Progress!
Boy, is it great to be putting stuff back in the car, not taking it out! This
weekend The Garage
Queen started (slowly) taking shape again.
The respray of the paint on the console worked like a charm. The contact cement
I had a reaction
with was DAP brand; the paint was DupliColor. This time I used Plasit-Cote
brand and it worked fine.
BTW, a 1/2+1/2 mix of paint and cement might make a good undercoating; it
laughed off my attempts to
remove w/sandpaper and razor blades for some time. The leather went on the body
of the console like
it was sprayed on! The lid, I'm not so happy with; between the interference of
the seams and not
having an original unit for comparison, it has turned out as lumpy as a moose
t*rd, and I'll
probably keep at it until it looks right. I do not know how to get the ends to
tuck in correctly
either.
The kick panels were a breeze. I ended up ignoring the original holes in the
metal and drill where I
please; the panels dropped right in. Hint: loosen bolts for the wiper motor and
the right panel
slips right in.
The boot doors look really nice. I had one hole in the metal on the main door
not line up exactly
with the prepunched holes in the leather panel's subtrate, which I noticed
_after_ I trimmed the
holes in the leather. Solution: re-drill the metal! I'm a little worried about
the hinges for the
main boot door abrading the leather panels they mount through; perhaps I can
rig some spacers.
Dunno. I also, for the first time, now have the rubber bits where the three
doors come together.
Between those and the Dynamat, that part of the car sound as solid as a BMW.
And not a minute too
soon, either! The pull handle/loop now looks silly in black, and maybe I can
rig one from
bicycle-shop brake cable housing in red if I can find the correct ferrules.
BTW, the Pegasus Racing
catalog has some plastic bushings that sound a lot like those where the pull
passes throught the
boot door, but I haven't yet had the nerve to call and place an order for two
fifteen-cent items!
:-)
The doors went in rather easy, too. I noticed that they rattle against the
doors' metal when tapped;
if I pop the tops of the panel loose and apply a strip of selfadhesive
household weatherstripping to
their backs it may go away. Also, the fasteners I bought were not supposed to
need the plastic
sockets originally in the doors, but on both sides the fasteners along the
bottom seem loose (and
_only_ there). Perhaps a retro-fit is in order; are they available? And I the
only one to find that
the padding makes the panels bulge around the door pull enough to make it
impossible to get finger
'twixt it and the door panel?
Surprisingly, the new lock assemblies went in fast, too; I was expecting big
trouble. The setup I
ordered did not, for some reason, come with a core for the console. Well, the
key I had retracted
the "blades" in my old core almost enough in some cases (you'd have to see it),
so I just ground of
the rest w/a bench grinder so, now I can finally operate all of the locks for
the car.
Oh: unrelated, but I'll share it. I swapped in the under-dash bar from my old
SV Alpine so I could
retrofit those vents in (the pull-knob brackets are integral), and discovered
that it had a tab not
found on the wooden-dash Tiger. It's at the far right edge and sticks straight
up where the last
screw (I guess ) goes in. I'll just have to trim it off.
Larry Wright "I can't get no-- Satis-traction"
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