by cammerjeff » Fri May 18, 2012 8:29 am
Phil,
We are on the same page on this one, the wheels have been stripped, but I lacked the motivation to actually Polish, mask, and paint them. I have a set of 15X8's on my 69 Sprint Firesbird, and I remember the work involved in masking those wheels when I painted them Charcoal!!!!! I actually ended up using a thick grease on all the center areas!!!! Later on I found out when Western Wheel made them, they coated the entire wheel, then machined off the center area. Wish I could do that!!!! I have a couple of center caps to choose from, some later 80's vintage Firebird with a gray background and red arrowhead, or I can stick with the vintage correct chrome metal ones, and just find some arrow head emblems for them. My wheels actually came off of a 1977 Grand Prix so just by pure chance they are even date coded correctly for my Astre!!!! (like I care, I just thought it was funny!!!!). The black centers with the red arrow heads that are on the 69 Bird are actually off a 1980 Bonneville.
And Yes I do beleive the body shop is doing very good work, even if the car is over a year late from when they promised it!!!!! And I do have a story of body shop horrors, I had a guy that worked out of his barn 20 years ago, he had done a 67 Lemans, and a 76 T/A for me, both done well, just alittle late, and on budget. Then I took him a 69 GTO driver I used to have, I did the same deal as the other 2 cars, paid 1/2 up front to cover expenses, and he proceded to strip the car to bare metal, take out the back window and rear bumper, break the window, lose the bumper, push the car out in the weather for 2 months. Then lose his shop and house, it took me 3 more moths dealing with the local Police to get the remains of the car back from him. I should have just reported the car stolen and collected the insurance money! As it had been moved 3 miles to some other body shops rear parking area! So I ended up paying $2000 to make my car worthless and undrivable. Never did get any $$$ back on that one, and sold the non-numbers matching car for $1600 a few years later, just could not stand looking at it any more!!!!!
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Jeff R
1971 Catalina Freeway Enforcer
77 Astre Formula, some day soon powered by a 215 Buick V-8
1973 4-speed Lemans Safari STOCK!!!!! 1978 Catalina Safari
2006 Mallet Solstice, 6.0 LS2, 6-speed manual
2009 Solstice Coupe, 2.4, 5-speed Manual