Bert Vorgon's Spring Maintenance Project

[RMS]

the light blends in nicely, I almost have to look for it. cant wait to see what it looks like with the air dam back on.

since the air dam is off did you consider removing the fenders for a bit of preventative rust work. road dust likes to make its way between the panels (evidence is on the valance) and the fender gaskets hold a lot of crap.
I bet there are areas like the end of the rockers that are sand blasted clean and could do with some paint

it only took 1500k of gravel roads to blast off 2 mill of under coating and all the paint from the splash side of the wheel well on my 69

[bertvorgon]

Thanks for the reminder, it was on my list to coat a few bare areas with some bed liner. 30 years of sticky tires blasting the inner areas had some bare spots. I would NOT remove the fenders at this point, I looked up there this morning and it is clean.

I finished up the turn signal wires, zapped them into place, it is ready to go.

I zoomed around under the car on the creeper, tightened every bolt and nut I could find..nothing loose at all.

Going to start to strip James's donor door now, get the window mechanism ready to go into my door.

Also checked the fuel sender/gauge issue, which I think is the gauge, or connection to it. I did the test they recommend, and the gauge went to full...then just backed it's way down to empty...RATS.

[bertvorgon]

I got James's door stripped down, just amazing at how good the factory plating was on the inner door parts, all still plated, other than in one bottom window channel, where the felt held the water in. The rollers and plastic washers are all in ok shape.

I took the glass home last night and literally gave it a bath in the tub, and carefully scrubbed the over spray and dirt off it. It cleaned up nicely, and is one of the nice blue tinted ones.

I just need the window felt now, and I'm ready to install. Hopefully I run into no problems in my door, in terms of what I may have done in 1983 to hold the Lexan in place.

James also brought in a gauge cluster, so we now can do a test we will post up on the fuel gauge/sender issue, so that we all can understand how it works.

[bertvorgon]

UPDATE:
A productive time this week. We took the fuel/temp gauge out of James's test mule, to actually see what it looks like, compare it to the wiring diagram, and test a fuel gauge hooked up to it. We applied 12 volts to the circuit board, hooked up the fuel sender ( my original 73' sender ) with jumper wires, and ran the gauge through its full to empty range, worked as it should.
One thing the DQ article just mentions, but does not fully describe, is the very small relay contacts under the fuel gauge, that you almost do not even notice, that need to be cleaned, besides the circuit board contact points. The DQ mentions using 600 grit paper and I would concur with that. The pin # is 3, on the plug for the circuit board, which is a yellow wire, which heads back to the fuel sender in the tank. This whole thing looks so simple, it is amazing, a flashback to another time in our world of electrical things.
I would suggest also, that if you have taken the time to take the instrument cluster out, to change ALL the bulbs while you are there, why not, when you think that bulbs age over time, this is a great time to maybe brighten things up a tad.
I am going to park this project till I have a full day to take my cluster apart, as I have a lot of things to undo and move out of the way, to get it out. After watching the gauge action when our connection was iffy, it mimicked what my gauge is doing, so I am pretty confident that either my gauge is dead, or, the connections are bad, as the DQ article suggests.

Then it was back to my window project, with my 2 rolls of factory window felt arriving on Friday from Japan. With that in hand, I could start to strip my own door, taking the panel off, so I could see how I mounted the Lexan window. James brought me in the proper tool to deal with the panel clips, so I got most of them out without damaging the fiber board. I could see that I had made two aluminum arms that bolted into the factory holes, with a small bracket at the top, which held the Lexan in place. It will take two seconds to remove them so that will be good. Today I will strip the old felting out, which hopefully I did not use a ton of adhesive on. I'm 99% sure I did put new felting in, in 1983, when we redid the car. The inside of the door is mint, pointing out that it was only 6 or 7 years old when I installed them, and, they had been sitting on the shelf at Specialty for many years before that. I took my 73' doors off, as they weighed a TON, what with the crash bar in them. That is one sign of a true 1973 510, the crash beam was large in those doors. I will measure, cut and glue the new felting in today, then, go back in tomorrow and install the window.
I have found that the small knitting tool for pulling yarn threads works great to pull the door and window handle clips off.
As I work on the door, I will also change out my arm rest(s). After years of carrying passengers, who held on for dear life....and pulled very hard on the rest, the passenger one has almost gutted itself. Years ago I bought some arm rests from someone in San Francisco, and Derek sent them up to me. They are not the original 510 ones, but, the later replacement ones, which should do just fine. I need to mount a nice solid grab handle in there!

[bertvorgon]

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[bertvorgon]

door stuff

[bertvorgon]

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[bertvorgon]

new door felt...going to have a nice tight window seal now.

[bertvorgon]

While I know this is not an exciting project, not like I just got 500 HP daily in my 510, or, I discovered how to pull 7G's in a corner and not blackout, but, for me to have a roll down window after 30 years....well....doesn't take much to get an ole' grey haired guy excited now.....

Yesterday I got out my new window felt, and for the record, 1 coil of this WILL DO 2 DOORS, of a two door sedan. I measured 90" for one door. First, cut your 90" length. Then, on the door jamb side, measure up from the bottom of the window channel, inside the door, up to the 90 degree, and make your mark. I had 30.250 inches on mine. There, you will make your two 45 degree cuts, so the window felt will fold nicely.

Then, with the window felt draped over my shoulder, I started at the bottom of the door jamb side, fitting the felt into place, working my way up to the 45 degree corner, tucking it an as square as you can. I then worked my way along the top of the door, then down into the inside of the door. You can have a bit of excess, then trim that when done. The critical point is that 45 degree area. Then, I carefully pulled down the top felt, and put just a few strips of adhesive along there, let it tack up for a few minutes, then pushed it back into place, then used my little plastic toll to make sure it was nested nicely into the channel.. I let that sit for 20 minutes, then lifted the down side section of the door jamb out, put some glue along that, and repeated the procedure. I then did the down slope on the hinge side. I did not use a lot of glue, who knows if it ever has to be changed again.

I then slid the glass down into the door, getting everything aligned and the bottom pin put into place. One trick is the that upper guide, that bolts to the door, if left out until the glass is in, is easier to gently pull the arm out, and fit when the glass is slightly rolled up. Once the glass was in, I reached into the door cavity, and pulled the hinge side guide snugly against the glass, thus eliminating any slack. Then, roll the window up, watching that it tracks nicely into the window felt and channel. I had no problems. I lubed things up, the lock mechanism, window rollers, put the panel back on, handles, DONE! I then installed the later model arm rest, really nice once on, larger than the stocker, and very solid. My outer door trim was then replaced with James's donor door strip, that rubber still fairly flexi and not cracked like mine. I rolled the window up snugly, and will let that sit over night so the glue can cure.

[bertvorgon]

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[bertvorgon]

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[bertvorgon]

So today I finished up the main spring projects. I put some anti -freeze in, fiddled to get all the air out, and fired the motor. Ran it to temp, no leaks so far...so good. Dropped the car off the jack stands, re-mounted my air dam, torqued the wheels, and we are GOOD TO GO!

I am working on a project to see what we can do to get brighter lights in our tail/running lights, without going to LEDS, I will post up as to how that works out.

Last thing later on will be to get my diff bushing issue done up, waiting for time at Specialty, due to a 1936 Bentley being prepped for the Beijing to Paris Rallye. I will post up some pictures of the car, pretty cool considering it's age. Tony is the #26 driver, in the 1936 Bentley DropHead. He is the same fellow that ran the Pan-American ralley last year in the vintage Corvette.

http://www.endurorally.com/pages/5th-pe ... rally-2013

[RONSLYCHUK]

Hey Keith, what does it feel like to roll the window down,after all these years?