CELEBRATING 20 YEARS!

Alright, let's get this party started.

February, 1987, my parents received their special ordered Aerocoupe. I remember vividly walked up to it with plastic on the seats, window sticker, everything. Grew up in the car from age 6 til present. For high school graduation in 1998, I was blessed to take ownership of the car. June, 1999, an electrical short sent it up in flames. Here we are in this foul year, 2020, and it's time for my 40 year old butt to get in gear.

Here is the car being dug out from where it was buried behind a boat, motorcycles, etc, for 21 years.



Here is a 3-fold of a Colorado trip in 1987, me with the car in February of 1999, and current year after being dug out with my ugly mug next to it.



Let's get this thing home!




The third generation of this car, and its future owner.



First up, get 21 years of crap off of it. I used a foam cannon with 3x the appropriate dose of Chemical Guys foam solution, applied twice, followed by two hand wash over the good areas.



Now, the hair-standing part - getting the window out safely, and retaining the seal. After a few calls and subtle interrogation, I found just the guy.




Success!




Thank God, these are in reproduction now..



Third brake light was a little damaged, so I gave it a little restoration of its own.

That VIN tag was nasty. Some Por15 and some hammered metal paint took care of it.



I wanted to see how the paint would turn out with modern technology. I was not disappointed.




Here's where I leave you for now. Scraping the glass with denatured alcohol and a blade. And don't worry, I've since upgraded sawhorses to much more sturdy ones. Looking forward to posting as things progress!

Lots of work!!! Glad to see it being restored and not left to rot.

Good luck. Ive been wanting to do a repaint on mine but that rear glass is just so intimidating.

Now THAT'S a labor of love! Mighty impressive. Enjoy to the full!

Best,
MAP

Looking forward to watching the restoration. Are you going to buy a rusty but stock and original parts car for the rebuild?
BTW, if I had to guess, the fire started in the HVAC electrical bundle behind the dash. When I was rebuilding my car, I found several burned, melted and smoked wires attached to the HVAC control panel. My car almost went up in smoke...before I owned it.

Don't be intimidated by the glass seal. It's really goopy, but not bad. Just do your research in finding the right glass guy. And if someone approaches the seal from the outside with a Sawzall, boot them to the curb before they start.




It actually started somewhere between the battery and starter, but I can't figure out even still how it happened. I remember when it started, I saw coolant leaking and the positive cable sparking on the ground from the starter post. The quality of a donor to build off of will be determined by t what's available in the coming months. Ideally, a well kept, 100k-ish mile example.

Pulling the engine and trans this weekend and hauling to the storage unit till I can find the right car.

That's great to see you save he car. You need quiet a few parts to get tit back together. I have many ducts, interior trim and electrical harnesses if you need any of it?

There's a lot of work there,but will be awesome when it's done. I'm glad you're doing something with it!

Great pics to start off, look forward to seeing it move forward! At least door back the parts look generally usable or even very nice.

Thanks, all. I haven't completely written off building from what I have, though it will take a whoooole lot and I'd rather not bite off more than I can chew. What I'd like to do is lift the body and build my frame on up and get a good shell over it.

Very small update for today. Got some crap wheels on it so I can restore the factory wheels.

1 gallon of denatured alcohol, 33 razor blades, and a whole lot of patience later, the sacred window is cleaned up 🙏🏻


Before




After

Great job on the back window. I think it was about 2 days ago on facebook a guy said he had 50 rear aerocoupe windows ranging from $2500 to $3000 that he was trying to sale. He had a picture of 10 of them. I would like to know how he collected them out of curiosity.

It might be the g-body junkyard guy on ebay. Mr.Chevelle1 is his username

Small update. Got the new rear shelf and trunk seal in today. Still waiting to find the perfect car to build this off. I found one in Detroit that I'm hoping to pick up in a couple weeks if it's still available.