Evenings are very exciting for me since last November… The reason for this is because the restoration shop, which is repainting my 67 Eldorado at the moment, is always uploading pictures of the days progress to a web server after work.
Today was especially exciting. I saw the Eldorado in its new paint for the first time!
Doesn't she look spectacular in its fresh coat of "Atlantis Blue Firemist! ?
Bernd and his team did an awesome job so far as you can see in the restoration gallery.
There is still tons of work left - but everything looks very promising so far.

In the paintbooth with fresh paint.

First time in the sunlight, with the first trim parts already installed.

Tags:1967 Cadillac Eldorado Repair Tip, 1967 Eldorado, Restoration, Paintjob, Repaint, Atlantis Blue Firemist, Repaint

The first pictures of my 1967 Cadillac Eldorado restoration / paint job project are coming in. You can read more details about it here on my website.
The restoration shop is sending me detailed pictures of the process. They are really doing a great job. Very exciting times.
Of course there are the first unpleasant surprises to be seen - there is a little more rust around the rear window than I expected, but still nothing serious. After disassembly we could see that the car is in fantastic shape.

You can find all the pictures of the restoration here on my website as high res pictures.

In the shop - disassembly began. They are cleaning everything up now.

Removal of all the trim and sheet metal

I will also redo the trunk.

Tags:1967 Eldorado, 1967 Cadillac Eldorado Repair Tip, 1967, Paintjob, Repaint, Restoration

My 1967 Cadillac Eldorado was a completely original car including its factory paint job. It looked great from 10ft away and on pictures. But if you inspected the car closer, you could clearly see the many paint issues it had .This is the reason why I never showed the car anywhere. I have already fixed all technical problems and the interior is in mint condition. It's a very low mileage car with only 28k miles and it drives like a brand new car.
One of the previous owners of this car tried to touch up the paint in some areas but it was not done properly…
I bought the car in 2009, and since then I was planning to repaint the car to make it perfect.

Being a perfectionist I had a hard time finding a shop which is up to my quality standards and work ethics. During a photo-shooting I came in contact with a shop about 2 hours from where I live. My wife and I were invited to photograph one of the owners Hotrods and he also owns a Cadillac with a breathtaking paint job. While we were there I was extremely impressed by the cleanliness of his shop and the quality of the work I saw there and especially about the attitude of the owner Bernd. A couple of years later 3 of my cars needed some little paint touch ups which made me pretty nervous. But Bernd did the most excellent job on my cars, so that I asked if he could also do my 67 Eldorado.
Unfortunately a couple more years went by where I did not have the financial means to do the job.
Last year - out of nowhere I was contacted by an uncle I had not had any contact for the last 42 years after my dad was killed at a work accident. To make a long family story short - he "inherited" me a very generous amount of money - almost as much as I´ll need for the paint job of my 67 Eldorado.

Yesterday I delivered the car to the restoration shop.
After a long and thorough inspection by the shop owner, the restoration will start soon. The owner is optimistic that hopefully there wont be too many bad surprises hiding. He measured the paint thickness and found some evidence that some damage might be hiding in the right rear quarter panel. Maybe the car had a fender bender sometimes in its previous life.

The car will be completely disassembled. Front and rear glass will be removed. Fenders, hood, trunk and doors are coming off. The interior will be completely removed, but the body will stay on the frame.
Then everything will be taken down to bare metal by sanding, as its too cold to strip the paint with chemical paint stripper during the winter months.

Every step will be documented with pictures which I will post here on my website as well. So keep coming back to follow the restoration if you are into this kind of entertainment.

I´m so happy that the car will be fixed at this shop. It's the first shop I have no worries about the quality of job done. Bernd - the shop owner - is a perfectionist like me. He only accepts perfect quality and wont take any short cuts.

FINDING THE RIGHT COLOR…

The big question for me now is if I should have the car repainted in its original "Grecian White" color, which I am not exactly a big fan of, or repaint it in one of my favorite 1967 Cadillac Eldorado Colors "Atlantis Blue Firemist" which was a pretty expensive optional paint in 1967
When I asked my friends to help me decide, about 80% said I should paint it in "Atlantis Blue Firemist"… If I could go back to 1967 and order one from the factory I would probably order the blue one…
I was also informed that the Cadillac LaSalle club does not deduct any points during judging if you do a color change, as long as it is done in a correct color for a certain year…
Being an originality buff - I´m having a hard time to do a color change though. My little son also wants to keep the car white - my wife would like to have it changed to blue… I´m sure whatever I decide - I will sometimes regret my decision. If I paint it in its original white I will always find the color on the boring side and if I paint it blue I will regret that I changed the original color…

The last The last picture of the 67- still with the original paint.
The car at In the restoration shop during the first inspection. The owner of the shop was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the car.

Cadillac buyers had quite a color choice for the 1967 model year. Here is the original 1967 Cadillac Exterior Color Selections Dealer Book
.
Code 90 - The optional "Atlantis Blue Firemist" is my favorite color for the 67 Eldorado.

Atlantis Blue Firemist cars were used for advertising the new 1967 Eldorados - Color Code 90. This would be my favorite 1967 Eldorado color…

My car still looked flawless on pictures until you looked closer…

One of the areas where the paint was flaking off.

Some of the areas where the paint was pretty worn and surface rust was developing.

The rear window had to come out to fix this "repair" attempt by one of the previous owners…

Tags:Paintjob, 1967 Cadillac Eldorado Repair Tip, 1967 Eldorado, Atlantis Blue Firemist, Repaint, Cadillac Color Selections Dealer Book

During the last 8 days I spent about 100 hours painting the interior of my new garage. I used my vacation to do so...
It was a lot of work to make it look like it does now.
My wife helped me masking everything for spray painting and my friend Richard helped me making the markings for the painted stripes.
Everything else I did on my own.

I needed 150 kg of white paint, 10 kg of red paint and 7 kg of grey paint and about 350 meters of masking tape.

It came out very nice and I finally could move the first cars into the new garage. Some minor things will still have to be done on the interior and I can also start decorating it now.

I hope to be able to also paint the exterior of the garage soon, before the long winter starts.
The pictures of the paint process and the finished interior can be found here.

This is how it looked like with everything masked off.

The (almost) final result - the first cars just moved in :-)

Tags:Garage, Paintjob, Decoration

As the new garage I´m building is almost ready to be painted, I made some drafts how it could look like once its painted.
My friend Mike had the idea for one of the paint designs. Thanks Mike!

As it is too cold outside anyway and I unfortunately hurt my back quite badly I won’t be able to do the paint work or any other work in the garage before next spring. So there is still a lot of time to think about how it could look like and most importantly to get healthy again ;-)
You can see the status of the work in the garage in this gallery with hundreds of pictures of the build.

Here are the two design ideas I like the most. I´m also still looking for a good name - favorites so far are: „Land Yacht Club“ or „The BIG Block“


The more classic version or…

… the more elegant version?


Some more color ideas


Some more color ideas - I will most probably go with this version

Tags:Garage, Paintjob

My buddy Tayfun was in town for a visit and we spent quite some time in the garage detailing the paint of my 1967 Eldorado. We used a lot of Meguiars products for a mirror smooth surface. The original paint is much shinier and glossier now and looks pretty good. Thanks for your help Tayfun !!!!

My friend Tayfun polishing the paint

it took 7 steps for a smooth surface...

Tags:detailing, Paintjob, 1967, Eldorado