She organised the truck and got the car and parts to the painters where it lived for the next week and a bit. Our painter sent through some progress shots to the Mrs who emailed them through to me on the other side of the world. It was starting to look the part and we absolutely loved the colour.

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A couple of weeks later the Mrs organised another truck to bring it back home. She got it into the shed and that is where it sat for about a month.

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I came back to Oz for 3 days (28 hours travel on each side of it) to reset my visitors visa and say Hi to the Mrs. While home, I decided to put the motor and gearbox in and what ever else I could within my limited time I had. After reading a thread on this forum I decided to install the engine with the gearbox attached. I jacked up the rear on to some high ramps and covered the engine bay in some rubber matting. This was the best move ever! It took us under one hour to have it bolted in and secure.

Note: One of the best investments I bought during the build was a second hand engine hoist that had a leveler. This made the job of getting the engine and gearbox in and out so easy.

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Just over a day later and completely buggered and jet lagged, I had the engine hooked up and turning over (not firing). Hopeing this would inspire my Mrs to crack on with the list of things to do, I had a day off and was back on a plane to the USA to return home in mid June.

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While away in the US for the second stint, the Mrs sent through her progress with the dash repair work. The dash was in pretty average condition with cracks all over but with a new one over $600 I told her to give it a go at repairing it.

She did a pretty awesome job of cutting out the rises and filling in the cracks and sanding it back down. She prepared and primed the surface and sprayed it up.

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She finished it off and even hand painted some highlighted parts like the old Datsun logo that goes around the radio surround. Not to bad for a first effort from her. She also did rescued and restored the original door trims, console and a bunch of the other interior components.

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It was mid June and I just arrived back in Oz after my three months of working in the USA. I wanted the car on the road ASAP so I set to work to finish it off. I had everything hooked up for the engine in two days of landing and the engine started. http://youtu.be/hnQzxnbkGuY

I had ordered all new rubbers, chrome trim, electronic dizzy, plugs, leads, battery, exhaust, brake pads, rotors, master cylinder, ball joints, sway bar, springs, shocks, hoses, windscreen washer, windscreens and everything else for this little beast. The fun part was about to start of bringing this car back to life.

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Great build,5 Stars.Your Mrs is very excited aswell hope you'll enjoy mounting back your 1200 together.I know the 1200 is a great car to work on!!

We buffed and polished all the chrome and bolted it all back on. It was starting to look really nice. I picked up a set of personalised plates for it 120ODT for $440 bucks for the little beast.

We were originally going to put a set of old school mags on it (dragways or something similar) but the ute came with a set of 4 chrome hub caps that polished up really nice. We didn't know what they were off at first but someone pointed out they were off a Datto 1600. Never in my life of doing up cars had I seen original 1600 hub caps but after a little searching online we discovered they were correct. They looked good polished up so we decided to keep them on.

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Now with everything bolted back on we started on the headlining. The old headlining was brittle and in no way of being rescued so I tasked the Mrs with sewing up a new one. I have helped my brother in the past doing headlining and it was never a fun job. I am more of a mechanical/electrical guy not a tailor/seamstress. We unstitched the old head lining and then cut out the new fabric using the old pieces as templates. We pinned the sew lines and joined it all together. We took it out to the car and it did a first fit. It looked pretty good so I stretched it into place and clamped it all down with bull dog clips before starting the gluing operation.

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