the bondo.	Point of no return..

April 27, 2004. Finally got several layers of primer on car. It was a record setting hot day of course, around 107 degrees in the afternoon. The primer color almost looks like the yellow we took off. But it's actually a primer color called "Buff." Even as the primer was drying we could already see several dings we missed with the bondo. Oh well, a little glazing putty will fix that.
Uncle Joe the spray man.	Primered up.	It's getting there!

May 17, 2004. After a two week work stoppage the pace has picked up again on the AMX. For the past 4 days we have been finishing the major body work, and prepping the under side of the hood and trunk lid, and the door jam areas where the hinges all meet up. Our thinking is that the more we can do to the car, the less there is for the body shop to do, such as the block sanding, painting, and color sanding. That hopefully might make the difference to get my car in and out of the body shop quick enough to allow sufficient time to put it all back together in time for the 2004 AMO Nationals. After we painted the areas below seen in red we had to re-install the pieces and get them lined up, which turned out "not too bad."
Bondo city!	Primer on bad spot.	Primer still drying.
Spray on, sand off.	Hood ready for new coat.	Twins!
Joe the Paint King!	We have red!	Really red.
New twins	Still tacky.	Got red?
Right door jam.	Left door jam.	Sky box view.
Hinge and door on.	Lines look good!	Ready to paint?

Next, a trip hopefully soon to the paint shop! By the way, below is a picture of what my car should closely resemble when it's finished. Maybe slightly darker red.


While I'm waiting for the car to make its trip to the paint shop I thought I'd share pictures of some of the new parts I've purchased.
Carpet Kit	Seat Foam	Headliner
Firewall Padding	Shifter Boot	NOS Gas Cap
Used Wiper Bag	Bumper Bolts	Door Clip Kit
More Clips	Rivets for door tag	Clips for AMX letters
Interior screw kit	Window trim clips	Door bumpers
Roof rail seals	Door seals	Quarter window rubbers
Cowl seal	Rear reflector	Taillight lens trim
Taillight gaskets	Door handle gaskets	Parking light gaskets
Weather Strips	Also known as fuzzies

June 7, 2004. Hooray, my AMX is finally in the body shop to get painted. I asked the shop manager to take pictures from time to time as the car goes through its various stages of preparation so I can post them here for ya all.
New home.	Nike: Just do it.

June 11, 2004. I stopped by the auto body shop today and was surprised to see how much progress has been made on my car in less than a week. I heard mention of the word paint in the same sentence as next week. Fingers are crossed here!



June 14, 2004. Holy smoke! I stopped by today to see if they were still working on the body. Guess not, they had it covered in its base color, Flame Red. The car still needs to be color sanded, but it may be going home sooner than I had imagined. The way the stripe was done was the white stripe color was sprayed first and dried for a day. Then the following day the stripes were covered up and the base coat applied. As the base coat started to get tacky the stripe covering was removed and a clear coat shot over the entire car for the "Base coat, clear coat" 2 stage paint job. Looks good from here!



June 16, 2004. On the way to the seat shop my uncle and I stopped by the paint shop to see the latest on my car. They are color sanding it already and I'm guessing the car might be ready to bring home by the end of the week or early next week.
Sanded but not buffed yet.	Talking about the good days.	Left side waiting its turn.

June 23, 2004. She's home! This morning I went to West Covina Auto Body and retrieved my car from their lot. Michael from Runco Towing in Glendora had my car loaded up onto their flatbed truck and delivered home for a whopping $35. Chuck K. who owns and runs WCAB took good care of my car while it resided there, and got it looking great. I appreciate him jumping on the car and moving it out the door so quickly, in about 16 days. A huge contributing factor that made it possible for WCAB to do this quick turnaround was my Uncle Joe. He by himself did all the body work from the rear bumper up to the front windshield, sparing WCAB from having to do the back half, other than fixing a few dings we missed and block sanding. There were several trouble spots that my uncle did some amazing work on, such as the trunk lid and right door. A month ago it was starting to look doubtful that I'd get the car painted and back in time to re-assemble it to make the AMO Nats in Phoenix next month. Now it looks almost certain! You can see my aunt in one of the pictures giving the car her thumbs up gesture. Red happens to be her favorite color. Right away I started the process of putting the car back together, by switching the "runner" tires to my good tires. That alone made the car look better right off the bat. Most of the day was spent pulling boxes of parts down from up in the garage's rafters storage area, and cleaning and painting parts. Almost didn't even get to touch the car today except for pushing her up to the garage after being off loaded from the truck. I'll be busy for the next week, so probably no more pictures until after everything is back in place!




June 24-27, 2004. Work has been going on daily on the car since it came home last Wednesday. The biggest problem so far has been the doors and windows. The right door, that I got from Dave Chick to replace the door I dented last year, had a bad scissor mechanism and was making the window wobble. We exchanged the guts of my old door into the new one and got it working really good. Everything is adjusted, both stops top and bottom. Also had to move the roof rails out a bit so the windows would seal. Then the left door was rolling up and down real hard, found out it was the bearing of the small gear. So we took the small gear out of the spare right door and got the left working real well. Also had to move its roof rail outward to seal the window. Carpet kit was real fun, preceded by the sound deadening material. Worked hard on both problems, finally finishing the carpet, with the exception of the wheel well humps, which did not fit well at all. Will probably take the car to a seat shop and have them do it lickity split. Got all the window trim on expect for rear window, which is still out. Headliner is in, license plates on, tail and head lights in place. I need to mention what isn't done I guess, such as finish the carpet installation, install new door panels, letters and rings on Q-panel.
Window trim pieces.	Trimming carpet kit.	Sound deadening rubber.
A carpet kit start.	Kim stopped by to help.	Who's going to Fuddruckers?

July 3, 2004. Dog Attack! I came home Saturday to discover that guard dog Dollie had attacked both doors in her effort to get inside. You can see in the picture there was a bit of scratch damage, but it appears it is not deep and can be color sanded out. I was already planning on taking the car back to the body shop on Tuesday to blow some more red down into the wiper arm cowl area, I'll have them take care of the scratches at the same time.. Had a guy come over and install the rear window. He said he's been doing this line of work for 27 years and it showed. He had it installed lickity split. The car is realng finished. You can see the carpet is fully installed. On Sunday the other seat was bolted in. The radio with CD was wired up and is operational. The only things remaining are to install the left arm rest, put in a few screws on the left door panel, and CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN.
Lot's O scratches.	Rear of interior.	Front of interior.

July 7, 2004. The car is pretty much finished so I took it to the monthly Twilight Cruise at the NHRA Museum complex this evening. Kent Harman from my work stopped by with his son and checked it out. You can view the other cars by clicking here.
Ready for the road.	Twilight Cruise.	Picture off center.

Next Stop - Phoenix!

July 8-10, 2004. Hooray, we made it to Phoenix for the AMO National Car Show. Roman rode with Dave in Dave's car, and I followed alongside in mine, while Dave's family rode in the Ford chase/repair car. I had a small problem with my center dash gauges shorting out, and what I maybe perceived to be my radiator running too warm. Ended up changing my timing a few degrees and switched to a lower temp. thermostat, and the return trip home ran great. After I got home I found my short problem. We wished more of our group had been able to join us. Even with the heat it was a great weekend.
Ripping down the road.	Gas stop. Again!	Million gallon pool.
Thursday night dinner.	Cold Stone Stop.	Saturday Show Day.
Dave's Car	Mark's Car.	Dave's wife Kati.
What'a ya know. The car won a "Gold Award" at the AMO National!
So after it was all said and done, my 69 AMX made it through a 5 month restoration project and got completed just in time to make the 2004 AMO National in Phoenix. I was still bolting on the last few pieces the day before we left. There was a lot of hard work by everyone who helped out, with my Uncle Joe shouldering most of the load. I can't wait to win the lottery and reward him for what his time and effort was worth! The End..