When I first bought her back in April, 1990, I didn’t have a lot of money, and just wanted an antique car to drive around in. First I got it running good (with my old man’s help, of course). Put a new water pump, fuel pump, rebuilt the carb, tuned it up and got a set of (used) tires on her. I had a lot of trouble with 6-Volt batteries dieing on me. I had to re-do the brakes too, but by September 1990 it was on the road, and the body work was started. Man, was it a pain. I didn’t have a garage, so everything I did had to be done…and done before I went to sleep. So if I sanded a fender, I had to prime it before nightfall, outside, under oak and pine trees. I think I spent more time picking bugs out of the primer than I did fixing it up!
10 Years in outdoor Jersey Weather took a toll
I didn’t have a garage when I lived in Jersey, and the harsh winters, road salt, salt in the air from the bay (I didn’t live far from the bay) and acid rain took a toll on Stardust for the 10 years I had her in Jersey. By 1998 the paint was starting to peel in places, rust was popping back through, and the shiny gold and brown bumpers/grill weren’t so shiny anymore. At this point in my life I had spread myself thin with my career, my traveling mystery theater company, dating, and owning as many as three vintage cars at one time. My daily driver was a ’56 Buick Wagon and my weekend car was a 1975 Buick Convertible, and they took up a lot of my time. I still drove Stardust, but I didn’t have the time to do the work she needed, to be done right. So in 2000, when we moved to Florida into a house with a two-car garage, I paired down to one driver and the Chevy. That’s when I decided to strip her down to the metal, do the bodywork right, and do the custom mods I had wanted to do for so long.
By the late 90s, Stardust’s paint job was not looking great
53 Chevy Custom, Stripping down the paint 
53 Chevy, stripping paint, French Tail lights 
53 Chevy French Tail lights 
53 Chevy body work 
53 Chevy Custom 
53 Chevy Custom 
53 Chevy working on the custom cabriolet roof 
53 Chevy Custom, working on the top 
53 Chevy Custom 
Working on it was killing me 
53 Chevy Custom 
53 Chevy Custom 
53 Chevy Custom 
53 Chevy Custom 
53 Chevy body work 
53 Chevy Custom body work 
53 Chevy body work gettin’ done 
53 Chevy Custom body work 
53 Chevy, stripping paint, working on fins 
Early Hub Cap Idea
Between 2000 and 2005, I worked on stripping down the paint to the metal, removing old bondo and fixing rust with metal ( I learned how to weld! Not well, but well enough), and getting small dents and dings straightened out. I did a better job at straightening the door jam that was bent in the collision in the early 90s, and spent a lot of time straightening the body-door separator and getting the doors lined up. Then, in 2005, with an infusion of cash from a home re-fi, I started on the fins…