Things have been going pretty slow on the Eagle, but I have a few small things done. I'm pretty much relying on the hubby to fabricate the exhaust system and get the motor running. He wants to put in relays for the headlight and blower fan switch to save those hard to come by switches. Unfortunately he's pretty busy at work so we don't get a lot of time on the weekends for him to help with the Eagle. To top it off we decided it was getting too pricey to keep paying people to store my Corvette over the winter so our last few (and next few) weekends are taken up building this:
It's going to store the Corvette in the winter and the Eagle in the summer and it's just barely big enough to fit them in. That opening on the side is going to be a door so I can open the driver's door after I get one of the cars in there. The weather's been pretty good for late October/early November but it could snow any day and drop to -30 so I've got my fingers crossed for a couple more "mild" weekends. We've spent about $1000 on storage and towing the past two winters so this project will pay for itself quickly
I did get the door panels installed and what an incredible pain that was. Here's how they looked when I got them:
The fiber board on the back was broken around most of the clip holes and in other areas so I pulled back the vinyl and fiberglassed both sides of the board and covered with wax paper to get a smooth finish. Despite my best efforts I got a lot of fiberglass resin on the vinyl and to my dismay the acetone I used to remove it also removes the colour from the vinyl. I did my best to remove it and leave as much colour as possible. I used contact cement to glue the vinyl back on the board and that was a mistake. I put it on thick with a paint brush and the contact cement makes the vinyl soft and expand and end up wrinkly. It got a bit better after it dried but its still noticeable, I should have used something else or a spray on contact cement to minimize how much got on the inside of the vinyl. Hubby suggested that but after the mess with the fiberglass I thought spray on contact cement would also be too messy.
I also decided to "customize" it a bit by painting the brown trim strip black. Here's the panel after repairs and cleaning:
My car doesn't have power windows/locks so I had to do something with the hole in the panels for the window/lock switch. I decided to make little plates out of aluminum with my name on them and hubby fabricated them for me by tig welding this clip on the back:
After sanding with 220 to give them a brushed aluminum look I took them to the engraver and $50 later they looked like this:
So, after that it was off to install the panels, I'm thinking 6 clips and 4 screws, 5 or 10 minutes - boy was I wrong. Turns out the fiberglass added enough thickness to the board I couldn't get the clips over it and spent hours re-bending them and trying to force them onto the board. After that I went to install and got four of the clips in and the other two were not close to the holes in the door, it was like the door panel had shrunk like the other interior parts had. So, it was back into the house and carve away part of the fiber board to move the clips over and then fight again to get them to slide onto the board. I can't believe how much trouble this interior has been to put together! All in all it took me three afternoons to get the two door panels clipped and screwed into place but here's how it all looked together, not bad:
I also got some NOS "SX/4" decals and put them on along with mouldings as close as I could get to the original that seperated lower body colour from upper:
I had some decals specially made for the car. Hubby suggested this one for the hatch window (I can't believe how dusty the car's gotten since paint!):
And being a Ford girl at heart I couldn't resist this one for the front fenders:
Topic: Priya's SX/4 project (Read 372496 times)