For the third (and last) time, we have agreed to have a car on the field at the Amelia Island Concours before starting to restore it.
The two previous times we agreed to this folly, we had less than a year to do ground-up restorations, working mostly nights and weekends. The first was a Group 44 Racing Triumph GT6, followed by a Tornado Typhoon that event founder Bill Warner asked us to bring when fiberglass specials were featured.
This time we would be smart. We would give ourselves an extra six months of leisure time to finish recreating the Lotus Elan that we found broken in half in a northern Michigan field, where it had rotted away for nearly forty years.
In every restoration, there are a few inevitable truths.
First, things will take longer than you think. If you had told us two years ago that it would take nearly half a day to properly refit the glove box door (a job that seems like it should take five to ten minutes), we would have said you were crazy. Today, we would tell you differently.
Another truth is that things will always go wrong. The old saying “two steps forward, one step back” is never more true than in car restoration.
As of this writing, the big event is just three weeks away. Two weeks ago, the car was nearly done. Then, while trying to force ill-fitting reproduction molding around the back of the cockpit, we noticed a six-inch-long crack in the paint on top of the bulkhead.
Unbelievable! We would have to repaint the entire rear half of the car.
We quickly took apart much of what we had lovingly spent the last few weeks assembling and rushed the car back to the paint shop.
After much begging, bribing, and overtime, we got the car back after just a few days and spent the better part of a Sunday hurriedly putting the Elan back together.
While this crisis was averted, we have no room for further error. If just one more thing goes wrong, or we need one more part, we’ll miss the field at this year’s Amelia Island event.
