1972 Granada Mk1 coupe build - Still going... 14-10-2024

Time for another update.

From my perspective I have made descent progress the past weeks, but it never quite feels like it is enough. Seemingly simple jobs seem to take forever, holding back progress. And off course I tackled something that one just can’t qualify as easy for someone who does this for the first time… I’m talking about me fitting my home made headliner.

So what did I do since last installment?

I believe first was finishing off those pesky fog lights that just wouldn’t really go in very well. I managed to do so in the end, but there is slightly more tension on them than I would have liked. But nothing broke so I guess it’s not too bad.






After that I think I took my son with me to fit the rear bumper. He had helped me paint the insides in bodyschutz and also assembled and mounted the license plate lighting. Then I put on the bumper and had him tighten the bolts as far as he could from within the boot. I just torqued them up a bit and that was done as well. I used bodyschutz to clean up a particularly bad area of the chrome on the bumper just below the license plate lights. So I may have to do that on the insert that actually holds the plate as well. I’ll see next week when I mount that.







I refurbished a set of Scorpio horns as one of the original horns is not making contact very well any more after a previous repair to a contact point that had broken off. My son helped me put them in!





Then I moved on to preparations for the headlining. That meant first of all that a small section of the wiring loom had to be put in as it powers the accessories in the roof and is hidden by the headlining. That was pretty straightforward. But after that I had to mount the new hoses to the drains on the sunroof. Finding the right hoses to actually fit onto those slightly different non-standard fittings was a challenge. I managed to get away with 18mm and 15mm garden hose (one for backyard ponds and the other a regular garden hose). Getting them all to go where they needed to be was one of those simple jobs taking ages. Somehow there’s something in the a-pillar that just has to be passed the right way for the hose to come through. As you can imagine that took some tries. On the driver side this was complicated by the wiring already run through it. To get the hoses to attach I heated them in 85 degree water and stuck in the back end of an assortment of screwdrivers. Upon cooling the hoses had a tendency to remember their new shape long enough to get them on their fittings. Again not easy. But the old ones were damaged from welding etc. so new ones were obligatory.







Next up was putting in the rest of the wiring loom for the car front to back. A nice little Saturday morning job. The three big connectors that connect the inside compartment loom with the under bonnet loom were a pain to get seated by myself. But it got done!






With the hoses fitted, I could go ahead and glue the new roof insulation to the roof just as the original had been. That was not a difficult thing to do, but due to the glue being applied with a brush rather than a paint gun, it was rather slow going. The material absorbed the glue to some extent so applying was slow. However the professional glue with a heat range of up to 90 degrees worked great. And whatever I stuck on, wherever I stuck it, it stayed well stuck!





In the mean time I had visited my mother in law and used her sewing machine to sew my headliner pieces together. I started on the easy parts. The sliding roof had its own headlining that had a strip of material sewn in (melted from factory) to wrap around a central support. I recreated that first to get the hang a bit. I then went on to the big pieces. That was a bit more challenging, mainly because of the position of the machine. There was little room to support the pieces being sewn so I had to be patient and keep track of where all material was in relation to the machine. I think I did ok!! Although fitting it would prove if the shape would be good enough.






First thing I glued was the sunroof headliner insert. That gave me an opportunity to test out how the glue behaved. I had to learn to be a bit more patient while glueing. That is why the central area of this piece is not as neat as later edges. I had to force myself to look at the clock after applying the glue and waiting at least 7-10 minutes for it to achieve proper characteristics for sticking together well. Abiding by that rule, the glue worked excellent. Although it lacks room for adjustment a bit. There is a fine line between being able to adjust the parts and the glue not yet sticking. So I just made sure I knew exactly where I was going to stick something and also only stuck together a finger width as a starting point. Then from there I usually tensioned and stuck two inches of material at a time, continuing along a preglued body line.







With that done there was no more putting it off, I had to start fitting that damned piece of cloth. I put the bow in, and hung it in place. I had put a center line on the material and the car turned out to have a notch in the frame edges to show center. I lined them up as a starting point for working back to front. The position of the bow posed a question in relation to where from factory some insulation had been, so I swapped for the original once or twice to be sure I had it lined up right. Then I clipped the rear and front with some old not fitting sunroof rubber molding and started tugging and clamping to see how things would work out. I determined that to get to work I just had to glue the center to the car and work from there. At that point it was important to keep tension to the front on and constant at all times. I worked my way to the right rear corner and tensioned and stuck that to the car as well as I could. I repeated on the left. I was not dissatisfied with the results at all, although truth be told, the corners aren’t as tight as I’d have liked. But I decided to finish the rest before going at it with blow dryers or steamers… Even if it would never approve, I’m cool with it as I know I did my best and it simply saved me almost a 1000 euro’s in doing it myself! Then again a scary moment. Because of the sunroof the forward tension had to now be set at the rear edge of the sunroof. Otherwise there would be no way of knowing if the tension to the front would remain the same when finishing the sunroof opening. And once the sides are stuck, you can’t play with forward tension much anymore. So I took a pair of scissors to my new headlining and cut a huge opening. My approach seemed to work well as the tension on the middle section both toward the front and the sides proved tweakable enough to get it tight in both directions. Working my way forward I clamped and glued each section at a time, taking care to not overtighten/stretch the material causing new creases. I was very happy when I negotiated the b-pillars and a-pillars with the fabric getting to the last edge to glue.























With the headlining done, I’m quite proud of the result!! I need to take DSLR pictures of it though, cause the phone is just not up to doing a decent job. In the pictures the area around the sunroof winder is creased, but in reality it is not anymore. Just needed to open up the material a little more. Point in case: once you go too far you’ve got a problem so I cut it a bit at a time.

After finishing the headlining I thought I’d quickly put in the sunroof itself. That turned out to be a deception. I had had it fitted before and it worked great even with the new rubber. Now however it just didn’t want to work. After 3 hours of tweaking the winder suddenly went frictionless and I thought and exclaimed “oh f..k”. I had visions of the cable snapped or pulled out of the mechanism. Some careful examining of the situation proved that the cable was still moving, only the wide brace that moves the sunroof wasn’t. I was really lucky here that I could wind the cable forward to just before the roof line and slide the brace forward as well after removing the tabs that help it raise. I was pretty miffed about what I found. Somehow when prepping for paint the prep guy had remove the roof panel and probably a bit too much. In putting that back he had put the screws through from the top with the cable attachment plate below. It was deigned to be on top however otherwise it wouldn’t be clamped below the screws. And that was essentially what happened, the screws held the plate in place for a while until tension grew and the plate slide of the screws. An easy fix: put the plate on top, and put the srews actually through it and it worked a lot better. So next morning I again fitted the roof and its lining. The new rubber needs to set somewhat so operation isn’t yet super smooth, but at least it’ll be alright and something I can address later on if need be.




Now the road is open to fitting the rubbers and glass. That will pull the headlining somewhat tighter still in areas such as the door openings and possibly the front and rear window openings. I just hope the moldings won’t damage my headliner. So fitting is going to be a delicate job.


When not working on the actual car I dug out the Cosworth V6 and figured out the correct routing for coolant and vaccum in order to build a rig to test the engine on. I also added the BOB original gearbox to the engine again. This time with the help of my daughter.

And that is where I am now. Ready to fit the glass and build the doors up. I just need to remember to drill access holes for the 16 wire cable I need to get all things in the door operating.

Hope you enjoyed. See you next installment!