This is the beginning of the restoration blog, which starts with the car completely disassembled, stripped of paint, and protected with etch primer. The first step is to estimate what’s required to restore the bodyshell.

As the pictures on the disassembly pages show, there was a fair amount of rust to deal with. More than I had hoped for, but maybe not as much as feared. In New Zealand we are never far from the sea, apart from a couple of dry inland areas, so rust in older vehicles comes with the territory.

The team at The Surgery provided me with a detailed assessment of the required metal work repairs, the parts they already had (quite a few as it turned out), and the parts I would need.