Picked up the wagon yesterday from the painter. Looked great in bright pink with white roof in the sunshine, but as soon as I got it into the garage with its 96 feet of flourescent tubing the paint looked a lot different. Not anything I can photograph, but most of the horizontal surfaces looked like the paint was sprayed over dirt.

Not a smooth surface at all, with many "pimples" in the paint - many per square inch. The hood and other parts had orange peel finish too. I spoke to James and he hopes it is a contaminated clear coat, and said to bring it back to be re-sanded and buffed. Apparently there are 4 coats of clear on the car, so we hope that it can be fixed easily...

I spoke to James who is working on the wagon - not good news there.

Looks like another grand will be sunk into the old boat since we found a lot more rust and cleverly covered up repairs.

Yes, that's us looking inside the car from outside the car.

James is working hard on the Tiki Wagon, welding in patch panels and preparing for paint. The roof is ready for paint now, white with pearl and flake over the top. The dark pink we originally chose went up to $600/gallon, so james found the same color in a 94 Geo Storm chart. 

Having decided to keep the 8 lug wheels as spares for the convertible, I bought Astros from MoonEyes and white whites from DiamondBack.

I was amazed to find that I could still buy brand new 5 lug drums from Napa, so a complete set is winging its way here.

I also ordered a new bumper from a junkyard in CA for a third of the price of plating the existing ones, and a 4 barrel intake manifold so I can use my spare Carter and remove the existing 2 barrel.

Progress on the Tiki Wagon today - the exhaust system was overhauled by Rainblow Mufflers (lots of pain and suffering, borken bolts, etc for 3 days), the new whitewalls arrived from Diamond Back and I ordered my air bag kit. Fun stuff!

Got up early and visited James at JW Kustomz (http://jw-kustomz.com/index.htm) to show him the wagon. Just as nice in person as he seemed on the phone, so we booked the wagon in for late next week.

He'll need a month, maybe more, to strip the wagon, patch the rust and paint it. We're still choosing colors, but purple flake and cream roof seem the current fave..

Fitted new coil, plugs and wires which made a noticeable difference. One of the old plugs had a 2thou gap, and at least two of the wires had been cut clean through.

The whole bunch looked like they had been chewed up by a lawnmower.

Flew to Dallas at some ungodly hour to pick up Tara's new wagon today. Luckily it's gonna be her car, cos I can't see getting her out of bed at 5am any other way. Chase (mazboi) picked me up without problem and drove me back to DFW to his house where the old girl sat. Rust wasn't as bad as I expected, which was nice. Interior was really good - dash was a little in pieces and the headliner hanging down in the back, but seats were almost tear free, carpet good. Started right up although it sounded a bit like Christine at the beginning of that movie. :)

Headed out on the highway at 10:15am, start of the drive that would end at 3:15am the next day. A couple of Vault's and a weird little vial of ultra-caffeinated (but foul tasting) stuff kept me going. No real issues on the road; a couple of times it puked trans fluid because it was probably overfilled, and I wasn't being that gentle keeping it at 65-75mph for 900 miles. Stopped every 200 miles for gas, but could have stretched that a little, average was around 17 mpg.

More pictures of the trip at flickr..