Thanks for your comments, very pleased with how everything is looking, its been a very long and difficult time though. Its nice that others appreciate the car too, I often question why the **** I'm spending all this money on a relatively low value car but they're quite rare now, it was the first car I ever bought and they're great fun so I suppose that justifies it.
I stripped the car in May/June 2009 when it went to the 1st bodyshop. They took a year to do a blowover for which they charged me £4000. The car then sat on my drive under a cover for 6 months before going to the second bodyshop in January 2011 where it has been ever since (getting on for 2 years now). They have nearly finished but the car will stay with them until around March (I'm between houses at the moment so no-where to keep it).
I've had a 2 year legal battle with the 1st bodyshop and have still yet to receive any money from the guy although something is possibly imminent. As I've mentioned before I've now entered into long legal battle with my credit card company who have refused to refund any money that was paid in this transaction due to a pathetic technicality. The Financial Ombudsmen are now investigating and they could potentially order the credit card company to pay up but it could be a long process, potentially up to a year.
Parts supply has been a nightmare, I started collecting parts around 5 years ago and have been spending a fortune on parts every month for years, sometimes I've been very surprised with what I have managed to get from dealers and have often snapped up the last of one particular part from the factory parts stock. Surprisingly a lot of the dealers I've used have been very enthusiastic and helpful (despite the reputation of Alfa Romeo dealers in general). I have also found a lot of parts to be NLA so I've had to scour the world for various parts or have had to make some stuff myself.
Just when I thought I'd overcome nearly everything I've found more problems involving parts that are NLA, some parts of the car got dissolved in the chemical stripping process so they will need to be sourced somehow. I also need a new tailgate seal as the 1st bodyshop kindly lost my original and the one I sourced from Australia was effectively scrap, they are NLA as with many other parts but I've found 2 in Italy, the seller is being a bit "difficult" at the moment though!
All in all this has been a complete nightmare and most sane people would have just quit while they were ahead but I've somehow managed to keep going. I suppose that solving all the problems and sourcing parts against the odds is all the more satisfying in the long run. If it were an MGB I could just buy everything off the shelf, where's the challenge in that? I really hope the end result is worth it and that I am not reminded of all the troubles whenever I look at the car and the encouragement I've had on this site has been really nice, so a big thanks to everyone for their kind comments.
Hopefully there'll be a few more updates in the next few weeks but things will go quiet for a couple of months until the rebuild begins in the spring....
Here's a reminder of how the car looked 14 months ago...