A Sticky Situation

The past quickly and the tiredness from lack of sleep due to our hot weather always seems to vanish when it’s time to go to Mustang Maniac. The trip was a lot longer than normal due to the fact that my normal run was traffic controlled due to a big airshow at Duxford war museum. I arrived nicely chilled thanks to the aircon being on full blast. The guys were cleaning the yard and Chris’ car was about to get a new home. Chris is about to follow in the same footstep and restore his 66′ coupe i6 that he wants to use as a daily run around. Good for him to be able to enjoy it everyday, and that’s exactly what it should be. Not a trailer queen never to be enjoyed.

Anyway the plan for today was to fit the main door windows and align them up near enough ready for the door rubbers to be added soon. The windows is really a two-man job and Yogi gave me a hand to get them in the door. First job was to remove the rollers from the window rails as they would be snapped into place on the window itself. Inserting the window is a case of front end of the glass goes in first at a forty-five degree angle until about two-thirds of the way in. Slowly straightened up the glass moving forwards and slipping the leading edge into the guide rails at the front quarter windows. This will allow the back edge of the glass to slide into the rear rail. With the glass now straight slide the rollers into the bottom slide rail and align the winder mechanism to the rollers and snap into place.

There are not many pictures as we had to hold the glass and nobody was around to take them for me at the time. Once the mechanism was wound a couple of times Yogi got to work and started to adjust the windows. This is a tricky job and takes a while as the front quarters and rear quarters all have to align to the window glass and sit properly in the door shuts. Yogi did it about twenty minutes and just buzzed around bolts and allen bolts to align the passenger side up. I learnt a lot from watching and thought I had it in mind what he done. We both swapped to the driver’s side and fitted the main glass into the door. Then it was my turn to align it all up. let’s just say it took me a lot longer than Yogi. I got the rear right and the front wrong or, front right and the rear wrong that would overlap the main window! I just kept adjusting things to see what they did and slowly did little bits at a time. The time (hours) flew by. Eventually I got it pretty close to what Yogi and felt pleased with myself. Not much can be shown for my time at all, except that glass is in the door. Adam told me that it can day a day to fit and align glass up, even for those guys! Yes, I know the windows are filthy dirty, I will clean them up next week with some of the wife’s glass cleaner which I forgot to take with me this week.

Adam had his delivery of some Monte Carlo bars that I was after, which he brought down to the workshop to fit with me. The bar has a curve in it at the front ready for the air filter I am going to have. I had a choice of stainless, chrome or satin black. I went for the satin black to match the rest of under the hood. There are two bolts missing at the top of the bar hat bolt to the body, they are custom-made to match the export brace bolts. They are due to arrive by the time I go and play next week. 🙂

By this time the day was done, but I was given some homework. Adam asked me what I wanted to do with the rear parcel shelf. I said I will have what ever they had at the time. Most of the time they are car coloured, or have been modified for a pair of rear speakers. Adam said how about something bespoke that you can make. I was listening intently now. Up in Adams stores he had an old damaged head liner same as mine that couldn’t be used. So he said how about wrapping the shelf with the headliner. Great idea so I took it home with me. The first thing to note is that the headliners are easily creased and take a fair bit to straighten them out after they have been packaged. I opened the liner up and selected the part of the roof liner that I use and laid the shelf on it. I marked around it roughly and cut it with some scissors. Don’t tell the wife though.

Next was to stick the material to the board. I used some spray on impact adhesive and done little bits at a time smoothing out as much as I could of the creases using a hair drier to warm it all up and expand the material. again, don’t tell the wife about that bit either.

With the front completely covered I then pulled and stretched the reverse and stuck that down too.

The end result I’m really pleased with. A parcel shelf that matches the head liner and will look like it continues all the way down the back. I haven’t seen this before on a car, but I am looking forward to fitting it I must say. The pictures don’t do the project justice, but you can get the point though.

The most difficult part of this was trying to keep the glue of the material that I managed to get all over me, and the hair drier. I will give you some tips here:

1) Use WD40 to remove the stickiness from your fingers, it works.

2) Clean up the hair drier and place it back in the same place you got it from.

3) Don’t try and deny you have used it when it smells of WD40.

4) Make sure you know how long the wife “pops” out for before using her stuff.

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Making Headway

Looking forward to the long weekend as I could get to Mustang Maniac on Saturday and rest for a day on Sunday then do some homework which I had in mind on the bank holiday Monday. Saturday morning I loaded up the car and went to the garage to pick up my sockets and tools bag, I walked in picked up the stuff and put them in the boot and shut the garage door. Realising I forgot the ratchets I went to open the door Again. Locked. I searched my pocket, no keys. I went to the back of the car and checked the tool bag, no keys. I then had the cold sweat feeling, I put the keys on the service trolley in the garage. Now I always unlock the garage, lock it again and put the keys in my pocket. That way when I shut the door it’s already locked and so I don’t forget. Get the spare key, there is no spare key! When we bought the house there was only one key for the garage and I have been meaning to get one cut ever since for a number of years now should we say. At this point it’s dilemma time, do I try to get into the garage or leave it until Sunday? I decided to leave it, and went to say goodbye to the wife who could hear me havin’ my own little rant to myself out the front. She didn’t laugh (yet), but used some of the words that I was using previously to describe my stupidity back to me. Her stifled laughter didn’t last to long as I got in my car with the right hump. All sorts of things were running through my mind, locksmith? Replacement door? I just didn’t know what to think, all the way to the yard I was fretting and nothing on the radio calmed me down, cyclists two abreast down country lanes gave me the hump, getting stuck behind a bus down country lanes gave me the hump. Eventually I got to MM and bumped straight into Adam and Chris. I explained what I had done with my garage, they explained the best way to “re-gain entry” back into my garage when I got home. How do they know these things? Anyway, Sunday I tried their techniques to open the door. Now I needed a replacement part, I took the old one with me and took it to place I know who stock all that sort of stuff. Got home and replaced the handle and lock with a stronger quality one. All fixed again and now I have two keys.

Tip:

If you need another key, get one cut before it’s to late!

I unloaded half the tools I normally take to the yard and went to the workshop. Where Adam showed me the head liner that had been fitted. It looks great and gives it new lease of life. There were a couple of fold marks near the edges that would drop out shortly under the pressure of the headliner bows. I was well pleased and decided to go for a celebration Cherry Bakewell cake with the guys in the boys club.

Next was some exhaust work, as the parts had been sprayed last week and they were waiting for Yogi who didn’t get a chance to re-hang the exhaust as he was busy on other cars. So as I watched him last week I had a go myself, I soon realised it’s not as easy as he made it look. I eventually got it all back in place and aligned it up best I could get it. Just in case Yogi wanted to move bits I didn’t clamp it up hard, but just a tiny pinch to hold the brackets in place. There was not a lot of room to manoeuvre under there but it’s hanging in place and ready for Yogi to do his thing with the three-inch headers to the main pipes. I know they are not aligned up square and neat, but they will do just for now.

The next part was the carburettor fitting, I removed the old tape from the inlet port that kept the area clean. I rubbed the area down clean ready for the gaskets to be fitted back in place. John joined me and we worked out the sequence of gaskets to be fitted. The first gasket was to seal the intake to the carb spacer.

intake ports

First gasket

in place

Then comes the carb spacer, not essential but these give extra torque and power to the engine and make things run that much nicer. This spacer sits on top of the previous gasket.

The next part is the gasket for the bottom of the carb and then the car itself.

carb bottom

The sits on top and is bolted down for bolts each corner.

With the carb in place the throttle linkage was connected to the butterfly controls of the carb and the vacuum advance line. I’m not sure I like the pipe and may change that to look neater.

throttle link

vacuum line

Adam joined me late in the day we got to grips with the pipe work. We fitted up the new black silicon pipes with my new clamps which turned out to be a real pig to fit in position due to the bulk of the T-bar fittings at the top. We eventually got there but I needed to order two more clamps for the top hose. The clamps should have fitted, but they wouldn’t fit over the pipes and the ridge at the end of the water pump. I will order the next size up they should be with me by the time I get to MM next week.

heater hoses

top hose

Feeling a little worse for wear at 7.30pm we decided to call it a day. I had forgotten all about my locked up key, that was until I got on the dual carriageway, put the car in cruise control and reflected on the day, what a stupid boy I had been I thought to myself. OK I didn’t use those exact words but it sort of means the same thing.

My homework? Well that was to bring home a wheel and tyre from my collection. Adam tells me I had different steel wheels from different cars and only one of which was a Mustang wheel. The wheels were welded on some, riveted on others, different sizes and slightly different designs all that I hadn’t noticed. The only good bit about it all was that the Mustang wheel had the best tyre of the bunch on it. I will clean up the wheel and use that for my spare should I ever need it that is.

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Nobody Will Ever Know

The weekend couldn’t come quick enough for me and seemed such a long week until it finally arrived. Saturday I woke with a feeling of knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but I didn’t really want to do it. It was going to be messy, it was going to hurt and it would never be seen. But that is the nature of restoration that I have learned so very quickly. The job in question was removing Waxoyl from inside the car roof. As you may or may not know, I had fun and games removing it from the floor pans before I treated them with POR15 paint. This time it was above me and I wasn’t too sure how I was going to attack it. Red Bull drinks were lined up and snacks were lined up like little toy soldiers on my Blue Point work cart, I knew what was coming. Plan A; was to rub the wax off with a bunch of rags and degreasant, I tried but I only seemed to spread it about and not remove it fully. Plan B; drink Red Bull and find a scraper while eating a snack. This gave the poor ol’ bloke arm muscles time to recover from half an hour of what seemed like somebody setting fire to them, they were burning that much. The man cave has lots of things that I have stored, (not hoarded – Stored) to choose from. I found all sorts of flexible implements that I could try and felt rather pleased with myself walking back to the garage. Trials were undertaken for the best tool. First was a plastic separator for a tool compartment – that was too soft, but would make an excellent filler spreader tool. (Note made to self at this point, for a small spreader use this bit of plastic). Secondly I had a silicon sealer remover, this was OK but too small and hurt the hands due to the funny angles on it. Thirdly I had a pallet knife that was good but again to small and too stiff and dug into the metal on more pronounced curves as it was sharp. The winner was an old filling knife I used for decorating, it was flexible and formed to the very slight curves of the roof, it didn’t dig into the metal and scraped of a good amount each time.

I started from the back to the front and the flex of the blade followed the roof well. The whole process was messy as the skin grafts of wax were raining down on me and went everywhere. At the start of the work you can see the roof under the wax which wasn’t pretty but it worried me a bit as it looked rust coloured, so I wanted to protect it best the best way possible. I took a photo of half the roof done for a comparison with and without the Waxoyl to show what it was hiding.

untouched roof

The mess was unbelievable and the old towels I had put down were not enough to cope with the mess. The side pillars at the rear were also cleaned up but were going to get a slightly different process. Snacks were consumed and a fair amount of water taken into the system. Arms are now aching beyond belief.

half way done

mess

more mess

even more mess

left side pillar

right side pillar

Once the roof was stripped of the wax I had to degrease it with the strongest mixture of POR Marine Clean I could mix up on 1:1 basis. This cut through the grease and left a very clean surface after a couple of treatments. this was left to dry thoroughly.

I used a full tin of Rust Prevention paint (picture on the process page, or click here) as this time as there was no real rust to be fair. The paint required two thin coats within ten minutes of each other. They looked a little patchy when drying but the end results was amazingly smooth and consistent to a whitish grey in colour.

single coat

second coat

almost dried

The side pillars were a different story as the bottoms by the shelf was rusted a little more and need some treatment of the Granville Rust Cure. Once that had dried off too I used some Eastwoods Rust Encapsulator to spray behind the pillars into all the little gaps then sprayed the outside all the way down to the window winder area. The satin black cuts the light down in the car again. Around the roof where the inner rail is there was not enough prevention spray for all of it. So I decided to Eastwood those areas too, while trying to prevent a little over spray not that it would ever matter of course. Another note to self; start on the rear shelf soon.

left side

back

The end result looks quite good due to a contrast of the black and white, the down side is once the head liner goes in – Nobody will ever see it and nobody will ever know!