Restoration while using it as my daily driver

This part of the restoration was completed in just under 2 months. And this stage of things came about just because now that the engine compartment looked so good, the rest of the car wasn't measuring up. I pulled my Scrambler in the shop and decided to touch a few spots on a lazy thursday afternoon, and started to blow off the car with the air hose, This was going to be a quick 1/2 hr job with a spray bomb of etch primer, well... the factory paint was flaking off like snow, so I hung the licence plate on the wall and started sanding it down that night. By Monday I had the entire car sanded down to bare metal, removed the bumpers, I had pulled out the motor, almost all the glass, all the interior, dash and the wiring harness and the exhaust system. "What was I thinking?"

My friends Larry & Pauline came by on a monday evening and wondered why I wasn't down at the A&W all weekend. Larry said to me with his hands in the air, "JOIE, what have you done?... It's licensed isn't it?" That's when I realized that lego's don't go back together as fast as they come apart. I had to borrow my moms car for the next 2 months.

You see, the problem was..It was time to pull the 390 out anyway. It was at this point that my friend Daryl said well, you know, you have enough parts just laying around the shop, you could probably put something together. So I did, I assembled 360 ci with all the tricks I could get away with, using mostly used engine parts and it was never balanced. Just under 2 months later and the car was ready to have the licence plate put back on, however, Now I didn't want to use the original windshield because it was milky in the corners, and I had no exhaust. So... Yes I drove this car down town about 5 miles with no windshield and open headers in the middle of the afternoon (what a rush). The glass shop and the muffler shop were only blocks apart. At one point I was followed by a police officer, but he let me go when he seen me turn into the muffler shop. Lucky girl! I thought I was gonna get a ticket for sure. I don't know if he noticed that it had no windshield.

This 360 turned out to be the best engine I ever had!, I ran it for 5 years then I pulled it out and rebuilt it while I was going to school and working at Diamond engines. The rebuilt version was just a replica of the experimental version, but at least I felt safe taking it over 7500 rpm. And I did that all the time, because it was loud inside the car. Oh did I mention that all this time I had no carpets in the car, just a bare white metal floor.