OK....So 6 months have passed. I have managed (with no prior experience),to replace both complete wheelhouses, firewall, 1 pc complete floorpan, cowl side panels, and lower cowl. Now I am nearly done assembling the body, and fitting fenders/doors/hood etc. I have already coated the underside with red oxide primer. Based on your experiences, what is the next step....the interior or exterior?

 

Dude...thats a ton of work you have done...my hats off to you.
Can you share some pictures?
If it was me, I would refit all the body panels and start sanding and smoothing...but like you, I have never dug this deep into a car in my life.
I must say, I have a great deal of respect for anyone who is willing to jump in to something with both feet like you have.
Oh ya...dont forget the pictures.

 

how do i post a pic?

 

If you wanna spend the money, do it right the first time and have the entire undercarraige Line-x'd (a.k.a. Rhino liner). You'll never have to deal with rust ever again and it be just plain cool.

 

good idea...

 

To post a picture you must first load them onto a image hosting website, like www.photobucket.com . Then take the url and either copy and paste it on here, or use the little button in the tool bar that looks like a mountain and moon and paste it in there. That will make an actual picture here, instead of going through a link...

 

Because the exterior will show even the slightest ding, I try to wait until everything else is done to do the final priming, sanding, and painting. There is an awful lot of parts in the interior and it will take quite a while to install them. The whole time, you are going back and forth through your new paint.

You could make a case for spraying the interior and exterior at the same time if they are the same color. Since that means doing the interior after the exterior paint, I would only consider that if the paint were an easy color to touch-up. Solids are OK, metallics are hard and anything more exotic than that is very difficult.

I hope you find this useful.

Brian and Zak