DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

My parcel shelf was a little bit faded, and the hardboard panel on the shelf was distorted and would not flatten out. Anyway, the old vinyl would not have matched the newly covered side panels and caps, so I got to disassembling it.

6 thousand...million staples later....

The original boards were just flat 3mm hardboard sections, so was easy to replace these. The foam was still perfect, so re-used it. The centre hardboard section between the shelf and seat back has a shape that would be impossible to DIY, but it was completely solid.. so 2 new boards and early vinyl everywhere except the seat back area, which is 72/73 vinyl.

Had to fabricate and fit the clip that holds it down onto the rear bulkhead too...

Bought myself a good air stapler, the proper size selection of staples, and reconstructed and re-covered it 'exactly' as it was originally.

The result is a thing of beauty... if you like that sort of thing..

The shelf vinyl sections overlap each other; it was a bit of a puzzle... luckily, I took plenty of photographs...

Getting bored yet?

Me too.. so switched to test-fitting the Targa glass seal. OMG! TIP- don't use washing up liquid that never dries!

Abandoned this for a future time...

Just one more of the shelf...

Stripped the rear quarters to see what was what. Well, actually, I had to scrape most of the original paint off despite trying 2 supposedly 'strong' paint strippers which could only seems to soften the surface... probably took 4 or 5 applications and scraping to reach the bare metal.

About 2 weeks and 2 blisters later....

The metal turned out to be completely solid under the paint, except for the top sections which were under the glass seal, which were toast in a couple of small areas.

The left quarter was patched adjacent to the B-post in front of the wheel, so all things considered it had to go despite also fabricating a new repair section... doh!

The jury is still out on the right side, which is solid apart from a few holes on the window seal area....

rear quarters.. continued

Door pockets were in pretty good shape, but the vinyl was very tired and I needed to match the rest of the car anyway... so off to work.

These turned out really well, I think.

The small pockets needed a stitch, but after that was positioned accurately as per the original (kept one complete pocket for reference while re-covering the other one)...

The large pockets were really straightforward to re-cover, except the one where I accidentally put glue under the big rectangular aluminium trim part (the handle?). Here is a good tip - don't put glue anywhere were you definitely don't want creases!! You can see what happens in the picture if you look closely... never mind eh!

Small door pocket recovering shots...

Door pockets...

More pocket pics

The door caps both needed repair - they were bent, cracked, slightly out of shape/bulging at the edges and around the holes, and the metal support under the foam covering was snapped where the door lock button/knob hole are. The metal was weak and tricky to weld, but do-able once the foam was peeled away and held away from the heat...

Used epoxy resin to fill in the cracks and pooled it around the back sides of the lock button holes to give that weak area some strength...

Then began the surprisingly tricky task of re-covering them, but they turned out really well...

Now that the cold snap was over, I could brave the garage again and get back to the metalwork.

Off came the lower section of the left rear quarter. Off came the left outer sill, which was still as-new, in sections. Off with the kidney panel. Off with the jack tube reinforcement, and then the jack tube itself.... Off with the inner sill, in sections because it had a hole in it and corrosion at the bottom flange, and I wanted to check behind it.

Very light surface rust on the floor panel section, but all perfect elsewhere with the original black paint all perfect and all completely solid.

Left A post repairs... behind it were some small holes (this picture is taken after some cutting, so it looks much worse than it was).

All cut back to completely solid metal, ready for replacement sections... pics soon.

And this about brings me up to date