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.......

Comin' down the mountain

Today I finished with the paint stripper.  The weatherstrip glue is now mostly gone, and my vent windows and door top trim are both spaaarrrrkleeeyyy :)  I'm a magpie, sue me.  Moved her out in the sunshine for the first time in a few weeks so that I could thoroughly wash all the Citrustrip off and left her there to bake for a while to make sure I'd gotten all the water out.  The last thing I want to do is to re-boot the whole rust thing although I've taken some pretty long strides toward it's eradication.  The holes are now nicely plugged as well as 4 or 5 pretty huge ones left from the old aftermarket a/c.

I used fiberglass to fill these holes and found out I've developed an skin allergy to either the resin or hardener and broke out in itchy inflamed red bumps all over my face and arms (my hands were nicely protected by gloves....so I've got THAT goin' for me).  Between this and last week's chemical burn from being a complete dumbass and scratching my face with a gloved hand bathed in Citrustrip I looked pretty amusing......not so much to the lovely missus less than a week from her 20 year class reunion  (oops).  Fortunately, fastidious applications of ointment and nightly doses of benadryl had the whole mess mostly gone by Friday so I only looked like my standard issue goofy self :)

I've got to do the sound deadening work on the driver's door but otherwise reassembly begins tomorrow.

Slow progress for the greater good

 As there are daily steam & rain showers going on such that I don't particularly enjoy the walk from my office door to the air conditioned car.....I'm taking my time and trying to methodically address the small mountain of little things that were wrong inside.  I get a little bit done each night thanks to the installation of several more lights and a big ass fan in my garage.

I've irradicated the rust and been applying sound deadening to portions of all the remaining exposed metal.  The installation instructions say only 25-40% coverage is necessary so I've got about 90% of the floor and 98% of the rear deck covered :)  I also put a product called "heatwave" over that back deck sealed all around with alum. duct sealing tape.  Take that mini-me scorching rear compartment.

This picture may not look like much but it represents a whole host of improvements over what I had going on there. I've added enough sound deadening material (there is more on the inside) that I no longer have a giant gong.  Then I found the not attached little rubber isolators for the door pull and lock rods which will hopefully stop all the constant rattle-jangle from the doors on the road.  Finally I cleaned up the window mech. and tracks and greased them.  They are a LOT smoother now.

Vanity makes me want to paint that yellow inside but there's not much point to it as it's completely hidden with the panels and rubber back in place.

On to the other door now (I told you I was being slow)

Citrustrip is not good on skin

While wonderful at removing old glue and paint Citrustrip should not be applied to the face, I have a finger shaped chemical burn beside my nose to prove it!  (yes, I AM a dumbass)

I've gotten the seatrails, handbrake and gauge binnacle sanded and painted in fresh black satin.  Looks lots and lots better!