Tuesday, October 22, 2013
"Finish"ed?
Nowhere near "finished", but it is very satisfying to see some real "finish" today. I got a second coat of varnish onto the dashboard, and a first coat onto all of the door window surrounds. Despite my worries in the previous post, reassembling the door latch mechanism on the driver's door went rather easily. I then moved to the right rear door, where a long bar on the mechanism had detached itself from the latch. I got the broken one out, and then moved over to the parts car where I retrieved the rather decent replacement part. In so doing, I got a bit of a taste for the future project of swapping over the interior trim and upholstery, as I had to remove the door panel. Again, it looks to be a rather hopeful project.
Monday, October 21, 2013
The Doors
While the cat's away.... Pat is away for the week at a ceramics workshop on SaltSpring, so I get the whole week for working on the car as much as I can. I also took over her studio so that I could do woodwork refinishing in a warm environment.
I began with stripping off the old varnish from the dashboard, and after a while sanded it and varnished. It looks lovely!
It was then time to have a look at the doors. I spent some time trying to free up the window cranking mechanism which had seized up on two of the doors. On one of them, the door handle mechanism had bent over, blocking the crank rods. On the other, the channel had gotten blocked with its own felt runner lining that had bunched up. I had to pull it right out so will have to determine whether or not to replace it. I think the window will crank just fine without it.
I had forgotten that two of the doors had seized door latches, so that has become a big job, and may well take up the rest of the week. It is very difficult accessing the latching mechanism as it is within the door, and the mounting screw are pretty seized. After a couple of hours and some skinned knuckles I managed to extract the driver's door latching mechanism. It is now on the vise, and I have freed up the seized part. I am not particularly looking forward to the reinstallation. And then I must go to work on the right rear door which has a broken rod in the mechanism. That will also require extracting the replacement from the parts car. Ho hum!
This evening I stripped the varnish off of the two rear door window surrounds. It will be quite satisfying to get those spiffed up. At least I can see the product of my work, as opposed to the door latches which are just necessary grunt work.
The culprit:
I began with stripping off the old varnish from the dashboard, and after a while sanded it and varnished. It looks lovely!
I had forgotten that two of the doors had seized door latches, so that has become a big job, and may well take up the rest of the week. It is very difficult accessing the latching mechanism as it is within the door, and the mounting screw are pretty seized. After a couple of hours and some skinned knuckles I managed to extract the driver's door latching mechanism. It is now on the vise, and I have freed up the seized part. I am not particularly looking forward to the reinstallation. And then I must go to work on the right rear door which has a broken rod in the mechanism. That will also require extracting the replacement from the parts car. Ho hum!
This evening I stripped the varnish off of the two rear door window surrounds. It will be quite satisfying to get those spiffed up. At least I can see the product of my work, as opposed to the door latches which are just necessary grunt work.
The culprit:
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Radio head
Finicky work with not much to show today. The main project was disassembling the faceplates on the radio to polish and paint them. I am still not certain if I can get it to work, but at least it will look good!
Mad Phil, the local upholstery guy dropped by while I was working. It looks like he can do the headliner in the proper material at a cost I can afford, so I will probably go that route instead of installing the cheap looking vinyl stuff from the parts car.
He confirmed that the seats in the parts car are mostly re-do rather than original, but it is good quality stuff, and worth using.
The rest of the day was cleaning and grinding around the doorways of the car in preparation for touch up paint.
Mad Phil, the local upholstery guy dropped by while I was working. It looks like he can do the headliner in the proper material at a cost I can afford, so I will probably go that route instead of installing the cheap looking vinyl stuff from the parts car.
He confirmed that the seats in the parts car are mostly re-do rather than original, but it is good quality stuff, and worth using.
The rest of the day was cleaning and grinding around the doorways of the car in preparation for touch up paint.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
First Step Forward
Today marked a big step in the restoration... the first installation of a newly restored element rather than disassembly which I have been doing up until now.
The item installed was the newly painted instrument panel. Needless to say it was quite a project trying to reconnect the rats nest of wires and cables. I won't know if I was successful for a couple of months when I hook up the battery again.
It also occurred to me that this is the best timing for swapping in the radio from the parts car, as I already had the dashboard partially dismantled. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to remove it from the parts car... just two screws and it slid right out, with just one wire to be cut.
Installing it in the good car though turns out to be a much bigger job. The centre glove box is the proper location, and the unti is designed to fit there. However, I did have to cut part of the metal dashboard frame, and the clock seems to be in the way. I checked the parts car, and it appears the clock is a bit smaller in the parts car, so my next project will be to swap the clock, then hopefully the radio will fit.
The other issue is... does it work? I did hook it to a 12 volt battery on a workbench, and the display light came on. When I twiddled the dial though, I did not get any significant reception, just a bit of snapping sound in a couple of frequencies. There is no aerial, so that may be the issue. I will check it out on my next car day.
The item installed was the newly painted instrument panel. Needless to say it was quite a project trying to reconnect the rats nest of wires and cables. I won't know if I was successful for a couple of months when I hook up the battery again.
It also occurred to me that this is the best timing for swapping in the radio from the parts car, as I already had the dashboard partially dismantled. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to remove it from the parts car... just two screws and it slid right out, with just one wire to be cut.
Installing it in the good car though turns out to be a much bigger job. The centre glove box is the proper location, and the unti is designed to fit there. However, I did have to cut part of the metal dashboard frame, and the clock seems to be in the way. I checked the parts car, and it appears the clock is a bit smaller in the parts car, so my next project will be to swap the clock, then hopefully the radio will fit.
The other issue is... does it work? I did hook it to a 12 volt battery on a workbench, and the display light came on. When I twiddled the dial though, I did not get any significant reception, just a bit of snapping sound in a couple of frequencies. There is no aerial, so that may be the issue. I will check it out on my next car day.
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