The restoration starts!

[mustangman70]

Today me and dad will start prepping the body, sanding evreything down to see just how ugly her bare skin is, i plan on redoing the WHOLE car into a resto-mod now that i am a saddend owner of a 99 civic lol

So here are my ?'s This is a big task, taking things off and such. I plan on taking the whole car apart. Should i get a new wiring kit for this thing while the car is bare? I think painless wiring makes a complete kit right? I have pretty good knolege of elctrical but how hard is it? oh should i pay some one to do it? The car shoudl be painted last right?

 

[Ronstang]

Take tons of pictures during disassembly to aid you in the reassembly process because your memory will fail you at some point. I personally do not like Painful Wiring because they have non-standard connectors for the period and look out of place in my opinion. I have a friend who went this route and I think he is starting to regret the decision. If you are diligent and patient then you can easily restore your wiring harness and even replace sections if necessary.

About the paint. I like to work with the car in primer as long as possible. I usually disassemble the entire car and then restore the individual parts and subassemblies and then put them back on the car.....everything in primer, even the parts. This way I can double check all fit and finish problems and correct them before I have painted them. You would be surprised at the amount of parts on a 35+ year old car that actually don't fit right (due to both bad manufacturing and POs taking and putting parts back on) but you won't notice because it is a complete car. The mock up process is even more important if you are restomodding and changing to nonstock parts so you can double check the fit and function of everything.

Then I disassemble everything and paint and final finish everything and carefully wrap and store all the parts while I finish the bodywork. The nice thing is that once the car is painted all the parts are in "ready to bolt on" condition and the car goes together rather quickly and without incident because evrything has already been fitted and massaged to fit properly.

Good luck