charliekwin

Pretty slow going over the last few weeks. My youngest is now 14 months and past the age where it's easy to schedule around her, and she's mobile, so if I can't work within line of sight, I don't get anything done! Anyway, the decision to take on those tail light panels ended up being a bigger deal than I thought. The left side was easy, the right...not so much. Apparently after the car had its rear end accident, someone had to re-assemble the tail light surround. They also did a decent job painting it. Decent enough that the paint which flaked off easily from the left side had to be blasted off from the right. I also had to dig out some old body filler to fix some of the contours, but all told, it came out pretty well. Following along from another thread I found here, I primed, painted with Duplicolor wheel paint and sprayed some matte clear. It's not quite as dark as I would have liked, but I can live with the results for now. No one bothered to fix the sheet metal after that accident, so I bought a hammer and dolly set from Harbor Freight and gave it a go. Picked up a spot weld cutter while I was at it and removed that ugly sight shield, too. Thankfully, it was rust-free under there. What else...the tail light gaskets were totally shot. I bought a sheet of neoprene rubber from eBay thinking it would be a lot squishier than it was. It wasn't. I spent a little too long trying to make that stuff work before punting and using the closed-cell foam I had left over from the floors instead. A few of the bezel screw holes broke after almost 40 years of exposure, so I had to rebuild those with ABS cement. Everything else got a much-needed cleaning. Then I remembered I put the license plate light holder in the corner and forgot about it, so it got the same treatment as the panels. Everything went back together, and I was ready for a Sunday drive, until I found that I have no brake lights, so that's next up.

Deleted already. Godspeed Ms. Tucson!

Popped up in my feed tonight. http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cto/5519350138.html Screenshot for posterity: If it's legit, I kinda hope she figures out she's 10-20x low on the price before she gets her boyfriend out of jail!

Vinyl was delivered during my lunch break. First impressions... Looks pretty nice. Touch won't fool anyone, but it does look nicer IMHO than the bare plastic. Reminds me a lot of the hard touch plastics used in economy cars. I'm optimistic that it'll make a nice, subtle upgrade for the panels without looking out of place.

Mass-loaded vinyl backed with closed-cell foam. That's what I did.

Yeah, but try putting your kids up on Craigslist for $3000 OBO and now you've gotta answer all kinds of questions from the police.

That's why it's a good idea to buy enough extra material to make another one! (For the record, I am almost never so forward thinking, which is why most of my projects require a minimum of two trips to the store!) 1/8" MDF, which is more flexible than hardboard, is another option to consider. EDIT: another option would be to cut one or two slats the length of the panel and glass them together to approximate the shape of the curve then shape by hand or with a sander. Of course, all this might be overworking the problem if the rest of the old door card is still in salvageable shape.

Yes, it's a router bit that's a straight cutting bit with a bearing are the bottom (or top) that rides against a template piece to produce an (almost) perfect copy. As for the curve, I haven't pulled my door cards yet, so I'm judging just by outside appearances here, but the Masonite may be flexible enough to bend and stay there with the door clips alone. If not, a couple of relief kerfs and a little resin would do the job.

Fiberglass resins will bond to that stuff until the end of time, no need to soak them beforehand. If you do glass them, you'll want to set up some kind of jig to keep the panel from going out of shape and/or shrinking during when it cures. If it were me, though, I'd head down to Home Depot and get a half-sheet of masonite and a flush trim bit and just bang out a new one. Fiberboards weaken over time and it's likely to tear out again.

Nice work! I'm so jealous of you guys with big garages

Definitely right about surface prep. I would expect the leather texture to hide some tiny imperfections, but just about anything will show up through regular vinyl. I don't trust the dash to not crack further, so I've already planned on removing all the plastic and putting on a layer of fiberglass. I'm don't think the factory texture + 40 years of accumulated gunk would make a suitable substrate for the vinyl anyway.

Don't want this thread to die on the vine. I took rough measurements of the main panels (tail lights, quarter windows, rear hatch) and figure that 2 yards should be enough to cover them all and have some left over. US Cutter (http://www.uscutter.com/HEXIS-30000-Cast-Vinyl-54in-by-1yd) knocked their price down recently. For $85 shipped, I'm giving this stuff a shot. Will report with results when I have some to report!

I've spent an absolutely unreasonable amount of time over the past week just trying to get the paint off my tail light panels. That's a heck of a lot of work you've done!

Filler hose problems aside, in the past two weeks I used an impact wrench, a hammer and some cursing to get all the sensors out of both thermostat housings, and after a bit of refreshing they still look to be in good shape. Removed a whole bunch of water scale from the 280zx housing and everything's back on the motor. Nissan switched the locations of the two larger sensors, though, so there's a routing issue I'll have to deal with when I re-flush the system again. Also, no more garish blue hoses! I can't seem to stop taking on new little projects before finishing the old ones. Took out the tail lights to clean the rear deck. Hmm....dirty. And a bit rusty (I understand how lucky I am that this is -- so far -- the second worst bit of rust I've found on the car). And then the paint flaked a little bit....and I never liked the body color on those panels anyway....and then a couple hours later....and then a lot of hours later, because some of that paint did not want to come off. So now it looks like this and I'm trying to decide whether I want to go all the way and paint the panels or just leave them as is. They do match the state of the rest of the exterior right now And the Shin Buster Supreme is finally gone. Not walking into those things ever again.

Thumbs up to BRE; it sounds like they have a program that lets individuals do something cool with their cars and protects their interests at the same time. Win-win. Count me in the group that'd keep it gray, though

I grabbed the eBay hose, and figure I'm paying extra for some peace of mind. Might be able to make a few bucks back by selling the old one, if I ever find the time to try and sell all the stuff I have laying around the house!

Mystery solved. Occam strikes again. I pulled the filler house tonight and found a hole. It's in one of the seams, which is why I missed it before and almost overlooked it again this evening. The hose, of course, is NLA, so it might be a while before I can find a replacement. Until then, I can leave the tank a few gallons short when filling, which is rather crude but gets the job done. Obviously this isn't something to patch over as a permanent solution, but a temporary is better than nothing. Red Seal RTV -- and I've taken so much of that stuff off! -- is the first option that comes to mind. Anyone have better suggestions? EDIT: serendipitously, a filler hose that I'm mostly sure is the same part was just listed on eBay. $50 for some hose isn't cheap, but it's (presumably) less than the cost of catching on fire and exploding.

I'll try here before I go starting a "Help Me!" thread...this is what I've noticed since yesterday... Noticed the leak pretty much immediately after filling up. The leak was as fast and steady as in the video; about 1-2 drops per second. Left it in the parking lot and over the course of about 3 hours, the leak slowed down steadily and eventually stopped. With it no longer leaking, I took it home (a very short drive). Leak then resumed, which is the video I took. Last time I checked before going to bed, the leak had stopped again. Woke up this morning, leak had started again. Other things: Tightening or loosening the hose clamp doesn't seem to make a difference. The tank holds air pressure. It passed smog and vents out when taking the fuel cap off. The filler hose looked to be in good shape when I looked it a few months ago, but maybe I didn't inspect it closely enough The two possibilities that come to mind: There's a blockage in the vent system somewhere and increased air pressure in the tank is forcing fuel out through the filler. If that were the case, though, it doesn't seem like it would stop leaking during a warm afternoon and start again overnight, nor would I be able to pass smog. There's a pinhole leak in the filler hose that I overlooked. Though in that case, I'd expect the leak to be relatively steady and not cycle. I'll swing by the hardware store and pick up a big hose clamp to eliminate that as a variable. Any other thoughts or suggestions?

It's one step forward, two steps back. Filled up this afternoon and found out that this problem wasn't nearly as fixed as I thought. I think it's gotta be a problem with the filler hose, though I didn't see anything wrong with it when I inspected it a few months ago. Adjusting the clamp doesn't make a difference. The tank holds pressure just fine, it vents out when I take off the fuel cap. At least the new paint is holding up well....so I guess that's positive. VID_20160229_170930.mp4

After a lot of searching, I found Hexis, a vinyl manufacturer originally from France, that also makes a leather-textured product. Hexis seems to have the same high level of regard as 3M and Avery, and -- most importantly -- their leather finished stuff is available through retailers. Here's one of the finishes: I think I'm gonna give it a try. I'm not putting speakers in the B pillar, so losing those holes is not a problem. And if it works for the panels, I'm really excited about the possibility of using it on the dash. I was going to give vacuum forming a try, but wasn't totally optimistic about it working

And un-do some of the finest work done by the PO!? I think I'll let them stay until I'm emotionally prepared to deal with whatever else I might find on the other ends of those wires

Covers fit, but barely! I had to take off about 1/16" from each end of the disconnects.

That's correct. Fuses I got on either eBay or Amazon (can't remember), but they're widely available. Get the maxi size.

Glad you guys like them! I actually ended up using 3/8" disconnects, which are not easy to find either; I bought mine from www.repairconnector.com. Mouser or one of the other big parts suppliers was the only place I found with 3/16, but minimum orders were 1000 pieces or something ridiculous. I used 3 50 amp fuses and one 80 amp. That was the most common arrangement I found with other people that switched to fuses.