Took the GT on a road trip today, the shot is from the upper deck of the Port Townsend ferry. Car did well, some berry-flavored, baked on bird droppings aside. Be nice to get the overdrive in, though!

Update: I went to the regular first Saturday South Whidbey Sports Car meeting, on time for once…and everyone else was late, no joke (see photo). I had to run before anyone else arrived as I was headed to the vintage races at Pacific Raceways. This has taught me a valuable lesson about timeliness: don’t bother!
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Jim did the final buff and I spent some time today polishing the car with a foam pad. I still have some hand polishing to do…it’s not looking too bad. Not perfect but pretty darn decent.
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I decided to live life on the wild side and painted the wheels a maroon color that matches the seats rather than the staid silver the majority thinks they should be. (The photo is pretty horrible–please excuse–but I’m shoehorned into a corner of the shop while Jim is working on his Italia 2 project.) Got the drums painted as well. The wheel color “in real life” is closer to the color you see on the front wheel in this shot.

The wheel wells are now painted with truck bed liner and I even cleaned the tires…the car looks much crisper. I still need to paint the wheels themselves, and the brake drums, too.
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I did a tremendous amount of work on the GT today…well, OK, I got the license plate lamps working. I took a few minutes afterwards to drive the old girl outside and take some photos, including this one with the BSA. (More after the jump.)
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Got the front seats in today–they look pretty good…better than they did in the front hall, anyway. They aren’t quite as red as shown in this shot, the photo below is more akin to their true color.
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Progress! I have most of the interior installed, but I need to buy some additional carpet; the cheapie kit I used didn’t come with any for the areas behind the rear wheel arches, next to the load floor. Overall, I’m reasonably pleased with how the interior is turning out, but concours champions can rest easy, this car won’t be competition. By the time I get done driving it a few miles it will look well lived-in anyway.
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I grabbed a couple of wheels from storage (complete with dry-rotted tires) and gave them a quick shot of rattle-can paint to see what a set of red wheels would look like, “for reals.”

Update: Added a couple of photoshop mock-ups to end of post.
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I was able to get some clutch action today (I have a new slave cylinder set aside for the transmission swap) and, sitting on the floor to drive it out of the shop, saw the GT for the first time under natural light since it was painted. I think it looks pretty nice, though it needs to be buffed again and then polished. Please excuse the badly parked wipers with frankly awful wiper blade assemblies (being replaced)–and don’t examine any of the trim too closely!
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