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

[njsteve]

I've been working on the headliner this weekend. Slowly making progress and getting the wrinkles out...I've also been painting all the headliner and interior window trim, white.

I found another NOS piece in my closet - an original "SHAKER" decal. Date May 1969. Remarkably, it stuck on there just fine with its half century old adhesive.

Also also found another original, yellow, antifreeze decal that I had signed by Larry Ehnat, the Suburban Dodge mechanic who originally dealer-prepped my old 1970 Hemi Charger R/T-SE in 1970. I had him do two of them around 17 years ago, just in case I needed another. The first one went on the Charger and I held on to the second one til today. I installed that one on the purple car's radiator support this morning. Can't get any more vintage than that!

[Lee Stewart]

[njsteve]

The wiper transmission bushings finally showed up from the Great White North. There's a guy up in Canada (Silvain Mopar) who makes the brass bushings for the early Mopar wiper levers. They are expensive ($60) for the four bushings and the two steel tools you need to expand and crimp them into place, but he is the only game in town, and they are perfect replacements. https://www.ebay.com/itm/203005565534

You have to grind out the edge of the existing bushing (after marking which way it goes in, so you can match it properly for the install position) and then you place the new bushing in the hole and either use a hammer on the crimping stamps or the press. You press with the #1 tool first and the follow it up with the #2 tool which properly expands and the crimps over the edge to retain it in place.

You can see how worn out the brass bushings were in the first photo. The bushing was completely ovaled out.

The new bushings worked great although it took a few tries to get the arms in the right order once I took it all apart to get the hubs bolted in to place under the cowl. (Ignore the lower bar position in the last photo - it's installed backwards in this photo. The square end should be connected to the pivot, not the round end).

[RS_COPO_Canuck]

Originally Posted by njsteve

They are just regular, modern bolts from what I can tell - not original ones. Got a photo of what the markings should be? I can start digging through my bucket of bolts for similar ones.

I'll look for a picture - but they are "Highland" bolts with an H on the head.
Zinc phosphate, no washers.

[njsteve]

thanks. I'll start looking in the bucket of bolts.

[njsteve]

Working towards finishing the week-long headliner project, today but ran in to problems with the crappy reproduction sail panels. The original pressboard sail panels have several compound curves to go around the interior of the C pillar. And it has a bracket for a door panel style clip in the center to hold it against the interior C pillar frame. Of course the repro panels are a flat piece of cardboard with a two-sided taped square to hold the door panel clip in. The fabric is glued onto the cardboard. And as expected, about two seconds after you engage the clip into the C pillar frame, it rips right out of the cardboard, which does not conform to the contours of the C pillar area.

So that was $60 down the drain. I tried peeling off the fabric from the repro panels and then gluing it onto the original pressboard sail panels after removing the original black fabric. But the cardboard delaminated and half of it separated with the fabric and wouldn't peel away cleanly. I tried anyway. No luck - it was a wrinkle-fest and even with steam and an iron I could not get the twists and wrinkles out.

So I contacted the manufacturer of the sail panels and bought two yards of the white headliner material to attempt to recover the original panels myself.

So here is the progress and the current semi-finished result.

Lucky I had the Lincoln's hood to spread the headliner out on. Whole lotta wrinkles in that folded up fabric.

[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!