The Webmaster Zone

Finally had a weekend to do some more work on the car, drove down to see my bodyman on Saturday with a new trunk lid I picked up last week. We fitted and aligned the new lid, and now I have a trunk that closes properly for the first time ever! It just "clicks" so nicely when you put it down, no slamming, no jiggling the edges to get it open. Actually it hasn't closed at all since the bodywork was done, so it would squeak and bang around when going over bumps, which was extremely annoying not to mention I had my emergency spares stolen out of the trunk last month. He had a new parts car in the driveway which had a few more items that I needed, namely a very nice straight bonnet (hood), so I bought that and we put that on too! Basically every external panel on the entire car is being replaced, as it has either been hit or has rusted out on every side. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that he also had a Smoothline hardtop in quite good condition for sale!! I like the Smoothline better than the factory hardtop, and since I travel on the highway a lot the extra heat retention and noise dampening that a hardtop affords was looking pretty attractive. The headliner inside is in great shape, the seals are in good condition, and the windows only have some minor fogging and swirl marks that can be easily removed. Next weekend we're going to fabricate some mounting hardware for it, right now I am just using baling wire to keep the back down (the snaps to the windscreen work fine). The wheel rubbing problem may be due to faulty new leaf springs or an error I made installing them, because the car is sitting much lower on one side. On Sunday, I worked on a bunch of little things - replaced a broken rear tail lens (upgraded to Euro style amber on top), fixed the interior light, rewired the rear lights (brake light was wired to turn light on one side), tried to fix the brake light, still not sure why it's not going on sometimes, fixed the fuel filler so the rubber grommet was sealing to the body (no more trunk leaks?) and tried to fit my battery bin liner, but my battery doesn't fit in it. I also picked up a blue paint pen at a local art supply store and coloured the instrument bulbs - way back, I repainted the instrument cans with high-gloss white to enhance the brightness, but by doing so I painted over the original blue quarter which gave a bit of a tint to the gauges. The coloured lights look great at night! Gave it a good wash and interior cleaning too, just because its tatty doesn't mean it can't be clean. That's probably my Dutch heritage speaking. Next weekend I'm doing more work on the car, look for another update soon. The car is quite the spectacle now, its 5 different colours!! The body is red & green primer, the bonnet is green, the trunk lid is orange, and the hardtop is burgandy. If you squint your eyes though, it looks great, and you can see the lines are really coming together! More pics coming soon.