This is primarily just to show Paul Rich and Paul Holden how far Fred McKenney's car has progressed since we all first peeked under the body a month ago.
For those of you who didn't see the 'before' shots, the back half of the chassis was pretty rusted (first picture). Many of the welds were old and cracking, with not a lot of metal left under them. There wasn't any real protection from the elements for the steel, and the car has 130,000 miles on it.
Fred sent the engine to a guy to fix a crack, and cleaned and repaired most of its add-on parts while it was out.
The body is solid, but has that 'patina' that makes it look terrible -- or cool, if you're not Kelly Frazer.
The first of the 'after' pictures show what should looks like cleaner-than-average structure for a 35-year-old pan-based car. He's POR-15 treated the chassis, but it's not hiding anything unsightly. He put it back to the original Intermeccanica shape (near enough as makes no difference) and added a crossmember for rear seatbelts. He said he welded on it for about six hours, and he's a fast welder. It doesn't flex like it did.
It's not all the way I'd have done it, maybe, but it's as road-worthy as he feels it needs to be for routine driving the way he drives. Bearing in mind all of the other, minor details we encountered and repaired, he'll probably think he's driving a whole different car.
I think we're probably going to be putting some Bug shocks in, but he's otherwise happy. Under budget, too.
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