luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Nov 16, 2018 10:11:13 GMT
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Guess we'll never know  Anyway. The luggage space seemed a good place to start because it was at the opposite end of the car to the doors, so I couldn't paint myself into a corner, and because if I stuffed it up completely it was the least obvious area and one which people didn't usually sit in. So I pulled out all the carpet, which left behind a good amount of its backing in the form of tiny little balled-up lumps of rubberised fluff all stuck to the paint in a layer of rock-hard super-cured contact glue that had been there God alone knows how long. Good, chuffed with that then  It took ages to get it off, the only method that really worked was to scrape off the worst of the chunky bits and then just scrub at the residue with cellulose thinners. Anyone who's done similar won't need telling what a hateful job this kind of thing is. You're wedged in a steel box all folded in half, the fumes do your nut right in, the thinners dissolves gloves as well as glue, so you're soon basically submerging your fingers in a caustic solution and rubbing them back and forwards against a hard surface so that eventually your nails start to separate from your fingertips. Starts to hurt after a while, that. Not my choice of holiday destinations. But  luggage space cleaning by Nick Liassides, on Flickr After entirely too long I'd got all the old glue and smegma off the package boot and it was pleasantly surprising. Tim and Dan of RestoGibbon had actually done a really good job in here. The paint was smooth and I managed not to knacker any of it... and more to the point, it was everywhere. I'd half expected to strip off the carpet to find the original rusty Pastel White underneath. It twitched my OCD a bit that the sound-deadening rubber mat stuff was on the wonk, but it was properly ON there and I decided life was too short to try getting it off  luggage space cleaned by Nick Liassides, on Flickr leaving the fumes to dissipate a bit and giving my poor aching head and hands a break, I got on with something else in the meanwhile. I trimmed the heat-crimped edges of the original cornflakes-in-a-vinyl-sack footwell panels so that I had a genuine sized template to work from, as the edges were bent under when in situ but laid flat added 10mm all round. I didn't have enough vinyl to waste on making things that wouldn't fit, though at least it didn't look like Lydia was going to sell out anytime soon.  footwell panel templates by Nick Liassides, on Flickr in keeping with the scavenger vibe, I re-used the scrim foam from the old sidepanels I'd already stolen the pleather from for the rear seat. The foam had lines of holes from where it had been stitched, but you'd never see this when all together  footwell panel foam by Nick Liassides, on Flickr and now I could face it again, back to stripping out carpet. The one thing you can definitely say in favour of Beetle interiors is that everything comes out easily. The front seats slide forward, press down a tang on the runner with a screwdriver, slide seat completely out. The rear seat squab simply lifts out, the seatback is held by two bolts and a check-strap. Which had snapped anyway. The carpets had once been stuck but the glue had gone so hard and brittle they pulled out with little effort. The downside of this, of course, was that it left the glue stuck firmly to the metalwork of the car.  surface rust only by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I lucked out again. I was optimistic it'd be OK, having already done the battery tray area, which was always going to be the worst spot for corrosion, and found only surface rust there. The floorpans also had areas of dusty surface rust but again, no rot anywhere. Phew! The more I stripped out the carpet the more it seemed like a non-original one, nor even an original pattern one. Dunno where it came from, but the sections were certainly cut very differently to the replacements I had. I'd never liked it; the texture was nasty and the barbers-pole edging just naff and excessively jaunty, so I was more than glad to see the back of it.  footwell stripping by Nick Liassides, on Flickr So the plus side was it was quick to strip the interior. The downside was this meant I was straight back in to scraping off clag and breathing celly thinners for hours. I ended the day with every joint aching, covered in bruises from banging against steel surfaces, with fingers feeling like they'd been dipped in acid and the mother of all headaches. Definitely not the most fun I ever had with clothes on!  floor cleaning by Nick Liassides, on Flickr In the evening in front of the telly I could get on with something a bit more genteel; cutting, gluing and stapling some of Lydia's pleather to the ply templates I'd made for the footwell panels  footwell panel covered by Nick Liassides, on Flickr It doesn't appear that you can get replacements for the heater outlet trim rings, so I had to re-use these. They're just two rings that clip together from either side of the panel, but my panel was a bit wider than the originals as it was 3mm ply and foam rather than flimsy knackered cardboard, so the rings didn't want to click into dentent very easily and I had a few nervous moments where I thought they were just going to shatter. But we got there in the end  footwell panel spigot by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Next day I could get on with making stuff better rather than worse, as much for my own state of mind as anything else. I stuck on some more sound deadening in a slightly desultory fashion because I don't think a Beetle is ever going to be a quiet ride. But hey, every little helps, apparently. I also tried out gluing some carpet in. With hindsight I probably should have picked an easier bit than the rear wheel arch sections, because they were just about the most complicated bit to get sitting right of all. They have to follow a compound curve through two directions so getting them to sit without any wrinkles was more or less impossible. In fact, having now done the rest of the car and learned a lot about how to glue down automotive carpet, I still think it'd be impossible to get them to sit flat without any bulges at all. ]  the first stick by Nick Liassides, on Flickr So it was a bit annoying for my OCD side, but as previously said, it didn't really matter too much as the wrinkled bits are hidden behind the rear seat pretty much all of the time. I knew they were there, though and it was a bit depressing a start. I'd bought the carpet set as a complete kit from Heritage, and it was a lot nicer than the manky black stuff that had come out in a (semi)authentic VW style and lovely oatmeal colour mix. The negative aspect of it being much nicer quality was that it was a damn sight thicker than the old stuff, and cut to a completely different pattern. This made it a lot more difficult to mould to the complex shapes of the car, and also harder to work out which bit went where and in which orientation. The instructions did offer some useful hints and tips, but this was the first time I'd ever done anything like this. I was working on my own and mostly by ear, bluffing it, and getting increasingly worried I was going to totally balls-up an expensive carpet set. And to add a sudden time crunch pressure, we had tickets booked for ages for the Brighton Breeze London to Brighton run, and time was ticking away. Everything was taking a lot longer than I'd ever envisaged and it was beginning to look very much like the car might still be in a hundred bits. Would we make it in time?  |
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Nov 16, 2018 11:10:41 GMT
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I get 'Nam style ptsd flashbacks about scrim foam now, terrified of it 😔
That said i bet new stuff has got some stupid EU compliance that it has to biodegrade in xx years. I was talking to East Kent trim about it, that's actually a thing on new door seal rubber, eeek
Tidy work again
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Last Edit: Nov 16, 2018 12:19:36 GMT by darrenh
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Nov 16, 2018 12:04:14 GMT
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Nov 16, 2018 15:30:45 GMT
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lol, what have I started?  Right, anyone remember the catch doobries for the rear seatback latches a couple of posts back? Yep, you trot off and refresh your memory, we'll wait for you here. Back with us? Good, I'll carry on. sooooo, I had the receptacles for the latch rod but there was nothing to attach them to. All the internal structure of the car could offer was a vacant web behind the sidepanel where obviously something was supposed to mount, but no trace of what it should be  mystery webs by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Offering up the old cream sidepanel I'd stripped for other uses, it was clear that the little receptacles were supposed to screw through this into something that originally mounted in those webs. The sidepanel had witness marks where the receptacles (almost certainly not the correct name) had been, but they obviously weren't just screwed to the panel as it was too flimsy to take the entire weight of the seatback and stop it pivoting without bending. Well, much googling and hours trawling the Samba left me none the wiser, and to make matters worse, the JK replacement sidepanels had one hole in the card for the receptacles... just one... and that was quite clearly not in the right place. I deduced that what I needed was a plate with threads in it that could float slightly within the webs and that the receptacle could screw to through the sidepanel. The reason the car C-pillar didn't simply have threads cut in for this like a seatblet mount was that the threads needed to be moveable slightly so as to be able to line up the receptacles with the latch rod in the seat and take up any tolerance variables that might occur. Hence the web that would retain the threaded plate, but not prevent it moving into the exact right spot. Clear as mud? Good  receptacle mount experiment by Nick Liassides, on Flickr well, it'd have to be good ol' rivnuts then, wouldn't it? And a nice thick piece of aluminium plate. And while I was sawing metal and drilling holes, I wasn't very happy with the super-flimsola parcel shelf brackets I'd taken out. They were cheapy galvanized steel, clearly out of the Wicke's parts bin, and held to the firewall with a single self-tapper. There was no mechanical fixing to the shelf whatsoever, which was simply held in polace with velcro to the boot carpet. The shelf itself, being 1/4 inch MDF with heavy speakers in it, was not something I wanted cutting loose and decapitating my offspring should the worst happen like an accident or something. So I made up some rather more heavy-duty brackets to hold the shelf (old ones on the left in this pic):  rear shelf fitting new v old by Nick Liassides, on Flickr In fact, I made it out of such thick alloy that it was a fair old job folding it without cracking it and the Dzus fastener receptacles were a hell of a job to stretch over the edge! left those drying in etch primer for the time being  rear shelf fitting legend by Nick Liassides, on Flickr In between times, I'd literally used an entire can of thinners rubbing off all the old glue and smegma from the floorpans and interior paintwork, and got down a coat of POR15 metal prep acid wash stuff to clean it up ready for paint  much thinners later by Nick Liassides, on Flickr This was as bad as the car would look from now on in, so at least every step now was forwards, making stuff look better not worse. Two coats of the good ol' POR later  floor painted by Nick Liassides, on Flickr and I also had some much nicer, Dolly Blue parcel shelf brackets  rear shelf fitting finish by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I decided that gaffer tape an bare cables were not the ideal way of running and "securing" the speaker wires to the rear end, and took it upon myself to thread them through some conduit instead  speaker wire threading by Nick Liassides, on Flickr After the wheel arch carpet, the luggage boot one was apiece of proverbial, since it was basically a big square with one end rounded off. I did start out with spray adhesive, but this was unsatisfactory for a couple of reasons. One being it just doesn't go far enough, one can would basically only just give a decent coverage on a carpet secion this size. The other is it didn't seem all that strong, I guess being diluted to fit through an aerosol actuator and with propellant and all that thrown into the mix. I went shopping and found some seriously gloopy stuff in a tin. It needed brushing on, and had all sorts of health warnings on the tin, so I figured it was The Good Stuff. And anyway, I couldn't read most of the presumably dire warnings because it was all written in Eastern European, so hopefully it'd be safe in Britain  luggage space carpeted by Nick Liassides, on Flickr RestoMarmoset had run the speaker wire behind the old carpet, then cut a dirty big hole through to thread the connector block through from behind. The wire was held in place behind the carpet with gaffer tape I reckoned I could do a bit better than that, especially now my cables were in a neat conduit. I got some little plinths that accept a cable tie and are held in place with a stainless screw  speaker wire mounts by Nick Liassides, on Flickr and for an encore, got on with sound-deadening the living smeg out of all the now-accesible bodywork. Note embryonic trial seatlatch plate top left  rear 3qs soundproofing by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Time to fit the parcel shelf brackets, and I figured to use the original hole from the old brackets and then drill a second one in line for my new brackets (which had two mounting points rather than the original one). This was a snag I hadn't foreseen... I couldn't find the goddamned holes! They were covered in lovely thick carpet that no way was bendy enough to reveal a 4mm hole just by prodding with a finger. I wasted ages messing about and getting wound up before I came up with a Special Tool. we all love a Special Tool, don't we?  VW Special Tool HF1970 by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Yeah, to you it might look like a molegrips clutching a big needle wrapped in tape, but to me they're a thing of beauty. And it certainly made it easy as pie to prod around through the carpet until I found the hole. Then, once held with one screw it was the work of mere moments to level out the brackets and drill the second one  luggage space finished by Nick Liassides, on Flickr so that was the boot area pretty much done. Yay, progress! The seat latch plates were proving a bit of a pain, though. I had two totally different styles of sidepanel, none of which gave me a definitive answer as to where the holes needed to go. And getting them to stay in place was a bit of a pain because the webs held them tight but not tight enough so if you moved them too much they'd fall out and drop down into the sills of the car. And because I'd cleverly made them from aluminium, I couldn't even fish them back out with an extending magnet  It only took a couple of goes retrieving them with a lump of Blu-Tack on the end of a telescoping magnet thing before I wised up and resorted to insulting tape. Trouble was, you couldn't help but jiggle them around trying to mount the sidepanel because it's held in place with those hateful bent steel prongs that VW seemed to love and they never line up first go.  receptacle receptacle by Nick Liassides, on Flickr After a lot of swearing and god knows how many trial fits, I had the sidepanels lined up to where I thought the receptacles should go, and marked them off for the point of no return; drilling holes. Now then. Ahem. Remember I said I should have paid more attention to the fact the scrim foam in these panels wasn't proper foam but a loose mat of woven fibres? You know what's going to be happening next, don't you? Yep, before I could twig what was happening, the drill bit picked up the fibrous stuff and wound it up like the lady and the Tramp sharing spaghetti. It basically dragged all the foam stuff from about a third of the panel area and wadded it up into a massive ball all round the bit and chuck. Nothing would ever persuade it back into the vacant space between the layers of vinyl after that, and most of it I couldn't even untangle from the drill and had to cut off. It was annoying... no, in fact it was &#@!$ing annoying... but not totally the end of the world, as most of the damaged bit of the sidepanel was at the seatback end of the shebang so it wouldn't really show that it was now just flat vinyl-wrapped cardboard devoid of padding, but as you can imagine, I did invent some new swearwords at the time! Eventually, after what seemed like entirely too long faffing about with them, I could line up the countersunk allen screws through the receptacles, into my little floating plates... which floated just like they were supposed to and allowed me to then line up all the stupid little horrible sprung steel prongs to fit the panel properly  receptacle lined up by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Bearing in mind that this performance didn't just involve fitting and removing the panels loads of times, every time I wanted to check whether I'd got the seat latch plates in the right place, I also had to fit the rear seatback to check that the latch rod fitted the receptacles properly. You can see from the number of grubby fingerprints how much sheer faffage this actually ran to!  rear seat back fit by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I can honestly say that I fervently hope never to have to remove those sidepanels ever, for any reason, ever again!  |
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Last Edit: Nov 16, 2018 15:33:09 GMT by luckyseven
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mungo
Part of things
Posts: 320
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Nov 16, 2018 16:49:44 GMT
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Nice work !
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56' bug 2332 +ida's
56' lowlight ghia
72' bus 1600 devon
67' type 3 square - gone
83' gti - gone
90' gti 16v - gone
82' chevette - gone
70' GP1 Beach buggy -gone
78' lightweight landrover 3L v6 -gone
89' gti - gone
83' gti - gone
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Nov 16, 2018 17:15:09 GMT
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I was building the suspense, just like they do when the tell you the winners and losers in Strictly.... thus turning a tedious 7 minutes of television into 30 minutes of tedious tv but with more dead air... Or working, it’s one or the other  forum.retro-rides.org/thread/189091/1982-lada-total-change-power?page=10Towards the bottom of page 10 it all gets a bit flouncy!!  |
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Nov 16, 2018 17:30:46 GMT
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Bloody hell, I hope I've never come across anything like that weirdo Maybe I should get on with deleting my entire Flickr library just to see if anyone really loves me |
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gess
Part of things
Posts: 220 
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Nov 16, 2018 19:26:27 GMT
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It seems so easy, everyting you do yo your Dolly :-) Everyting falls into place clean and neat! It is almost rude to laugh at your challenges, but you tell them som amusingly. Loving the thread, as most people at a certain age I also have experiences with beetles, a friend used to have a black 1302S with a 1600 engine, sports exhaust and the padded dash. It was an amusing car but very cold during winter.
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Nov 16, 2018 20:45:10 GMT
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Very enjoyable read this. Car gets better and better too:-)
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Nov 16, 2018 22:01:33 GMT
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Bloody hell, I hope I've never come across anything like that weirdo Maybe I should get on with deleting my entire Flickr library just to see if anyone really loves me Never say never!! Once Dolly is finished you’ll need a little project Excellent work and vocabulistics. Waiting for more |
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,266
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Nov 16, 2018 23:12:25 GMT
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Aren't interiors fun?
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Great looking car. I really like your write ups. Thanks.
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Nov 17, 2018 23:19:57 GMT
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Dunno about "fun" For mine, "disintegrating" would be a better word. Dolly's looking good though. |
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Nov 18, 2018 15:53:32 GMT
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Given what a total pain in the bell the little carpet I'd fitted had been, I thought it prudent to trial-fit the rest of it before getting stuck in... or more importantly, getting anything stuck to anything else. As I said, the black carpet that came out was cut totally differently to the oatmeal kit I had to fit. Whereas the old stuff had separate floor mat sections and then a strip that ran the entire length of the tunnel, the new kit had two large front and rear sections which included the tunnel area. The front mat in particular was a nightmare as not only did it have to curve over the tunnel and then curve again for the floor, it also had the complicated pedal area thrown into the mix. You'd think it'd be simple but it took me a lot of juggling to get my head round where everything wanted to go  test fitting by Nick Liassides, on Flickr As for the kickboard and side footwell parts, well the former needed to curve round about four different shapes in three different directions and the latter... well, I couldn't even decide which way round they were supposed to go. Hmmm. In my usual Taurean methodology, I decided just to put my head down and charge. Start doing something and the rest would follow. Eventually. First things first then. The sill panels, according to the instructions, needed to go down first then the floor mats overlapped these. Where the old carpet had just stuck* up to the edge of the sill, the new stuff had a rubber edging piece that was like thick U-channel that needed to go under the edge of the sill and be clamped down. There was a ridge in the sill of the metalwork for this exact reason. Trouble was, it was mostly bent totally flat against the door aperture where decades of feet had squashed it flat. I had to bend it back up again so as to wedge the edge of the carpet under it, then bang it back down with a mallet to trap the carpet. * not really stuck as such. The glue had all turned to varnishThis was a bit dicey because I really didn't want to go breaking it and the paint was reluctant to bend with the metal and tended to chip off. I ended up with another Special Tool  sill Lego tool by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Yep, those of you blighted by children will recognise the Lego separator tool thingy you get in the bigger kits. It worked pretty well; the screwdriver levered the sill flange up just enough to get the Lego tool in, then its wider flange (oooh, flange) and softer plastic was much better for bending up the metal without damaging the paint too much. I had to touch in a few bits but mostly got away with it! It was still the devil's own job getting the carpet glued down; having got it crimped under the sill, I still had to glue it and the floor, then bend the carpet in under the seat runners without either having the glue stick to bits it wasn't supposed to or, worse, having the rubber U-channel stressed so much that it popped out from under the sill. This would have been an utter nightmare because I'd have had to start again from the beginning  sill carpet fitted by Nick Liassides, on Flickr There aren't many photos of this bit of the operation because you only get a short window of opportunity to get the carpet stuck down once the glue's on because it has a curing time so that once you miss the window, all you have is some claggy non-sticky glue all over everything. I did discover that no matter where you thought the carpet was going to sit after a dry run trial fit, once glued it changed its characteristics entirely and became much more malleable so it fit to curves easier and ended up sitting nothing like what you expected. If you got one bit miss-aligned it then obviously affected every other bit and then you were faced with the choice of tearing it up and hoping the glue would survive the stress and re-stick, or trying to follow on and hope it would still all line up. It's contact glue, don't forget. When it touches the opposite layer of glue, it sticks. There and then. And that's that. I found that steaming it into place first so it at least formed some of the correct shape, then gluing before it totally dried out and cooled down helped. A bit  steaming mad by Nick Liassides, on Flickr The kickboard part was a total pig. The kit suppliers had provided one single hole, where the brake pushrod went. However, I wasn't keen on taking off the rod from the pedal/master cylinder and trying to get a 1" hole perfectly lined up with sticks-first-time glue. The top of the under-dash area is flat, then it curves in towards the front boot, then goes flat again, then curves back out towards the pedals. Then has to go over the tunnel and behind all the pedal architecture and down onto the floor. Trying to hit the pushrod hole would be like trying to drill a hole in a waterfall and not have it move while you were lining it up! I made the decision to...err, relieve the crucial hit-a-hole-in-one problem  pedal carpet unmolested by Nick Liassides, on Flickr ...and cut some bits out for the brake and accelerator mechanisms. For those who never had the joy of Beetling in their life, the pedal assembly all mounts on a common rod that bolts through the tunnel from the passenger side. The accelerator pedal further complicated matters by being hinged from the floor upwards. I didn't fancy taking all that out and trying to re-align it properly and re-tension cables and all that malarkey, so I worked round it. Once the carpet was in place you'd never really be able to see the cut bits  pedal carpet mutilated by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Because I really needed a break from carpet by this point for the sake of my sanity and because the glue fumes were starting to make me even weirder than usual, I imposed upon Auntie Panda* and her industrial sewing machine again. I couldn't unstick the scrim foam from the shelf without destroying it (it seemed to be the one part of the old interior where the glue hadn't denatured and turned to lacquer over the years) so it wouldn't be as three-dimensional as I'd have liked, but to baffle the eye I marked up the vinyl on the parcel shelf and got Panda to run some straight lines of stitching across it. * not a real auntie, not a real panda. My wife's best friend, when our daughter was tiny "Panda" was the closest she could come to saying "Amanda" parcel shelf recovered by Nick Liassides, on Flickr The lines matched up to the stitching in the rear seatback, and gave a much-needed visual relief to what would otherwise have been a big flat expanse of cream nothingness. The lines were a bit wonky in places but I don't mind that, nature abhors straight lines and it's a home-made thing after all. Refitted the speakers (the grungy mark at the top in this photo is just where the fixing for the new brackets would go, don't panic!)  ripspeeds new home by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I cannibalised the old black vinyl from the original stuff that covered the shelf for the underside, more to hide all the stapling than anything, and used some little cable tie plinths to hold the wiring neatly. Ever notice what an odd-sounding word "plinth" is? Say it ten times over, go on  parcel shelf undertopped by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Some nice new super-long 35mm Dzus fasteners fitted perfcetly through the shelf and into my new support brackets (almost as if I'd planned it that way ) and the shelf was in and a damned sight more secure than it had been when it was "held" in place by velcro and sheer optimism. Plus it was a twist of two quarter-turn fittings, unplug the speaker connector block and the shelf comes out in seconds  Parcel shelf fitting by Nick Liassides, on Flickr It gave me a much-needed mojo boost, so I felt like I was actually getting somewhere. Before the back seat had been a depressing pitch-black hole  Parcel shelf coal hole by Nick Liassides, on Flickr whereas now it was light, airy and much more inviting. And if I'd seated the shelf properly before taking this pic it would have been a whole lot better  Parcel shelf finished by Nick Liassides, on Flickr |
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Last Edit: Nov 18, 2018 16:05:43 GMT by luckyseven: trying to make it make sense
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Nov 18, 2018 16:08:37 GMT
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But what about the Snoopy heads..... did I miss that bit?
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Nov 18, 2018 16:20:26 GMT
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Snoopy heads? No idea what you're on about |
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Nov 18, 2018 17:21:22 GMT
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It was at about this point that disaster struck and reminded us of what's important. People, especially loved ones, are important. Cars, comparatively, are not. Mrs L7 proved this quite comprehensively to me by going into hospital for what should have been a serious (because they all are) but relatively routine operation, then contracting pneumonia and sepsis as a result and being taken off to a ward for the foreseeable future with a antibiotic drip and lots of machines that go ping. At a time like this, simply getting a car finished seems tawdry and ephemeral ... and more details of why I was hoping to get Dolly finished before this can be found in the Brighton Breeze report thread here forum.retro-rides.org/thread/206805/brighton-breeze-2018-pics?page=1&scrollTo=2459291 so I won't go into too much sordid detail here. Suffice to say between Mrs L7 resisting the pull of the hereafter and the kids and work, I didn't have a lot of time to get the car done. Eventually things returned a bit to normal and I could get stuck back in. Stuck... glue... geddit? Jeez, tough crowd  rear mat fitting by Nick Liassides, on Flickr With the felt underlay mats glued in, I went for the rear floormat half because it seemed the easier of the two, and because that's what the instructions said to do. It went OK, the hardest part being getting it over the handbrake and heater levers without sticking it to anything. The instructions suggested using big sheets of plastic to isolate the gluey carpet from the gluey floor while you lined everything up, then pulling the plastic out an inch at a time, sticking the mat down as you went. This worked really well on big mostly flat areas like this but was totally hopeless for complex bits like round the pedals. I got the tunnel bit lined up, stuck down and then did one footwell area at a time using the plastic separator technique. The footboard and sidepanel bits were just a total pig. No mitigation at all, just a horrendously annoying and fiddly thing to do  footwell carpeted by Nick Liassides, on Flickr For the front mat, I cut a hole to clear the mounting that holds the entire pedal assembly to the tunnel because trying to get the carpet fitted over the top a) resulted in really lumpy carpet and b) meant you'd have to tear out the carpet if the pedals ever needed removal  drill your own hole by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Once that was all stuck down I could get on with trimming back bits like the gear lever mounting area, round the pedals and so on  some widening needed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Overall the carpet kit is a great product and it sounds like I'm moaning but that's just because of the nature of the job, not the product itself. You'd be hopelessly naive to expect to be able to just chuck it all in the car and it to miraculously fit first time, every time. I had to trim a few bits to fit, but overall it was exactly as Herr Porsche would have liked. Had he got his hands dirty with the factory floor. Some bits I trimmed through choice rather than necessity... such as the bridge of edging trim that would have basically needed removal of the steering column to fit. I figured cutting that bit in half was a more expedient way of fitting it. At the end, I had a few bits left over but not much considering  lots of bits left over by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I used my Special Tool hole-finding pronger to round up all the holes that had gone missing (for the seatbelts and suchlike) and standing back, felt fairly chuffed with the end result.  carpeted finally by Nick Liassides, on Flickr well, not exactly the end, but the ed of the carpeting anyway. There were a few glitchy bits; I managed to get the footwell side panel carpets about an inch difference in height which you only notice when looking at both sides of the car at the same time (but I of course notice every time I get in), there were a few wrinkles and the front mat went in slightly on the wonk so that it's tighter to the seat frame one side than the other (again, something only I will probably ever notice). Overall, I felt pretty pleased with myself  wall to wall by Nick Liassides, on Flickr So all that's left is all the rest then. There may be Snoopies involved... |
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Nov 18, 2018 18:30:46 GMT
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Yay Snoopies!!! And glad Mrs L7 is better now, even if it did mean there was a break in your posting |
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I feel a bit pompous saying I have "restored" cars, maybe chipped away at a few stones is a better description. But anyway, having done most things spread over different cars, I've strongly come to believe that "perfection" is often viewed through the eyes of someone who hasn't had to achieve it themselves.
Example, someone at NEC said my car was timewarp, it was amazing. I smiled but in my head I'm thinking it's got bird sh-t stains on the roof, how can they have missed the bird sh-t
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Last Edit: Nov 19, 2018 9:50:17 GMT by darrenh
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Nov 19, 2018 11:30:58 GMT
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Wow! Great job on the interior! Yannick |
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It only took a couple of goes retrieving them with a lump of Blu-Tack on the end of a telescoping magnet thing before I wised up and resorted to insulting tape. Trouble was, you couldn't help but jiggle them around trying to mount the sidepanel because it's held in place with those hateful bent steel prongs that VW seemed to love and they never line up first go.
