Starting my restoration tips. Just too many topics to sort all around so hopefully will stick to one thread and see how that goes and I will work on adding the information as time goes on. Just seeing how images will post here. This should show a picture of my instrument panel from my '56 olds after spraying. I took this project on- that is to disassemble everything, and respray when I learned that the color for my interior could be found in a spray can, which is made by Krylon, and after some experimenting, found that this could give results as good as any air compressor paint job without the equipment and mess.


Here is the dashpad, the original one that was in poor shape and I was considering sewing up a new one. Glad I didn't and instead experimented with the vinyl paints in a spray that are offered. I looked at a couple of vinyl samples and I knew that it would be obvious that it was a resew job since the texture did not match original vinyl. I thought I had taken more pics of this but here is the dash pad as I am installing it, the edges are primed with the best contact cement available, and I recall this was a tough job, especially working out the tension on the pad but it looks like brand new now, no complaints. Had to refill some of the fibreglas that had cracked from the original pad and used some quilt/chair stuffing and with a long stick,pushed what was needed in place.The trick is to attach the area by the windshield first, use plenty of glue on both surfaces, relax and put in place. As always,trial fit everything before the glue goes on.Also know that contact cement will not stick to fresh paint, it will eat it.


Here is the backside of the old pad. Wish I had taken a picture of the top side. The sun seemed to have taken a toll on the top right hand side where it sits and gets the most sun. The vinyl was very brittle but the life soon came back as I heated it with a hair dryer set on high heat. Looking through the web,this technique is used to restore old vinyl as it softens it up and being oil based, seems to like it and amazingly gets very pliable. So this picture shows where I cut out some of the deteriorating fibreglass and stuffed it wth upholstery padding.

Part of the instrument panel back in place.The dash pad looks good!


Another picture later on after some more restoration, brake assembly removed,toe pan etc, which I had not done before and wasn't as easy as I hoped. The brake unit is very heavy and awkward to get lined back up with the toe pan,plus all the sealing issues. I also had a good look at the dimmer switch and replaced a terminal that was getting corroded.One of the screws wouldn't let go and it was a real job, even after I cut the lead off and had it on the bench, and even after acid dipping.....just wouldn't budge!


While I had the lower vent housings out and most of the obstacles on the firewall out of the way,I cleaned the firewall insulator and gave it a fresh coat of vinyl spray. I thought it might be a lot of trouble but well worth it and no huge overspray problems.





Also included a repaint on the heater. Again, I thought I had taken more pics of the issues with the felt that had fallen off the inner flapper, common with most heaters that old it seems and one wonders why the air flow is just not up to par. The old felt was still good and I used fibreglass resin to glue it back on the wing.The grey used on the old heater had a sort of hammer-type finish, very subtle though, and so I chose to finish in the proper shade of grey, which really looked good!





Another shot. Remember to take off the top defroster housing when removing /installing the heater unit so as to be able to access the hidden screws behind it.

Found another picture of the inside view. Everything gets renewed.I found that there was some linkage problems with lack of lubrication and so on. Notice the door switch and the upper left hand side is the resistor, that was toasted on my unit and had to be fixed-jb weld. It controls low and high speed for the fan using a resistance and I suppose since it could potentially give off a lot of heat, it was located where airflow is greatest.

Here is a picture before repair of that resistor. The center pole, which is common between the two resistances(and thus two speeds) had broken away and needed repair.A real mess and a fire hazard perhaps as you can see one of the coils unravelled from me possibly trying to fix it thru the little door opening years ago without removing the heater (I'm guessing).




Need a new sticker.For reference purposes. I have this without the calipers if anyone needs it.Notice the previous rust. I used a wire cup on a medium sized Makita grinder to clean this up in a hurry.A real weapon. Saving the old paint would take way too much time and a lot of it didn't stick all that great anyways so I stripped where I could to expose a shiny clean metal surface.More to come as time allows......



Had to take the speedometer out for this project. A tip is that the color of the wire harness to the area of the speedometer for the lights is painted on the housing.

another picture from behind that I used for identication purposes that may help somebody down the road...

While I had the speedometer out,I chose to tackle a problem with the speed needle sticking.Wish I had taken more pictures.I also chose to reset the odometer back to zero and it was a real puzzle to do so and the first time I had ever had one of these apart....

Here is the heart of the matter, and to get to this unit,you have to take off the speedometer needle. It unscrews with the finest little thread and I can't say for sure whether it is left or right to do so because it seems to tighten on its own...I would probably try counter clockwise first,make sure to grip the shaft with small pliers first though.It should spin right off(many turns)

From what I can recall,the momentum of the turning cup transfers some energy to the speedometer needle assembly....it was a while since I did this and this part is a little foggy and I had some trouble with alignment that if I recall,had to be corrected when assembling back into the housing or it would still drag(the original sticking problem). All these parts should be super clean of course!

 

Great job. It looks like it turned out very well. Now you just need to get it all back together.

Brian

 

Here is the headlight switch torn apart. If yours is like mine,it took some effort to pull it and I knew it had to come apart.This is a patience project,there are lots of small parts so takes lots of pictures if you attempt this..



The rhoestat for dimming the instrument panel lights...It just slides out.

The are springs and contacts that must go back in place.Once you figure out the theory of the sets of contacts,it gets clearer in purpose, but lots of patience.Wish I had more pics of this and all the little springs!

Once I had this back together,it worked like a new one should and slides very easy.I used some dielectric grease on the contacts(which were very good) and some lube for the moving parts that slide and bind.

 

Just caught your post. Looks like you did a great job; lots of patience and a lot of time, but worth it. Have been there and done some of that. Lots of TINY pieces. Good luck with the rest of the resto..

 

I've seen hammertone done on some restos and no question its a very interesting look. My understanding is that its used in areas that would take a beating. I like the look of what you achieved.

LOL I only just graduated to the world of sandblasting. That would have cleaned up even better with glass beads.
re: the decal? I can help you with that. 2.95 from Dr. Decal - Mark Cornea. His website is back up and running. Have a look:
http://www.drdecal.com/viewitem.php?productid=223

I've used spray vinyl color with very good success. Glad it also worked for you. Good tip on the new paint/contact cement.

I've got a 70 speedminder speedo I need to restore so I was interested in some of the disassembly you showed. And FWIW I really understand the frustration of 'thinking' you had a pic of one thing or another. But it's a real tradeoff between productivity and picture taking. Great job on your car so far. Did you have the chrome parts restored or did you polish them?

 

Thanks for a the sharing the interior work. Mine is a next project in a 49 Coupe.

 

Thanks for the info, we're about at the same stage on a 55 S88 and this helps a lot. On the firewall insulator, at the bottom edge, did you repair or replace that sewn-on strip at the bottom? We have a good original insulator pad but that bottom "fringe" is cracked, and are wondering which direction to go with it. Thanks

 

You must mean that strip that looks like it is going to tear away on mine.Depends on your fussiness but since it would be impossible to sew again,unless you have prison patience, I would recreate the threads perhaps,easy enough with new thread and simply replace the vinyl,contact cement it on. Getting vinyl to match the texture will be tough but spraying the whole works will help it blend in......and what would be the harm in faking that,other than tearing everything off the firewall which seems out of bounds.Oh ,but reading your post again, if the insulator is off the car,by all means,sew on a new one,either by hand to use the old holes, or a quick machine job.
I sewed by hand,all my seats with new black cloth material.I went to a regular upscale furniture upholstry shop and scoured thru all their books and found a black cloth very similar to the original,pricey but way cheaper than sms or that other cloth place that escapes me at the moment. Using the old seat material for a pattern,it was time consuming but always went forward nicely by proper patterns and pinning the fabric(or hot gluing) as I went along to spread the cloth evenly. Sewing not always girly work.Good luck.
ps more pics to come....

 

Looks real nice !

 

Nice work! Keep the pictures coming.

 

I didn't quite finish this post.I have pictures but they aren't very good. I really had a tough time deciding what to do with the rusty metal flap with a really sad looking felt. It also was in the way of really cleaning the inside of the chamber, a real pain to fix, and even getting the flap out is a real piece of work. The rule is that you don't want to destroy a part and not being able to fix it. Having just restored an olds British Smiths heater in an English car,I had some idea of what to do. Getting the flap out meant getting a new rod,which is just a steel rod with strategic bends. Also be aware of the size of the rod. The original may be a little smaller than what your replacement will be and will mean shrinking the size of the area where the cable slips on. It took some time for me to see this but if you look closely,the flap holding the felt is in two pieces sandwiched together and spot welded, so these must be drilled out.The rod is also spot welded ad/or crimped to the flap and this is a problem to get the rod away from the flaps and not destroying the flaps. A dremel tool will be useful here. I should have mentioned that cutting the rod to get the flap out is much easier. Since the cable that runs the flap has adjustment, it is not so critical that the new rod be so perfect as the old one but still you should keep as close as possible.As you can see in picture three, I have the new felt sandwiched between the flaps.I could not buy felt thick enough so I have doubled it up and coated the two pieces with fibreglass resin to give it some resistance and stiffness. I was able to buy oversized pop rivets to assemble the flaps. All in all, it worked out well and my lack of assembly pictures was due to the uncertainty of the outcome.A simple part,...yes but I would bet you will find few restorers that will go the extra mile to fix this stuff,especially since it is hidden.Sadly my heater motor did not fare so well. This particular motor was a real piece of crap and I bet the rest are no better.Terrible bearings and the commutator is not fixed solid to the shaft and won't reassemble well and binds. The aluminum paste in the picture is Loctite anti-seize compound for lubrication.Good stuff!

Added Information: I forgot to mention that I had to use miniature pop rivets to fix the shaft to the flap and requires some very small drilling and patience.I had a tough job finding the rivets that small-less than 1/8 so beware of that.Anything bigger would compromise the strength of the shaft.

 

Any luck on restoring the slide cables that actuate that flap? These are always frozen and also need to be disassembled to rechrome the bezels. I've tried a few different approaches to no avail..

 

Great job and great pics looks like its coming along very well...nice work on the dash

Thanks for sharing

 

You are so right Olds Dad! I tried for some time to get the cable to release from the **** but gave up and thus oiled my cable and it was fine but if you wanted to restore the ****....problem. I wonder if I have a good picture of this. I bet Fusick should know. It surely must come apart but you might have to destroy one to see inside and how that cable is held and how to release it. Chevys must have used the same maybe?

 

The cables are crimped into a hole in the back of the **** assembly which is a solid casting - you can't "Uncrimp" it, you have to cut it. I have destroyed an old one in an effort to try to restore. I'll try to post some photos later

 

Very true. Nice to see you're dedicated to even the smaller details that others wouldn't even open up. BTW, HOW did you get 10 pics attached to the thumbnail bar??

 

Not sure about the thumbnails but I did change to using the bulk uploader for imageshack and then cut and pasted the links from there which included more data, that I assume means the thumbnails.

 

Good Morning Pete,
Good Job. You must have some engineering skills. I have rewired both the heater and fresh air fan motors in my 49 Coupe. There are parts that I have made from pictures, especially small parts that are no longer available anywhere. I'll be posting photos as soon as the Coupe gets painted.
Dick T