My main activity with the TI as of late has been to strip it down to a blushing shell. Bumpers, grill, mirror, emblems, and most trim have been removed. I don’t really want to touch the stainless trim on the rails for fear of mangling them during removal. I’m pretty sure replacements are non-existent.

The smirking TI with its bra removed and belly button exposed. Too bad I don't have the nipple foglights for this car.

In addition to this undressing, I’ve also done a fair amount of grinding wherever the rust bubbles were impossible to ignore.

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After a hiatus of a few weeks, I spent some time on the TI today and made some progress. Rust and general neglect are my regular foes; it seems I can’t look under a panel or wiggle a part that doesn’t suddenly ask me to pay attention to it, so even the most basic goals have grown more difficult to achieve.

I’m also succumbing to good old fashioned mission creep. Once you start tearing into a given area, it becomes more and more a fool’s economy to leave what’s already half-assed or non-functional as such. A couple of examples: seats and door panels, heater, gauge cluster. As of right now the only things I haven’t removed from the interior of the TI are the shifter knob and steering wheel.

Here's what it looks like when you have no dash. Or rather when the dash is laying on the passenger floor. At this point I've probably removed 200 lbs of stuff from the car; time to go racing? Also you can just see the newly completed patch on the driver floor.

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I haven’t posted in a while but luckily that’s not due to a lack of progress on at least a few of the tasks and projects in the driveway. I’m particularly excited about the TI. It will never be a show car but I think I’m close to finishing a few things that will make it a solid and super fun daily driver.

Last Sunday I spent some time with Luigi figuring out how to tackle the driver side floors. The rear was particularly bad, but the front also showed a nice gaping hole around where the drain plug may once have resided.

The rear had bad rust -- most of this panel had to be cut out.

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Finally a spare afternoon! I was able to finish the passenger side today, at least the metal-work part of it, and celebrated by taking a quick drive around the neighborhood. This car is so fun to drive, it’ll be great when it’s fun AND comfortable.

Today’s exercise was more or less a repeat of the last time. I have no delusions now of anything being easy or particularly good. I do have delusions that exterior panels will be easier to work on, being on the exterior and all, but at least I can leave good enough alone for the floors.

Fitting the big piece. I left the weird corner piece out on the first pass; consider that a lesson learned from doing the front job.

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