Antonello Restores an F Coupe in Italy

After restoring a G convertible and a C coupe, I realized that my favourite letter car was the F coupe in black….this after two white cars….so grabbed some copies of our magazines and there were a couple of cars that seemed interesting. One was a dead end, as nobody replied to my calls. The other was described as a mechanics special….at $15 grand. I called and was on the phone with Ron, a nice guy. The ad was a couple of years old, so Ron was very willing to discuss price. At the end, I bought the car for lot less than asking price. Car needed everything, was rusty and incomplete….so it was perfect for me…but was also very cheap. What convinced me was the presence of the build sheet, and the fact that the car was a special order car built without the toilet seat on the rear deck. And it was factory black!



When car arrived, there were some bad surprises, like rear frame rails rusted badly, cross member where the rear bumper bolts missing, badly rusted front and rear sides….but glass was nice, there was an extra complete rust free floor from a parts car, the front end and inner rockers were new, so I was happy about the deal. In the meantime, was exchanging mails with Anthony Rinaldi who had lots of extra parts from his F project. Rams, carbs, trans, brakes, inner and outer stuff….he had almost everything I could ever need for my F. So a deal was struck and parts were on their way to Italy. Thank you Tony for your patience.



In the meantime, I was working on the body, welding the floor in place, fixing the trunk floor and all other rusty parts on the body. Big M sent me a front fender and a rear quarter, so the body was in good shape once again. My body shop took a lot of time to get the car block sanded and ready to paint, but she was finally done. Here are pics of work done until now.







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