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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Raise a Glass Or Two

The good lady wife cleaned out the kitchen cupboards and moved a load of things around and found some bottles of drink we were given when we got engaged. We decided at the time to keep them for a special occasion as you do, and we put them right out-of-the-way for safe keeping and we promptly forgot about them, out of sight out of mind as it were. That special occasion day was today – they went down the drain as they had corked and smelt like vinegar when they were poured away. There is a message here, if you are given a nice drop of plonk – drink it while it’s still good. The others are OK but that’s not he point. I do however plan on opening a nice big bottle of champagne once I am holding that elusive MOT certificate for my car, then I can drive it legally, not after the drink of course, but you know what I mean. Oh, in case you are wondering – now things have been moved around, I can’t find anything!

The title suggests that I have been on the ol’ vino apart from what went down the drain, sadly that is not the case, but more about getting the rear quarter windows out of the car. For the past two weeks I have taken a complete side of glass out, which includes the frame, brackets and bolts all of which were cleaned up, then the whole thing repeated for the other side. The task itself sounds pretty easy, but the main issue is getting the glass out through the top of the quarter panel opening. Once the glass has been separated it’s not to bad a job at all, the technique seems to be unbolt the frame, undo the glass and separate it apart inside the frame. The dexterity of hand and eye coordination is put to the test where you have to hold the glass, lift it out of the frame rack itself and then guide it out the top. The glass is not heavy but I am aware of the age of the glass and I didn’t want to knock it and crack it or worse still drop it. The fact that the winding gears had dried solid grease, Waxoyl all over them and general lack of maintenance sort of explains why nothing wanted to move very much. The cleaning was a nightmare getting the guide rails clear and removing the caked on Waxoyl. All this hard work nobody will ever see once it’s fitted back into the car. As a result, my shoulders and neck ache for constantly looking down at it all, poor ol’ soul! But here is what I have been up too:

frame in place

one of the guide bolts for the glass

right inside before clean

track guide

track for the window

right inside close up

untreated

finished

I have added a couple of before and after pictures as well. and I have added the full process under the Photos section or click here for the hyper link.

Right side glass

right inside before clean

right outside cleaned

right inside cleaned

Left side glass

left side

left inside cleaned

left outside cleaned

Left side glass track and frame

Left side bottom uncleaned

left side top uncleaned

frame Insides cleaned

Both side winder mechanisms

both sides uncleaned

other side uncleaned

both sides cleaned

mechanisms cleaned

The other thing I have tidied up today was a couple of boxes I had in from the USA a while ago which were some replacement dash gauges. These were in small boxes all over the place so I decided to make a little storage area for them. I had a sturdy box and created a cut out for each and placed them inside for safe keeping. A nice little idea, which I may turn into plastic instead of cardboard.

wropped up

protected

Quick links:

Photo Menu – Glass Work – Rear Quarter Window(s) Refurbishment or click here

Special Mention:

A special thanks goes out to Dana http://atlastracer.wordpress.com/ who has kept me laughing and motivated over the weekend. Pop over to check out her amazing blog.

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Busy Start To The Year

Back to work in the new year was a shock to the system after having a couple of weeks of I must say. I had almost forgotten what the alarm sounded like, but I was soon reminded with a sledgehammer to the ear drums when it went off. The day I retire I will take the alarm clock outside and I will give it such a good hiding for all the mornings it has ruined my slumber. Why do you have the deepest sleeps just before you go back to work and the alarm wakes you up?

Anyway, back to the car; The new year has started in a busy fashion and I intend to continue the pace, it’s been busy getting it ready for some body work after a conversation with Adam at Mustang Maniac. The time of over he holidays was used to complete a project I started on the twenty-fourth on November and that was the rust treatment of the floor pan, the hyper link is here for the full story. I originally started at the front foot wells and worked my way to the back of the car. It was finished on just before the new year, what remains are the side panels by the rear seats and the side frames.

seat area as it was (right)

re-cleaned before the paint

2 coats full view

In order for the body work to be ready, the right rear quarter window was taken out and the driver’s side will come out next weekend. Once they are out I can get to the inside of the panels and treat them with rust prevention, before the outside work begins. The rear quarter window work is under the Photos Menu – Glass Work – Rear Quarter Windows of click here for the hyper link.