Classic/Antique Car Repair: 1968 Cadillac Coup Deville Cosmetic Restoration, wood dash kit, cadillac coup deville

Question
Hello Dick,

I'm in the process of restoring my Dad's old '68 Coup Deville. The car had not been driven for the 18 years and was garaged. Mechanical restoration was completed two days ago, aside from some sort of intermittent carburetor problem... When warm, the car will run 7 minutes at idle, and mysteriously quit...  Won't start... Then mysteriously will start 10 minutes later... It is not flooded! Mechanics alternately think there may be some crud in the gas tank that needs to work itself out of there... We'll see.

Being that the engine was rebuilt and basically *everything* under the hood and elsewhere was replaced, I am into this thing $8000 now! I'll get the official insurance appraisal in a few days, but ballpark the appraiser said $5k as is. However, he did mention depending what I did to the body and paint job, the car would be $12-13k.

I intend to drive the car about 1000 miles per year and hold on to it long-term. Do I dare let Maaco touch it? Private body shops that specialize in restorations offer different quality-levels of paint jobs. Do I want the "Cadillac" of paint jobs?

The leather interior is pristine. The only problem inside is the dash face plate (not the leather top). There is a wood veneer or contact paper that's peeling up. I saw an online comment from another '68 Deville with the same problem. Somebody suggested he get a chrome dash (rather than the wood version) from another non-leather interior. Is this a good idea? I can't find a wood dash kit online. How important is it to keep all, including this wood dash original?

Also, I have 2 original sets of keys, but want to have some duplicates made with the Cadillac logo on the keys. Dealer says they don't have any old blanks. Is there any place to get reproduction blank keys to take to the key makers?

Thank you so much for your time and your help!

Best regards,
Margot  

Answer
Yes, we were on vacation, and the questions don't come through until I am back "on duty".   What happened to your comment was I saw it in the ratings commentary (which I usually don't even look at, but I thought it was odd that there were comments there when I hadn't answered any questions for a few days) so I clicked through to see what was going on, then searched through the old questions until I matched your name - --.

There is also a 3 hour time difference from the site to our time, as I am on the west coast - this often makes the dates not correspond to the actual date of entry.


Dick.  Keep those blades sharp!

 Our vacation was only 3 days - we went to a large swap meet in San Diego just to get away from the telephone and this damn computer for a few days!