Rest Of The Interior

After getting the center console in the car, rest of the interior was somewhat simple to put together. When I bought the car, I got a large box of interior parts with it. They had been sitting in storage for nearly two years so my first task was to thoroughly clean and inspect them. I had some Autoglym Vinyl & Rubber Care that I used for nearly all pieces. It returned a nice shine to the old parts.

While going through the interior, I found out that it was far from complete. It was missing the rear wheel well carpets, rear window frame, rear window lower trim, kick panels and center console side trims. And to add a few more, the air ducts to the side vents were also missing. Wonderful when I thought I had all the pieces when buying the car... Oh, and all the pieces that went to the roof were black. I had thought they should be black but later found out that they should be the same color as the rest of the interior...

I started from the T-top center panel as it seemed to be under other parts. Then came the windshield trim. They were simple to screw in but I needed to fiddle with them many times to get everything lined up. Finally I added the sun visors over the trim.

I had noticed the missing kick panels quite early in the project so I had already bought some used ones for my car. They were black but I simply cleaned and painted them to the correct red color. While attaching them, I also noticed that the door sill plates were on the wrong sides of the car. Luckily they were held together by just a few screws.

Then came the rear panels. I started from the roof trim that just screwed in. But when installing the rear quarter panels, I noticed that they should come first as some screws were cowered by the roof trim. The quarter panels were also the most problematic panels in the car. They had some glued metal inserts for screws but both sides had many rusted in screws that I couldn't remove. On top of that, both sides had many broken off screws.

I found a repair kit for the inserts but now needed to get the old screws out. A couple of them were quite easy to remove but some seemed almost impossibly tight. I tried pulling, turning, drilling, shouting, cursing and kicking but couldn't get all of them out. I'll have to see if I can come up more ways to try. Maybe crying? For now I just put the panels in the car without all the screws... Finally I placed covers for the seat belt retractors and the "trunk" was done.

One of the final pieces were the door cards. But of course they had problems as well. The panels are held in place with velcro like retainers. Unfortunately most of the retainers in my doors were broken or full of paint and unusable. So I had to order new retainers and am still waiting for them.

The last missing piece is the left dashboard panel with the speedo and tachometer. I need to attach the headlamp switch first but when doing that, I saw that I'm missing the nut that holds it in place. So, yet again, I had to wait for three weeks for it to arrive from the US before putting the panel in the car.