FINALLY! The body work is done. The car stayed at the body shop for 3 years. Well, I already told you, I didn’t push a lot to speed-up the process because the faster it goes, the faster the bills come too 🙂
I went to the body shop during fall 2021, it was done. Unfortunately, during this visit, I discovered that the licence plate lighting was not correctly aligned with the rear hatch so the hatch has to be modified.
On American and Canadian SMs (but not only), the licence plate lighting consists of two lights placed on the sides of the plate, but I don’t find this very nice, so I’ve decided to install the part fitted on the French SMs, which is a single light placed on top of the licence plate and integrated in the hatch. On the parts catalog I found only one hatch model so I didn’t expect to have fitment issues with this part. So we supposed that the hatch has been modified in the past, maybe because of an accident of some sort, but this is still a mystery today.
At the end of the previous post about this car, most of the preparation work was done so here are pictures of the finishing and painting steps.
This is a water-based paint that has been applied, with a varnish and then a wet sanding and polishing step, to get a superb result.
sm_662
Beginning of the finishing work
sm_663
sm_664
Multiple coats of various priming products have been applied, with some sanding work in between each of them
sm_665
sm_666
sm_667
sm_668
sm_669
Beginning of the finishing work on the front fenders
sm_670
sm_671
sm_672
sm_673
Lots of hours have been necessary to get a good alignment of all body panels
sm_674
sm_675
A gravel-guard product has been applied inside the front fenders. The final paint will then be applied on top
sm_676
Some gravel-guard also inside de the rear fender covers
sm_677
Finally the long-expected moment, here is the first part that received the final coat of paint, the front valence
sm_678
sm_679
sm_680
sm_681
It was the opportunity to plan for a passenger side mirror, it will be a useful addition
sm_682
And here is the body itself receiving the final coat of paint
sm_683
sm_684
sm_685
Then this is the rear hatch and the doors
sm_686
sm_687
Then the rear fender skirts
sm_688
And finally the hood, here during the polishing phase
sm_689
Here is how I discovered the car for real when I went on site after the paint work
sm_690
All panels have been installed but some alignment work is still required
sm_691
Here the modification of the rear hatch to have a better fit of the licence plate light
sm_692
sm_693
And here is the hatch done, it was the last part
sm_694
Here is the SM back home
sm_695
sm_696
sm_697
sm_698
sm_699
sm_700
sm_701
sm_702
sm_703
sm_704
sm_705
sm_706
sm_707
sm_708
So here is a highly important step done. So what’s the next step? Well, I initially planned to start reassembling the car during the 2021-2022 winter, but it didn’t happen, so I now plan to do that during the 2022-2023 winter. The goal would be to have the drivetrain back into the SM for the next spring.