A New Milestone

Post date: Aug 20, 2018 6:24:47 AM

This may be my finest accomplishment.

Why, yes, that is a garage stool recovered in the vinyl used for the interior of the Cutlass. I had a bunch left over after the package tray and had a trim guy install the headliner. Add in a stool that had been used as a sawtable many years ago (with predictable results) and here you are. A bespoke stool.

On a more serious note, this happened:

The full scale reference model is no more. A dude drove up from San Antonio and took it for the princely sum of $0.

Overall the interior work is coming along. The package tray, particularly, looks excellent. Shaun helped me get the rear seat completely stripped and rebuilt and I got the back all mocked up.

AND THEN (you knew that was coming), we discovered that the fancy rear retractor belts are mounted differently than the standard belts. After some head scratching we came up with these plates and got the retractors mounted in the right place.

Naturally that isn't the end of the problems. I simply cannot get the windows to seal correctly, nor the trunk lid. I tried fully gluing in a trunk lid seal but that was even worse. And cleaning out a fully glued seam channel is unpleasant. But that'll get another try. I have more roof rail seals on order to see if different suppliers actually make different bits.

I did recover the Year One armrests with the correct color vinyl. The first two tries didn't work well, but once I got a proper staple gun and started using heat in the corners they actually turned out pretty good.

In other news I got the last batch of trim powder coated and quickly threw on the rear window reveal. Of course it doesn't fit like a show car but is plenty good for me. I was holding off until I got the antenna lead to seal - that took a few tries - but that appears to be settled now. I think it's looking really good.

In other news, the driver side sail panel started bubbling for no reason. Fusick's agreed to send a replacement set. I got the sunvisors mounted, but not until I broke one of the mounts (some of them are made very very tight).

I ordered a Rally XL seat from Scat via Summit to try out. They initially said there was a three week lead time. After four weeks they added another month. Will it show up? Who knows.

So, like I said two months ago, I think it'll be more or less done in two months.