blackpopracing ashtrays!
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We didn't know how to remove the wooden door cappings, they looked to be attached to the door cards themselves and since we want to remove those for repair too it made sense to remove all of them. It should be a quick job since these door cards are going to be considerably less complicated than a modern moulded type. Best thing to do when you don't know how something comes apart is to start with what looks easiest, in this case that was the two screws holding the pull handle on to the door, flat headed on most of the doors, later cross-headed ones on the front passenger door for some reason.
With that removed and the door open, you can lift the door cappings straight off, which was unexpected. If we were just doing wood renovation, this would have been a much shorter job.
Instead, we wanted to remove the door cards to inspect the backing boards and see how they were put together so that meant getting to the bottom of how all the door furniture went together. The front driver's door window winder is missing the escutcheon and instead has a length of wire threaded through and twisted to hold it in place. We weren't sure why this would be until after we'd removed a door card.
The door handles aren't too bad to remove, you can push the escutcheon sprung section back to get to the pin that locks everything together fairly easily. The window winders are a different matter. Even though the window winder fixing is the same, actually pushing the sprung section in far enough to knock the locking pin out required the simultaneous use of three (four in the case of the winder with a slightly bent locking pin) screwdrivers and a hammer, definitely not a single person job. The pin you're looking for hides behind the stepped section of the escutcheon, you need to use a screwdriver to pry it down against the spring, and another screwdriver (or punch) to knock the pin out, and sometimes another screwdriver to hold the other side of the escutcheon down out of the way of the exiting pin. Reassembly is likely much easier.
With those off, it was then a case of finding the screws that held the door card on. On our doors it's clear that all but the rear passenger door have been fiddled with over the years, so the fixings varied. The common places for the screws were two hiding under the wooden trim at each end of the door, two on the bottom corners of the door card through the carpetted section, and two on the B pillar side of the door frame that go into little L brackets. The latter screws are the one that's just a screw hole in the first picture, and the rustier one in the second picture.
Then you lift the door card up to remove it from the screws in the frame that serve as pins. Unless there's some additional hidden screws or tacks that the car may have gained over the years. On the back of the door card are these slotted metal brackets, they're about halfway up the door card.
That free we got our first look inside the doors and there's nothing of note to report. Being aluminium, there's no rot, and the wooden elements are all sound. The factory chalk and pencil markings are still present on the door and the door cards and while it's probably not the first time these have been off, it seems likely these are original to the car.
We already knew the driver's front door card was water damaged, it was quite obviously warped when fitted. The plywood has delaminated and deformed quite a lot. Thankfully, because it's a flat board and the holes cut into it are simple, we can and will reproduce the backing board. We'll then repair the original cover and reinstall that on a new board. All the hardware on the back of the door card is held on with short tacks so those two can be transferred across to a new board fairly easily. We have been keeping things original where possible, you just sometimes have to recognise when there's no benefit to originality and these door cards are a good example of that.
The rear door cards fared much better, the one side that appeared to have never been off is the best of all of them, the other rear card has signs of having had woodworm in the past, though there's no sign of activity now in the car. The woodworm damage is restricted to the back of this one door card and hasn't gone into the door capping or the door frame.
All the door cards have the marking "568 Brown" which we assume is the colour and code for the interior. It will be a shame to be losing this detail but then again, nobody will ever see it apart from us and you reading this, so it doesn't matter really. Also of note is that the door pockets are done simply with a length of elastic rope through a piping channel which is fed through two holes in the door card and then given a knot at each end to keep it in place. The elastic is still in really good shape so providing we can undo the knots, we'll just reuse that when we remake the door cards. If any of it breaks, we can always buy new since it is still available.
Until we get the new plywood, there's not a great deal can be done with the door cards so for now we'll set those aside. Instead, let's take a look at these wooden items.
The varnish is yellowed and blackened but the wood underneath looks to be in reasonable shape. We're not sure exactly what wood this is, other than it being some sort of hardwood, the grain suggests it might be teak, some sections have a shimmering striation across the grain and the reverse of the pieces where the sun and water haven't got to them has that slightly reddish hue that my other mid-century teak furniture has. As with the door cards, the original chalk markings are still present. The weather stripping is in reasonable shape, it's a little loose where some of the tacks have fallen out and the glue has failed and the fabric has shrunk a little. The weather stripping is essentially a strip of steel with thick velvet covering it so it will be very easy to rejuvenate or remake entirely before refitting to the car.
Here's a little video to demonstrate how easy these were to bring back to life.
The first task was to strip all of the old finish off. This was incredibly easy with a sharp bladed scraper as the old finish was very brittle and not bonded to the wood particularly well. A lot of the apparent colour of the wood was in the old varnish, once removed the wood underneath had a much more prominent grain and a less yellow look. You can start to see some of the red hue of the wood showing through on the stripped piece in these images.
A closer look before, to show an area of the old finish that was the most stable and how much it's discoloured the wood underneath.
Here's a section afterwards, highlighting the grain and the very smooth finish of the wood under the varnish. There was no special preparation or sanding, no chemical strippers, this was simply a scraper followed by some very fine wire wool and then a soft cloth to dust off.
It was then wiped over with Danish Oil, I got the closest to a neutral stain that they had in stock, aiming for something a little closer to the colour of the seats. The majority of the colour change isn't the stain, it's the natural colour of the wood shining through.
Another two coats will be required to get the full depth of the finish and then it will be treated to a coat of beeswax. It took barely any time at all to get all four trims cleaned up and the refinishing started. It's an even more astonishing transformation than the leather of the seats.
This colour makes a lot more sense against the rexine and leather too, the colour much more closely matches them. It also explains why the scumbling on the instrument binnacle is so much darker and browner than the surrounding varnished wood, this finish is closer to the scumbling too so we imagine the dashboard also will come up in this lovely rich dark wood when we get to that point.
It's six hours between coats for the Danish Oil so we'll get another coat on later tonight and a final coat tomorrow. It's lovely stuff to work with and, providing you're not after a super high gloss finish (and we're not) it's so much more pleasant to work with than brush on varnishes. Very low odour too, and isn't sticky or tacky as it dries. We thought a high gloss finish on surfaces at eye level would not be that pleasant while driving, so this more muted sheen (it's somewhere between satin and gloss) is much better. The next task is to sort out the door furniture fixings. The escutcheons look like generic items and are all the same so we only need to replace one of those, all of the door handles and winders are in perfectly reasonable condition, and while some of the screws are good to go again, ideally these all want replacing with new in coherent sizes rather than this motley assortment.
