"74 SD-455 Restoration thread
 

Bought this '74 Blue 4 speed SD-455 thru forum member Matt Mariacher (Telli S.) a couple of years ago when my business was really busy. Spent spare time till this year disassembling and organizing the bagging/tagging to get it ready for metal/paint/etc. by Steve Schappaugh at Muscle Car Memories. I'll be restoring the parts I kept to have them ready for re-assembly after he is done with his part some the next year.
The car is a very honest car in that almost every part about it is correctly dated or numbers matching from engine to rear end to sheet metal and most all of the date ranges on parts that are stamped are correct dated. Steve has it all apart on rotisserie with the engine out for rebuild at a friends business that has done a number of SD builds.
It's well optioned with Admiralty Blue body over deluxe light blue interior, ST-10 4 speed, 3.42 Posi., AM-FM red dot, 8-Track, Rally II's (need one more date coded April to June HM wheel), hood bird, Was lucky to catch the custom license plate below right at the time the previous plate holder let it go back up fr grabs.).
Some pics below from when I bought it to it's current state:

'74 SD-455 Restoration thread
 

a few pics

some more pics

a few more, not bad metal from a lifetime northeastern car

Texas custom plate

That's going to be a real beauty Rick. Nice work. Keep the pics coming!

What a beauty starting point...watching with anticipation

thanks, since this car spent it's whole life near Allentown PA, I figured the rust would be worse than expected but it turned out to be a bit better after blasting. Not sure how many of the 4 speed SD's survived out of the 212, but I'd bet just a handful are still unrestored like this one.

after an 8.5 month lead time, the Legendary/ACI interior and assembled door panels just came in from UPS. Definitely worth the wait and with the discount Legendary gives on their sales it's really not much more than the PUI covers and stock seat foams. If you haven't used ACI seat foams, they are a big difference maker in how the finished covers look when done. I'll post pics of them in the next weeks as I get them done.

Great project! Thanks for sharing.

any updates?

Looking forward to a new progress report. Steve does great work and its in good hands at his shop.

Having some lengthy parts delays to get the paint and metal work back underway, these shortages/delays seem to be the norm now. Steve is hoping to to be back on the metal and paint prep later this month. I've continued to do individual parts like the Legendary interior so that's done now. Will post the upholstery pics later today. Legendary really does a good job on the correct covers/colors and I'm using Kolor Korrect on the interior dye as they work directly with Legendary to match the vinyl dye colors for the plastic interior parts. Sent gauges off for restoration, dash bezel has been at Randy Combs for some time now, ordered and received a lot of parts, bought 5 correctly date coded HM rally II's that I'm stripping and painting now. Original SD engine is at the rebuilder but he won't start the tear down on it until December due to their shop being swamped with engine builds in front of mine.

these are the hardest Firebird seats to get installed where they look good, but in my opinion, the most comfortable seats once they are done. The mottled blue on the Legendary deluxe buckets looks as close to factory color as possible.

Any updates?

I just found out this week that parts/metal needed for the body restoration/paint are now coming in and making progress at Steve's shop to get a solid month of October done on their end. I've had a setback on my end due to serious health problems but am moving along, just at a slower pace. Will post some updates pics as I can this month

This is great , if you dint mind , please be as detailed as you can it’s rare someone does a thread like this here it’s great info. I’m wondering how you stripped the body floor pans etc? was it soda, sand?
The interior looks amazing did you do anything special to the metal work underneath for prep Paint powder coat ? New springs or stayed w the old? What have you done for research up front before the resto? Thanks for answers really enjoy seeing this process . I followed some threads like this on yenko.net and really started to gain an appreciation for this process.

Hope you are okay.... Nothing more important than your health!

RIP Rick.....
 

Vaya Con Dios.

Go with God, my friend. :( :(

RIP


Condolences to his family.


:(