Car Restoration: Step by Step - The Tear Down and Inspection Process

Obviously the very first thing that you need to do is to decide what kind of car your going to restore, and from there you can begin looking for just the right car for you, this can be a long process, you can't just buy the first car that you find.

If this is to be your first car restoration, you'll need to choose the car that your going to restore wisely, you've got to determine what you know how to do, and what you'll need help with during the process, don't expect it to happen fast, it's a long process.

Really there are no cars that are easier then others to restore, some are a bit easier to get parts for, and for your first restoration you might want to start with a car that's easy to find parts for, like a mustang, camaro, or chevelle.

It always helps to have a love for the car that your working on, the last thing that you want is to feel like you have to work on the car, you need to enjoy the process, or you'll moire then likely give up on your first restoration project, and never do one again.

It's always best to stay away from the heavily rusted cars for your first restoration, pay a little more the first time, and get a car that is in decent condition to begin with, this way you'll get the car restored, and on the road, and this will build your confidence the next time you restore a car.

Now that you have bought the car, you can begin the process of inspecting the car for damage, and for parts that are gone, or need to be replaced, first we'll look for parts that need to be replaced, or rebuilt to get the car restored and looking good.

What I usually do is get a notebook and separate a page in to three columns, and then I label those columns, replace, repair, good parts, then I take the notebook and walk around the car making a list of the parts that I can see need to be replaced, or rebuilt.

Once I have this list complete I go to the internet to determine what parts are available for the car, and what parts I'll have to locate, once I know this I can start to build a price list for the parts, you will pay more for hard to find parts, because the people that sell them know what their worth.

Now that you have a list of parts we can move on to the actual work on the car, but make sure that you keep you parts list handy, you will be adding to it as you tear down the car, the next step is the tear down, you'll need to have a plan to store the parts of the car as you remove them.

I usually start the tear down on the front of the car, and work my way to the back, but you can proceed as you like with the tear down, I suggest as you pull each parts off of the car that you take a picture before you remove the part.

For parts storage I usually get boxes and label them according to the area of the car that I'm working on, so if I were starting the the front of the car, my box would be labeled engine compartment, make sure that you have a lot of plastic bags on hand also.

You'll need the plastic bags to keep track of the small parts on the car, like nuts, bolts, clips and other small parts that can get lost easily as you go, this won't be an over night process, so you best be very organized, and always keep your ducks in a row.

You should label your plastic bags before you through them in the storage box, if you follow this process, and take a lot of pictures, you won't lose a bunch of parts for your car before you finish the restoration process.

In my next article we'll begin the tear down process by removing the front clip of the car, we'll remove the fenders, hood, radiator, engine, and all the components from the front end of the car, so stay tuned for the full restoration process.