Maybe my tranny will make the needle rise

Another not so fun task done, not sure why I was procrastinating though as it took me all of 1/2 hour to do.  You may remember I replaced the inner cable (reusing the sheath) a while back and didn't make it a day before the new one snapped inside like the one before it.

So this time I'm trying replacing the whole thing as a unit, call me persistent and optimistic (not to mention my fresh looking speedometer should do something more than idly look pretty).

I tied a bit of cord around the end that attaches to the speedo, undid the connection at the transmission and gently worked it back until I saw string.  Then I reversed bringing the new cable & sheath back up through the tunnel to the frunk.

The PO seemed to have excess crammed into the tunnel right before the exit to the transmission and this is where the first cable snapped, it's not however where the new one I added broke.  So I have no idea at this point and I'm just trying to route it as straight and kink free as possible and hope it works this time.

New Carpet

Mmmm, Sliverknit :)

The center section isn't tacked down, I'm going to put some strategic velcro so it can be taken up for access to the shifter.  This stuff is light years more plush and nicer feeling than the domestic pile that was here before.

Incremental Post: Thoughts on seat recovering

I'm not quite ready for the "look at my awesome, cowhides" post yet but I'm learning some stuff I thought I'd pass along.  I used this post on Pelican as one jumping off point in tearing open my seats to recover them in leather.  I read through dozens but that one is pretty comprehensive and I don't plan to reiterate all of what's in there.

As is often the case with me, the 2nd time I do one of these tasks it becomes a LOT easier, quicker & the quality of work rises.  I did the driver's side first, it took me 2+ evenings to carefully disassemble that first one, taking lots of pictures, trying to note all the little nuances of the tucks, hogrings & tabs, not to mention I tried to remove the covers so they could be reused (they are in nice shape really).  I then spent 8-9 hours on a Saturday cleaning & painting the frame and placing the new leather cover on it.

I steamed all the foam (thankfully it's also in pretty nice shape) and covered the bolsters with new batting.  I found out after I'd already glued on the backrest insert leather to it's foam (first) that it's nearly impossible to get the hogrings on the bar directly under the headrest.... but I got it. I also feel like it's better not to glue the center sections to the foam (I didn't do much as I wanted them to breathe) as it seems to cause spots to bunch where you don't want them to and might otherwise even themselves out.

The result from the first seat is about 90% pleasing, it's far better than a botched job we actually paid for by an upholstery shop a while back.  There are some wrinkles in it, and you can see (just a little) the batting under the bolsters.  It does feel incredible to sit in.  I was told I could take the steamer to it and get some wrinkles out, a google search indicates that it just might work so I'm going to try it before I take that first seat back apart to redo it with my new-found experience.

I went at the passenger seat yesterday, I had the backrest apart and recovered in about 2 hours.  This time I did not use the "plastic bag trick".  My seats have a slicker covering on the backside of the headrest (which may not be on all?) but a bit of smoothing and rubbing and coaxing had the cover over it very nice and smooth without the plastic bag.  I attached the hogrings right under that headrest first, then worked my way down both side bolsters (no added batting this time) and it's tight and smooth and looks better than the first.  Finally I placed the new seat heater in the insert tacking it down in 1 spot only with glue, using no glue on the spot where your back touches this time, only on the back side, also attached with the outward bent staples.

I'll report more as I get further along with them.

The importance of good rubbers

As part of this overall refresh I've ordered lots of brand new weather seal/rubber.  First, WOW, what a difference some new, pliable, black seals make visually.  I've marveled many times over the years how it is seemingly insignificant things that detract from any finished product, they don't fully register on glancing inspection of a whole, but when they are done right said finished product just looks "right"  (Dirty door jambs or wheel wells in an otherwise clean car, a rough edge on a piece of home molding from a careless cut or an old blade, edging undone on a fresh mowed lawn, etc...).

I exhibited previously the shabby state mine were in so I won't clutter up with them, but they were dried out, chewed up, mis-matched and generally awful (lets not mention they didn't remotely keep wind, let alone water out of my car).

A few notes/things I've learned:

1)  You don't seem to need to coat an entire channel with weatherstrip adhesive to keep the rubber there, in fact it may be a really bad idea.  There were at least 2 seals that poured water all over the place when I took them off after the car had been sitting dry in the garage for a couple of weeks (at least).  (For the record I did this, glued what I had on 3 years ago so I'm not blaming a PO for it).

I glued each bit of rubber on the ends, the middle and at any bend points and it seems to be sitting there just fine.  I will of course gladly do one of my too frequent "I'm a dumb-ass posts" if future use proves this folly.  Remember to put a thin coat on both the rubber & the attachment surface, count to ten and then stick that sucker.

2)  Although door rubber is listed as "fits L or R" there does seem to be an upside down and a right side up.  Of course IIIII figured this out after I began gluing a piece on and it looked funny so I went to investigating.  There are drain holes (which face down ;-) ) and the profile of it stands proud of the body, grabbing up more toward the door, when it's installed correctly.





3)  Door topper/window squeegee rubber installation is just a mother-flocking biaaatch not matter how you do it.  I used liberal amounts of car wash soap and worked the first one up the channel from one end to the other and I believe I now know how a little lady Chihuahua in love w/ a Great Dane must feel.  The other I placed one side in the channel and pressed the rubber in 1/8" at a time for the length of it with a jewelers screwdriver, this took 3 sessions over a few hours with breaks so my hand locked in a Kung-Fu Grip could recover.  Sucks, get over it, get it done :)

I now have nice clean sealing surfaces that might actually say no to water and air, my door shuts with this wonderful new (to me) sound and the windows don't rattle around in it anymore.  It's the little things in life, don't judge me.

edit 2013-08-21:  After a few days of topless use I have discovered that the seal on the front of the targa bar needs to be glued down more.  I had it only on the corners but top on and off and highway speeds had it coming up.  I have glued it a few inches around each little screw indentation (so 4 or 5 spots along it's top length) and will note if this didn't fix the problem

Changing Sides

My little project is certainly coming together (a munchkin a few states away for a week seems to add a BUNCH of time to one's day).

I began this task having read it worked but somewhat unbelieving....Changing vinyl from black to light cream?  But the results are incredible!  One of the few new items that came in the pile of parts I now call a car were nice new Appbiz door panels (they have a really nice, proprietary backing material).  I must give credit, I spoke to Bob the owner of Appbiz at length before beginning this project as I planned to order my carpet from him, he was the one that identified what I had as a set of his panels.  He was also the one that suggested dying them instead of having me purchase a new set from him (at quite a bit more $) in the color I was changing to.

So I cleaned these things 3 times with liberal amounts of Simple Green, after they dried in the sun I cleaned them again twice with alcohol.  The first picture shows the first coat of SEM Vinyl Dye in "Santa-Fe" which by the chart I'd ordered with actual sprayed swatches matched the color of my Leather/Vinyl.  (Note:  I got the company that did my leather covers to send me 2 yards of matching vinyl, it takes REALLY close inspection to tell them apart...and they don't smell as awesome....but they match very well)

Here, I placed my freshly created rear side panels (more on those in a min) next to the not black anymore door panels for a comparison, not too shabby.








I temporarily hung the door panel on the door and placed my nice new door tops on top just because I couldn't take the suspense anymore.









Rear side panels:

In that same collection of parts I had a lonely, warped to all hell, rear side panel covered in tattered black vinyl.  When I tried to source new rear sides all I found avail looked just like that one and every one of them wanted $100-$150 for the set (which would have had to be recovered or dyed)


.  This spurned a defiant fit of ingenuity [you can read stubborn cheap-ass if you like].  So I went and got some 1/8" masonite, some batting, my handy new power stapler loaded w/ teensy 1/4" staples and my 3m-74 glue I've been using with nice success on the carpeting install.

I took off the black vinyl, found a layer of what I believe to be Camel or Tan vinyl under it, stripped that off, flattened out the sad little core as best I could and traced it out twice on the masonite.  I did make sure to keep the "shiny side" out the back hoping this side has the tiniest bit of moisture resistance and the "fuzzy side" would grip the glued material better.

Then I covered both of these with glued down batting, next came the vinyl.  I started in the middle top and bottom stretching hard and stapling them down.  Then 1 staple on each side in the same way, then I filled in starting in the middles and stretching as I went.  I finished up by gluing the edges outside the staples for just one added bit of finish.

Overall these were really easy and I probably have $50 in the pair of them.





Which leads me to B-Pillar covers:

Please recall what I had done to the back of my lovely German mistress in deference to lack of funds but refusing to be completely ratty.  I'd covered the entire exposed rear from B-pillar to shining B-pillar in black speaker box carpet that did a reasonable job of mimicking what was then on the floor.  To be honest I wasn't entirely sure just what was SUPPOSED to be on those ends until recently when I went asking for pictures from folks w/ less molested 911 Targas.

Well the answer was a strip of vinyl that matched whatever color the side panels were.  So I proceed to tape off the area all around, put a bit of my new favorite cushy material on and cover with fresh new vinyl.  Voila.

Dash as Eye Candy

I managed to put my newly fresh gauges in the dash yesterday as well as assembling and installing my new [to me] 930S steering wheel.  The dash isn't "done" but it is coming together nicely

Gauge Rehab, Check

So with a monsoon outside I decided to check off one of my projects that could be done inside the cool and dry a/c.  My gauges weren't awful but they were all "patina'd" to say the least.  Scratches, dirty cloudy insides, 2 of them had plexi faces where the others had glass and those were all scratched up.  Also my odometer hasn't worked as long as I've owned it and since replacing my gas tank my gas gauge shows full all the time.  Time for some of those pretty faces to be nicer to stare at and actually do their intended function.

I started with the Speedo/Odo.  Carefully took the bezel off as described in the tech articles and with lots of apprehension freed it's guts from the canister.


I found that I had going the [reportedly] most common failure of the Odo, the pot metal gear was spinning on the shaft instead of turning #s.  So I managed to slip it out, crimp it just a bit and put everything back together.  While I was at it I went ahead and reset the clock to the 1,200 miles that my engine rebuild has on it.  I have no clue how many miles are on the car, don't even have any real surety that the odo is the original (did they have 150mph speedos for the '75?) so the figure on the odo might as well have a correlation to SOMETHING.



After cleaning up my speedo, repainting the inside ring/glass holder and replacing the scratched plexi with a new glass face I reinstalled the original bezel, carefully reseating everything and using a small punch to bend back down that bezel.  Looked pretty good.  I'd bought new aluminum bezels from Rennline simply because they were purty intending to add them to all the newness.  The instructions have you simply place this lovely jewelry over the stock bezels attaching them with some thin double sided tape.  That didn't so much work for me, there's a big visual gap between the glass and the aluminum bezel that I knew was going to drive me bonkers.

I tested out and the new bezels would happily replace the stock black ones with a bit of engineering to attach them and be flush with the glass.  I went ahead and took the other 4 gauges fully apart, cleaned them all up, replaced the glass in the tach and then reassembled them attaching the new bezels to the cans with clear silicon.  They seem firmly [enough] attached, if they prove me wrong in time I'll up the ante on the gluing but the results are way too beautiful to go back to the original attachment method.



For the record my clock doesn't work, I took it apart as well but didn't really figure out why it does what it does.  The motor spins, it seems to tighten some gear till it does a little pop (that I've heard for years now) but doesn't move the mechanism.  I decided [for now] to let that one go as not really on my give a damn list. I'm excited about knowing how fast I'm going, how far I've traveled and that they all look like they belong in my quickly improving 911 again.

Leather, Vinyl and Wood

Yesterday was pretty automotively erotic, I got 2 big boxes at the door wafting the odors of re-purposed cows, glue and new German vinyl.  With the child-like wonder of unwrapping a Red Ryder BB Gun I exposed the treasures within.  I followed that with the same child-like impatience by immediately installing my brand spanking new, flawless dashboard.

It's amazing what new & fresh trim bits can do to make an old car look amazing again, or the inverse, amazing how little things like shrunken, hardened rubber & vinyl can make it look aging and broken down.

Note:  This dashboard & the door toppers mark one of 3 instances where I've decided to farm out some aspect of this car's renewal.  I'm glad I did it, I only hope the rest of my interior (done by me) lives up to the flawless perfection.





















I shipped this cracked, dried out, hot mess to George at AIR Motorsports in California.  He filled in the unneeded speaker grill, added new studs, repaired and recovered my dash delivering what you see above in about 2 weeks.

I'd studied pictures and how to's on how to DIY this part and none I saw looked quite as perfect as this.  For the thing you stare at every minute you are driving it just seemed to warrant perfection and that's what I got.

Clunk

Heh heh, I've taken a rattly "clang" and transformed it into a solid "Clunk".  Its quite rewarding what a bit of new rubber and sound deadening material can do.

And that's without surrounding rubber, and a door panel and.......