Back to it…

Spent the afternoon at Ken's for the first time in a month. I was pleased to see that he made a lot of progress uphostering the top well and the rear flaps for the behind the seat storage areas. Both look really good; the flaps still need fasteners to hold the flaps against the panels, and final attachment along the top. Here's what they look like:





Ken also custom made a rumble compartment floor mat, no easy task since the mat fits into a pair of footwells. You can't buy these now, so custom fitting is the only way to do it if you want the authentic rubber look. He traced a pattern on paper, then cut the rubber pieces to the pattern, then glued it all together. You can see the seams, but it still looks good (still missing two small pieces in this photo).



We also made the mat that fits behind the seat out of the same brown ribbed rubber material. Here's me cutting it out and a shot of it in the car. Matches the vinyl material very nicely.





Ken also finished and fit the rumble compartment side panels. I've decided to keep the existing rumble seat with the hopes that I can find or have made original seat springs. The set I have a foam custom jobs, OK but not great.

We held off on putting the front seat it, but did put the top on. Here what that looks like, pretty wrinkly after a year of storage.





We also got the windshield wiper linkage and switch hooked up. Never did find the missing spacer, but Ken made one out of wood that works fine. Of course, nothing works the first time: we found that the windshield division bar mounting screws were too long and were binding up the motor, so Ken cut them off with a grinder rather than disassemble the garnish molding. Here he is at work:



Then the poop hit the fan, as it seems to on a regular basis with projects like these. We wired the clock into the instrument panel switch, but couldn't get the dash light to work. Tore the switch open, but it checked out ok. Finally concluded that there was a wiring problem, but for the life of us couldn't track it down. In fact things seem to go from bad to worse. The headlights got screwed up and other weird problems appeared. So we left it to sleep on. There was a problem with this harness when I got it, that I thought was corrected, but perhaps not. Very frustrating! Hours of extra work on something that should be a snap.

I also found that the heater motor is pretty lame. It turns, but much too slowly. I think I have another one, so took the heater out and dissassembled it. Hope my spare works, and fits.

There is not much more I can do anymore -- the rest is pretty much in Ken's hands. I will go back Sunday to sandblast wheels (I bought the dark brown paint for them and the molding strip today) and do some other mechanical things. I've also got to decide whether or not to pull the nose off to try and fix the misaligned grill pieces. That's a pain, but it just doesn't look right the way it is.

Finally Precision Rubber reports that one running board is finished,but the other won't be done until December. That 12 months since I shipped them off to him, but it sounds like we're back on track after the first set's adhesive failure. Guess I'll believe it when I actually have them in hand.

So all in all, a good afternoon, even with the electrical frustration.