I left off with door panels and getting my new sewing machine and materials. Earlier in the year, I completed the upholstery on several pieces of the interior, including the center console (still have a few details to iron out), the center kick panels that have the heater vents in them, the front side kick panels, and the fabric for the “B” pillars. The side kick panels were interesting because they were originally made of pressed paper. Years of moister destroyed those, so I recreated them out of mat board and sealed with roofing sealant. We’ll see how well they hold up. I’m thinking they will do okay.
I let the car sit for about three months to do other things, but started back on it in November by going over to my friend Matt’s house and using his woodshop and experience to work on the dash. We had worked on it in the spring, finding some amazing book-matched pieces of maple at a hardwood lumber store in Seattle (Cross Cut Hardwoods - http://www.crosscuthardwoods.com/). We were looking for good quality plywood to be the backing for the pieces of birds-eye that we had cut up in February. We found the substrate, but also found this amazing book-matched maple and decided to make it into the new dash instead. So we cut everything roughly to shape and glued the maple down to the substrate with gorilla glue. Several months passed and then we got together to start shaping the dash from the rough pieces. We got the left and right sides drown out and cut, including the holes for the speedo, tach, air vents and glove box door. Matt has the appropriate wood working tools that made this much easier to do and we have much better results then I would have hacking stuff out with a saber saw in my garage. It’s so nice to use the right tool for the right job. It’s also nice sharing in a fun project with a friend!
Even though I had worked on the dash, the car itself still languished in the garage, becoming an SUV (Storage Utility Vehicle, or “place-to-put-boxes-and-stuff”). So, I started the first week of December by cleaning up my workspace, moving things off the car, and then starting to strip, rust remove and paint the interior trip components including the metal pieces that go around front and back window, the back deck components and the trip the runs along the top of the doors from the front window to the back. Several of these pieces either have pressed wood components or are all pressed board. These will need to be replaces and I’m using what is left of the originals to fabricate to pieces. Fortunately, there are enough pieces left to get a good pattern.
I also completed fabrication on the right (Passenger) side door panel. I had laid up the fiberglass in the spring and then left it until later to finish. I got it all done and fitted including pressed board insets glued to the back of the door panels for the plastic holders that hold the door panel onto the door.
I started sewing the upholstery for the arm rests/door pulls and realized that the complexity of the shape is going to be really hard to cover with vinyl, akin to covering a steering wheel. To make things easier, I’m going to modify the shape so that it will be easier to cover. This should be pretty easy to do by adding some more pink foam and glassing over that. The time savings in upholstery work will easy pay for the extra foam/glass work. Also, I think it will ultimately look nicer too.
I have also covered the left (driver’s side) door panel with the foam substrate and have started the upholstery, sewing the burgundy and tan vinyl together. I’m going to need to create a separate piece that will be sown in around the door handle because I will not be able to get the vinyl to stretch enough. This will be tricky to get right, but I’m getting pretty good with the sewing machine.
The next work is to complete the fabrication of the wood interior parts, checking fitment and covering everything with the appropriate materials (headliner material and/or burgundy vinyl). I also have to fix and cover the headliner which I had sitting outside the car when a tent fell on it and broke it! I should be able to repair it, but it needs to be pretty smooth in order for the head liner to look good. Will probably need to do some more fiberglass work here!
