The Car - A 1981 Delorean DMC-12

So on June 29, 2009 I bought this 1981 Delorean off eBay. I realize it looks bad (and the reality is that this picture makes it look better than it really is), but before you start commenting that I am in over my head, I have owned and restored several Deloreans before so, for the most part, I know exactly what I am getting myself into. This is probably going to be the most extenstive restoration I've done, and at the end the hope is that this car will not be recognizable from this picture.

A little bit of background on this car is that the previous owner had a mechanic who was a complete yank working on the car. The end result being that the car continued to have problems and the owner parked it in his driveway for about 15 years to roast in the Alabama sun. In the mean time critters got into the engine bay and chewed up some random wires. In addition the mechanic did some "modifications" to the wiring of the car that is going to need to be returned to normal. Its fairly obvious they were having fuel system problems because the fuel system is also not right. That pretty much sums it up.

The interior is cooked from sitting in the sun so almost everything needs to be replaced. The dash is cracked in several places, the seat covers are junk, the console is going to need to be recovered, the passenger knee pad is junk, the glove box cover is cracked, the shift boot is all dried out, the headliners and junk, and the list goes on. Fixing the interior might be the easy part because I also plan to strip the car back to stainless and re-grain it, which is going to be a very time consuming job.

The idea is to make this car look pretty much like it did when it was new. Its going to be quite a bit of work to get there, no question about it, but if I weren't a person to take challenges I would have never bought this car in the first place.

My goal with this blog is going to be to follow the progress of the restoration process, which concidently is already in progress, so I have some catching up to do. Hopefully is will be educational for others who are doing a Delorean restoration or are considering it.