Now that the car is home from the paintshop it is like a cool giant model ready to be reassembled!  There are all kinds of stories of people getting a car back from paint and body and then rushing to have it ready for Pebble Beach in 5 days or something like that.  I actually did manage to do a trick like that once with a small and simple British sports car for a local show – aided by my son and a pal of his.   However, with the E-type if you are doing most of the work with one or two people – forget it. There is a lot of trim and it is a bit like a puzzle box – things have to be put together in the right order. So, figure that this is going to take more time than you thought. Figure that you will need to redo some work to get it just right. Finally. figure that when you are done – after all that hard and careful work – you will have the coolest car in the world.

One important tip is to get those pictures out that you took when you were busy taking the trim off the car during disassembly.  They are going to be really valuable as reference as to what goes on what first and how the finished product should look. Also, hopefully everything was carefully and fully labeled when you took the car apart.  Finally, make sure to have a helper or two – if your partner is into cars and can help you are particularly lucky (even if his of her main interest is Alfa Romeos – like my wife).

For me, this retrim has been REALLY slow going as I have had all sorts of major distractions.  What follows are some main highlights from the trimming as the E-type starts coming together nicely.