Are we doing things in the right order?

[dictator27]

I was cruising around another forum recently and came across a comment which has started me thinking - which might be dangerous. A fellow said that he had noticed that there seemed to be a lot of
partially restored cars for sale which said that the mechanical work was done but body work was needed. He said that it seemed that too many people give up on a restoration when they are confronted by the complexities of body work. Mechanical work by comparison is relatively straight forward. In his view, the bodywork should be done first. If you can get past that, completing the rest will seem easy.
Thoughts?

Terry

[Swifster]

I always thought the mechanical, then body followed by the interior. The big problem is that the financial cost of body work occurs over a smaller about of time. It takes a while to spend $10K on mechanical but a short time to come up with the same amount for body work and paint. And the body work stalls...

[Chris Pile]

I think many of us have seen freshly painted cars that looked great, but couldn't be driven because the mechanicals hadn't been completed. I would rather get the brakes, powertrain, and electrical systems squared away first - the looks can wait until the end of the project.

[Corley]

Dragging an engine over freshly painted fenders seems like a mindless activity. Same with most of the mechanical stuff. Better to sling a whip over your shoulder, if you are bent of self destruction.

[PackardV8]

Fifty years of experience says, do all the mechanical work and drive the car for an entire summer. Keep a punch list of everything you didn't get right the first time. Fix all that over the winter and drive it again. When it drives out perfectly, then pull it apart and do the paint and interior.

Even after fifty years of knowing how, I still cheat and it bites me every time. On my custom C-cab, I'm leaning over $10,000 paint and body work to straighten out wiring problems which should have been done before it was painted.

jack vines