It’s running atleast!
With all the paint being completed I was able to concentrate on getting the car all back together. The hood was the only thing not painted and that was due to me needing to track down the proper hood. I had to borrow a friends truck, make a 6 hour round trip to go get the hood. I ended up getting it during the painting process and had some plans for it that didn’t fit into that timeline. The hood I had was from a 1st gen and it was made for pop-up headlights. Since I converted over to the later model projector glass headlights I need the proper hood also. So the stock 2nd gen green hood was installed for the time being to help get everything lined up. You sort of need a hood to get you panel gaps right.
The engine bay was all completed and all of the bugs were worked out. At this point the car was driving pretty much as a stock Stealth would have. The engine bay still needed a lot of work to bring it up to par but ensuring that everything was running and working properly is the first major step. All of the cosmetic stuff comes later.
It also helped that right down the street from my house was a Pick-n-pull junk yard that at the time always seemed to have atleast 2 of these cars on their lot as this build took place during the “Cash for Clunkers” program. So these cars were turning up left and right at the junkyard and I always went and pulled whatever I could get my hands on at the time. I always kept the best condition parts for my builds and resold everything else back out to the community to ensure that parts stayed in circulation.
The interior was also completely assembled using all of the parts from the old 92 Stealth. The seats I had at the time were complete garbage, hence the seat covers. I was still working to track down a good set of seats or save up to get a set of quality reskins. Just like the engine bay there was still a ton of work to do in the interior but it was really all cosmetic and just finding replacement parts for the existing worn out or broken ones.
