Weekend festivities on the project car

I made some decisions late last week. I have two Prii's and can only keep one. My first Prius is an 03, 147000 mi. and pretty pristine. Been repainted, works well, newer tires, etc. It's the one that's going away, soon.

The other one, that I dragged home from, is the one I am keeping. 200,000 mi., I've repaired what ails it, it has 4 year old batteries, straight body with lots of stone chips on the front end, good, dirty interior, but runs and drives really well. It's now officially a driveable project car. I put the new 12v battery in on Saturday, Friday went to Maico to get an estimate. Yesterday changed out the busted up front bumper cover for a nice one from the JY, $35 for it and it was almost completely removed from the car. Got a nicer set of head lights, too. Probably going to send them out for polishing, or buy a big polishing wheel for my bench grinder and do it myself. Leaving the lights out while the car is getting painted, probably take out the tail lights too.

Today I start sanding. First the front bumper cover, and then the rest of the car. And remove the sound deadening material from the trunk lid. I don't like the color much, it's silver, so I'm going to do a color change to red, or maybe yellow. I'll take some before pictures today, I guess. Why did the early (and a lot of the later) Prius's come in such drab colors?

 

Sorry, neglected to take the "before" pics. I took the car into Maico yesterday for paint. What was silver will soon be red metallic. There was a car there with about the same paint, and used the same process as mine will get. Looked pretty nice.

Thinking that today I'll run to the JY and turn in a core. They got an 03 out on the yard yesterday and I want to go have a look. Can't really think of anything I need, but who knows? I'll report back (especially for the locals.)

 

I'm picking it up from the body shop today. Woo hoo!

 

Yes, going to go get the $8 wash and wax and put it on C/L this weekend. By the local, Phoenix & Tucson, listings it will probably be priced right at $3000. Do you want me to post pics? It started it's life at Precision Toyota in Tucson and has spent it's entire life here. Not even a hint of corrosion! Wired for the Hybrid Automotive Prolong system, too.

 

I picked up the 02 yesterday. It looks wonderful! Pics today, maybe. I need to polish the headlites and put them back in. It's red metallic and the flakes in the paint are very prominent and it's really shiny! No orange peel. I didn't get the cheap paint job, tho. And it was a complete color change, so they painted under the hood, door jambs, and the trunk. It's the urethane with integrated clear coat. Total, wait for it, was just under $1600. Planning on keeping this one for a while.

I know totally irrational.

Did you look at the newest 1st gen they had, been out about a week? Tell me about it if you have a moment.