The Crusty Cuda: Whole lotta Shakin' (N96) Goin' on!

[Jonesy]

Looks great! That was probably one of the most frustrating part of my resto, was doing the headliner and sail panels on my 69 camaro. Pulling and clamping to get the wrinkles out.

[njsteve]

That's why I took my time. And with white fabric I had to make sure the headliner work was the first thing I did each day with surgeon-clean hands. If my hands were dirty from something, I postponed the headliner for the next day. I did the front area one day, the back the next, then one side one day and the other side the next. This one was actually easier than the headliner I did in my 72 black Formula Firebird. That was much harder since the fabric went down the C pillar and caused all sorts of wrinkling problems.

[mockingbird812]

Yowzaa Steve! Looks smashing!!!

[Woj]

Originally Posted by mockingbird812

Yowzaa Steve! Looks smashing!!!

Nice work. Not an easy job!

[njsteve]

Thanks! This was by far the hardest part so far. Well, until the seat cover set arrives.

I also have to repaint all the interior moldings. The SEM White is too bright. I have some of "Herbs Parts" Mopar interior paint coming that is the correct off-white, color code for the early 1970's white trim pieces. At least I have a white base coat now...

[njsteve]

I had a productive weekend. Spent yesterday razor blading all the old sealant off the back window. I ordered two rolls of 5/16 butyl tape and butyl primer so I can install the back window once I get the headliner all done. After scraping with a dozen razor blades there was still some residue under the areas that the stainless trim covered. So I used a wet Mr. Clean magic eraser and some powdered water spot remover and that got rid of most of the scaly residue.

Here's the back window after cleaning. I also got a good photo of the date code.

And yes, Grampa's Lincoln sure comes in handy...along with my daughter's papasan chair cushion

[njsteve]

I also decided to give another try at getting that repro sail panel material onto the original fiber-board molded sail panels. The key was borrowing one of my coworkers portable steamers (for getting wrinkles out of clothing). It worked great! It is designed to be used while it is pointed downwards, so it was a bit hard to use on the actual headliner to get rid of the folding indents that wouldn't initially "pull out". So a lot of flipping and tilting got those pesky last creases out of the actual headliner.

As for the sail panels, I ended up steaming the heck out of the material and then using a lot of the heavy duty clips to temporarily hold the two opposing sides (top and bottom) that are actually glued to the board. After clamping them, I carefully removed each clamp one at a time and applied some adhesive to the board and the overlapping edge and stuck them together and reclamped them. The front edge glues onto the quarter window frame while the back edge tacks onto the spikes around the back window frame. After several hours of massaging the sail panels while watching the Goodwood Festival on TV, I had the sail panels ready for installation.

I test fitted the rear side panels which also served to position the lower edge of the sail panels as well.

It came out pretty well. Now hopefully I can cancel the order for that extra material that they haven't shipped yet.

And while I was at it, I installed the 6x9 Kraco speakers. I tested them beforehand by hooking them to the Gramma's car rear speaker with a couple jumper wires. They worked fine!