It tends to happen that even though you decide to carefully document everything you do at the time when you do, you often forget it. And after wards it is painful to try to remember how you did it. This being my first post this year I am trying to wrap up what was done during the first half of the year before Snowback was taken to storage in early May.
First things to do was installing the new door handles followed by door locking mechanism. Actually this was not as easy as you could figure. The originals did fit but the new Scott Drake handles did not. I needed to move the old internal parts of handles to new ones to make them fit in the opening.
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| New door handle |
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| Internal parts of the door lock |
The locks were followed by the door windows and wing window. I soon noticed that adjusting the window will take some more time. There actually are no adjustment for the main door window but it is adjusted only by the help of the wing window which has kind of fore-aft and left-right adjustment screws. I suppose my windows scissor system is a little bit worn and maybe slightly bent on the passenger side so fine-adjusting that will take time later. At this time I only had the in and roughly adjusted.
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| More adjustment will be needed. |
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| Furry mouldings |
I did not install any king of seals of weatherstripping for the quarter-vents' outside perimeter. I will trust that the internal hose will be enough for draining the water if any will pass inside. I think Ford did not use any weatherstrip either but I am not sure if they applied seam sealer in this area. I only used sealer on the inside to cover and secure the attaching studs and nuts.
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| Quarter vents |
Fast attachment was the rear lights and the rear bumper and the exhaust opening rings for the rear valance. I must say that I am not too happy on this Scott Drake product either. They do not sit perfectly and are of weak quality. They will be replaced if I find a higher quality from some other manufacturer.
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| Recognizable rear now |
I have never before installed a headliner in a car. I am glad I took some time to do it. Some insulation was glued to the roof first. This should work as sound deadening as well as for condensed water dripping from roof on the headliner. For the three headlined bows there are two holes for each on roof structure. I took some measures of the headliner and decided to install them so that the first bow goes to front holes and the other two go to rear holes. I think this may vary by the manufacturer of the headliner. Anyhow my decision was based on test fitting this one. The bows are of different length. The longest one belong to rear and the shortest belongs to front holes. I bought some windlace and cut it in 2" long piece to help with the fitting.
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| Insulation glued |
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| Later moved front bow to front hole |
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| Test fitting underway |
The windlace works fine for the fitting which was started by defining the center and moving towards the edges of the windshield and rear window. When these areas were good to go I continued with the sides leaving the sharp turns and corners for last.
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| Started from front center... |
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| ...then moved to side openings |
Follow this advice: Install all the screws for sun visors and inside rear mirror before finally attaching the headliner. You will find them by feeling with fingers and it will be easier to cut holes for them. Otherwise you will have to feel where the holes through your newly installed headliner are and that's painful. I wasted a lot of time with a needle finding the correct position of the screw holes.
When I was happy with the fit I removed the windlaces from a small area at a time and applied glue in between the headliner and the roof edge. Then the windlaces were snapped back in and the glue was let to dry. I did use many evenings with this as I did not want to hurry. The patience paid off.
After enough curing of the glue the excess material was cut and the window molding clips were installed and the read 'sky light' rear window with a new weatherstrip was slid in place.
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| Waiting for the glue to dry |
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| '65 type window molding clip |
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| 'Sky Light Rear Window' |
Despite I am not happy with the quality of Scott Drake's products I am pretty happy with the end result.
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