Project Boondoggle (or, so I went and bought a Z!)

[dmorales-bello]

Found a link for the rubber door loom Charliekwin:

https://www.electric-life.com/product/5050-10-099-rubber-door-loom/

[sweatybetty]

5 hours ago, David F said:

What about mounting the actuator in the bottom of the door or away from the window track and using a bellcrank to redirect the linear motion as needed.

excellent idea! take that idea 1 step forward, any reason something like the heater control cables wouldnt work?

[charliekwin]

These just arrived today. I asked for the same stitching that I have on my seat covers (white on the French seams, black on the single-row stitching), which is exactly what I got. Just looking at them on the floor, I'm super happy with these.

[dmorales-bello]

15 hours ago, charliekwin said:

These just arrived today. I asked for the same stitching that I have on my seat covers (white on the French seams, black on the single-row stitching), which is exactly what I got. Just looking at them on the floor, I'm super happy with these.

Those look really nice. No missed stitches, very clean. Might seem like a crazy question but, do they actually smell like leather?

[charliekwin]

No, they don't smell like anything. Interior Innovations sells a set made from genuine leather for $260 shipped ($180 shipped for vinyl). I think one of the members here got leather seat covers from them and gave them high marks. Obviously these aren't original, but I think they'll be a nice upgrade that's still consistent with the style of the originals.

[dmorales-bello]

22 hours ago, charliekwin said:

No, they don't smell like anything. Interior Innovations sells a set made from genuine leather for $260 shipped ($180 shipped for vinyl). I think one of the members here got leather seat covers from them and gave them high marks. Obviously these aren't original, but I think they'll be a nice upgrade that's still consistent with the style of the originals.

Yes, I also went with vinyl myself for the sake of durability and in keeping with the spirit of originality but I've always second guessed myself about the aroma of leather.

[sweatybetty]

On 6/23/2017 at 3:21 PM, charliekwin said:

These just arrived today. I asked for the same stitching that I have on my seat covers (white on the French seams, black on the single-row stitching), which is exactly what I got. Just looking at them on the floor, I'm super happy with these.

very nice. do they get glued on?

[charliekwin]

That's the plan. I still have almost a half gallon left of the Weldwood high-heat contact cement that I used for the headliner and other interior pieces. That stuff works great, but doesn't leave much margin for error.

[charliekwin]

Kind of a scattershot update here, but that's basically been my approach to things the last few weeks.

Power locks and windows ended up being a small fiasco. Pulled the doors to get the wiring in, which led to removing the hinges for inspection/cleaning and replacing the detent rollers. Then things went sideways...the passenger door went back on without a problem, but I couldn't get the driver side to align with the fender. I played with it for about an hour before giving up and pulling the fender. That led to more cleaning, but at least I found that with the exception of some very minor surface rust, it's all rust free under there. I also found out that the hood is supposed to have a set of torsion bars. And apparently something happened to the original headlight bucket at some point. Adjusting the hinges never got the alignment any better than it was originally, but some persuading on the fender got the job done, so that was some work I could have avoided.

Wiring was easy enough. There's a factory hole on the body that goes into the cabin, and I drilled a matching hole in the door. The rest is grommets and some leftover vacuum hose. 

I made some cardboard mockups of the low-profile door actuators before buying them, and that was $11 well spent: I only had to cut out a small notch on the door panel and they slid right in; mounting and connecting to the door pull was similarly easy. They do hit the door card, so some shaping and trimming will need to be done there. One hiccup: the original kit I bought has one actuator that works as a master, so it still needed to be in the system somewhere for the slaves to work. I mounted both under the dash with some zip ties and leftover mounting hardware. It's not beautiful, but they work great!

Let me talk now about the power window switches, for I hope to never deal with them again. The first set of switches had a broken bezel, but I didn't much like the look of them anyway. The second set came nicely chowdered up and with chipped paint, which made it an easy decision to hack them up. I glued them together, painted everything to match the rest of the console, and stuck it in the blank switch panel next to the hazard switch. Then found out that the harness was too big to get the whole thing to sit flush. I re-did the wiring without the harness, and then one of the switches fell apart and blew the fuse (twice). I ended up using parts from the first switch kit (they seem to be of higher quality, thankfully) and everything -- for now! -- works as it should.

[dmorales-bello]

Nice job Charlie. Long road to get to there but you got it working.

[Captain Obvious]

Nice work.

So where did you source the new door detent rollers? I would really like to do this too, but it's lower on the priority list. I've already identified something from McMaster that I think would work, but if you've got something genuine, then that might be even better.

What'cha got?

 

[charliekwin]

Cap, item 8491A202 from McMaster. Same one you're probably looking at.