Purchase Era:
Not much visibly happened around this time; Got started understanding bondo and paint, messing around with the fuel tank.
I did clean thru the entire carburetor, stuff like the smog pump was also removed, but I left the rat's nest because it was still working fine.

I also spent quite a bit of time getting used to and understanding the car. Its quirks, how it handles, what it does and how it feel when it does it
I have a lot of fun memories with it around this time, but then again, that also involved the people I was with

The rear windows had some rlly old peeling purple tint on them, which was one of the first things to go, along with replacing a fender that the door had dented in, which you can see rattle-canned black

Painting:
It honestly took me a long time to get around to this point, like three years, but I had to eventually or it would never get done

The body work was pretty simple but there's 10,000 tiny factors that aren't obvious unless you're told about them.
Sanding to get the panels flat is very important, as it's pretty easy to accidentally leave them wavy.
After you sand: paint, sand, bondo, dry, sand, and repeat.

It's also incredibly important to clean the surface before you coat it with something else. I forgot to use my tack rag before the final coat of paint and there's a bit of speckled areas now bc of dust

Interior:
The interior was in very bad condition; the dash was faded and peeling up, it was missing the radio and some spare parts were mismatched colors
I learned a lot about 80s wiring, hvac, and general vehicle construction during this time
Also the main ECU is underneath the passenger kick panel !!! it was rusted to hell and back

The car had been sitting outside for about 3 years of it's life, and thus was full of snake skins everywhere. I even found a couple snake skeletons

There was a good chunk of time where often at night after school I'd go out to the garage, take some hits of the bong, but some chemical brothers on the sony boombox, set up a heater blowing in the car, and work on tearing the interior apart before slapping it all back together

The seats are surprisingly convoluted compared to the rest of the interior, and took up probably 1/3 of the time working on the interior. The door cards are literally a sheet of wood with fabric glued onto it and the seats use incredibly complicated pieces and seams to create the shapes that make it up

There was a lot of opprotunity for customizing when redoing the entire interior. LArgest of which prolly being the embroidery I did on the doorcards with silver thread

The original digital clock was delaminating, so I found a tiny portable AA-powered one that fit in the slot instead. With the color scheme it almost looks stock !