Cheers Stuart, much appreciated, pm me a picture, don’t worry about cleaning it up I’ll do all that….unless you previously buried it in the garden of course.
This morning before work I assembled the jack straps and pinched the hoops in my vice so they were nice and square before bagging them up for storage with the other dry waxoiled bits.
During lunch I phoned the paintshop for an update and they asked if I could call in and see them.
I visited after work and all it was, was a request to take the seats out the car. The whole car is now in primer and flatted. It goes in for colour tomorrow. They had difficulty spraying the primer under the roll bar over the rear window so asked if I could take the seats out so that they can climb easily in the car and get the spray gun at a better angle for the colour and lacquer. Not such an issue with primer when it gets flatted but the colour needs to be applied smoothly.
Seats obviously come out in seconds and it was quite a joke amongst the workshop guy’s there who took the micky out of the chap who asked me to come in and take them out when they saw me remove them in 5 seconds. Anyhow no bother to me as I’d rather they’d ask than force them if they didn’t know how to take them out.
Besides this kinda geed me on to getting them off to the trimmers. The basket weave is perfect but the vinyl on the headrests is sunbaked and cracked so the plan is to retain the basket weave inserts and replace all the plain vinyl.
Tonight when I got home I decided to prep the rear bulkhead trim panel for re-upholstery. It’s the same sun baked brittle as the headrests, so I hope to get the whole thing redone.
When I took it out I noticed the bottom of the panel was a little soft, weak and out of shape. Especially around the engine lid pull.
Flipping it over I could see that the hardboard type backboard must have gotten damp at some point (water stain marks on it) and it’s obviously been in and out in the past but looks like the sides had been pulled rather than taking out the 4 screws and lifting it vertically. The hardboard fibre material was delaminated and fractured. To simply re trim over it would not give a solid base and be all floppy.
The solution is an old car restorers trick I learnt 30 years ago that I’ll share.
All you need is a tin of wood rot hardener and a brush. It’s a clear liquid made for applying on rotten wood that soaks into it and sets rock hard to form a solid base to fill and paint. When brushed on old hardboard it soaks in and sets rock hard putting the strength back in. Ideal for back panels, door panels and headliner back panels that are soft and crumbly.
I painted the first 8-10 inches of the backing panel (after carefully stripping off the vinyl wrap around to gain access). 10 minutes later it was solid.
Next I concentrated on the area around the engine lid pull. It looks like someone in the past must have pulled the panel off without taking off the pull knob (un screws easily) and the escutcheon/sleeve which comes off the same way. The muppets had broken a large chunk out of the hardboard backing around the pull cable hole and bent and weakened the board in the area.
Despite the soak in wood hardener the backing board was not really in good shape to simply trim over.
The panel has a factory “U”channel down the sides to strengthen the back board so I replicated it in some Zintec steel sheet I had in my workshop, made a”U” and because it was steel I could easily pinch it to nip up the metal over the hardboard to hold it on firmly. Finally there is a slight curvature in this edge so I carefully bent the new metal to the right shape.
Tomorrow I plan to drop it off with the seats at my local trimmers, and when its recovered it should be nice and strong and the correct shape.
