Interior Vinyl trim

I have finished making the vinyl trim pieces for the interior except for the front footwell panels. These are the ones at the side of the footwells just in front of the front doors. I will have to get the parcel shelf from under the house, where it's been stored for about 12 years, before I can finalise the trim.

I have discarded all the cardboard that was originally used as stiffening and used 3mm coreflute - a kind of corrugated plastic sheet. I used the original cardboard as a basis for the shapes to cut out of the coreflute but I was surprised at how often I had to modify ill-fitting shapes.

I haven't fitted the trim yet - except for the pieces next to and just in front of the rear seat.

This isn't the only piece but it gives an indication of the almost-finished trim (no pinchweld yet).

Windscreen is Installed!

It's finally in! We installed it again Sunday morning with exactly the same result as the first second time (I forgot the this was the 3rd attempt) - it still wouldn't go in at the top. On Sunday afternoon, having tried a bit on and off to get the top in, I called Mathew from the Rootes Group Car Club. Matt had fitted a Super Minx windscreen a year or so ago so I figured that now was the time to get some advice. Matt kindly offered to drop in on Monday morning to have a look, so I left the windscreen alone for the rest of Sunday.
Monday morning came (this morning), Matt turned up, and one of the first things he asked after having a look was "do your hands hurt?". Essentially, he figured if we had been doing the right thing our hands should hurt. He showed me what to do, and after about 10 minutes of thumping downwards on the outside of the screen (standing on my painting trestle), it slowly edged in. A bit more thumping and the top rubber lip went over by itself.

I took this picture Sunday before it was all the way in.

 (Later addition to this post) This is the "trick" in getting these windscreens all the way in.

Once the bottom and sides are in, if the top still has a gap do as indicated in the picture. As Matt said, hands start to "smart" after a minute or two.

Windscreen attempt #2

Today's attempt to put the Windscreen in was almost successful except that we couldn't get the top part over the bodywork lip. I pestered away at it for an hour before I resigned to the fact that is wasn't really in. We slightly tore the rubber at the join too. We have removed the windscreen, repaired the rubber, and will try again tomorrow. Laurel and I think that we didn't get the bottom in correctly so hopefully we have learnt something from today's attempt.

Rear 1/4 Light Windows are In!

We installed the rear 1/4 light windows this afternoon. These are the ones where I returned the rubber seals to have them shortened because we just couldn't get the windows installed.
It still wasn't easy but at least they are both done.

For anyone with a Vogue Mk3 or Super Minx Mk3 Sedan, the trick is to put the bottom and vertical (front) sections in first and work toward the rear, hardest corner (the opposite of what seems intuitively correct). We use three 3.5mm pull cords - one along each side. Getting the top right angle corner in is tough and getting the rear under-right angle corner in is REALLY tough. I honestly thought that I'd torn the rubber seal on each corner, but I hadn't.

The finished product.

From the inside with the rear parcel shelf fitted (carpet not fastened down yet).

I managed to scratch one of the rear black pillars a bit but that's easily fixed as they are enamel that I applied with a brush - probably why they scratched as enamel is not as hard as auto paint. I hope I can get the same finish though because it was perfect before.

After our evening meal the whole family fiddled with the windscreen for an hour or so before we decided to call it a night. The pull cord will work OK (we had concerns about ther area just above the dashpad) but we had trouble getting the screen low enough for the rubber to go over the metal lip (see dashpad install).
I think it was because the outer rubber lip was folded under, so our strategy will be to use another pull cord on the outside lip as well.

Here is a sketch of the windscreen rubber and how it has to be fitted.

The inside pull cord is slotted in where I have drawn the purple lines for the car windscreen metal lip. The red arrow shows where the seal on the outside is folded in normally and has to be pulled out so the seal can drop down to the purple line (car body). The actual seal that we are using has the outside rubber lip tightly curved in and touching the rest of the rubber seal. It's quite difficult to coax out - a real finger wrecker.

Windscreen Trim

The steering wheel is painted and ready to go in the car.
I spent about four hours Saturday and a couple on Sunday fitting the trim around the windscreen seal.
Why? Because it was REALLY difficult. Keep in mind I fitted the stainless steel trim to the rear windscreen seal and that only took about 15 minutes. This one is thicker as it's plastic and I think that's what made it so difficult (the original trim didn't fit this rubber seal).

The red arrow shows where I stopped again Sunday morning to rest my hands. The masking tape helps stop the rubber falling off the screen again. The strange shape of the glass allows it to come off a bit too easily.

You can see how bulky the plastic trim is in this picture. The Ella Bache makeup applicators I've been collecting over the years were invaluable. (Long oval shaped plastic thing on windscreen. They don't have them anymore - Laurel brings home useless flimsy things now.)

My fingers and thumbs were bruised from holding it in as I went so I had to stop and come back to it several times. I know you can get a tool to help with this but I didn't have one.

We were ready to fit the windscreen on Sunday afternoon but given it was Mother's Day I decided not to press Laurel  to help (even though she indicated she was happy to). I figured if we failed it would kind of put the damper on the day. It's penciled in for Wednesday afternoon when the temperature outside is a bit kinder.

Finally I installed the pull rope for installing the screen. The windscreen is in our bedroom staying warm for the big day.

Steering Wheel #2

Filler sanded and steering wheel primed.

I had a lot of trouble finding a pause in the misty rain on Saturday to paint the wheel. At the moment I have nowhere inside or in the garage that I can spray anything. Sunday was an other-activity day so Saturday was all I had.
I put the first coat of black on the rim this morning just before posting this. We are going to use a Satin Black - not gloss. We'll see how that goes. I have to scout around under the house for a different steering column cowl. I know I have one for a manual Vogue without the hole on top for the gear indicator. I will have to prepare that and paint it as well. I had originally planned to use the gear indicator window for some visual indicator purpose but that will have to wait until the car is on the road. (See the "old steering wheel cover" picture in the previous post for the gear indicator.)

Steering Wheel Restoration

Last weekend I temporarily installed the dash/speedo and tried it out. The good news is that nothing bad happened and I even had the current sensing the right way around.
The bad news is that I was dismayed with the battery current indication. It varied from -1.5 to +0.9 Amps erratically. I added smoothing to the Hall effect device output in the engine bay and it totally settled down UNTIL I started the controller. Then it was erratic again. The DC Bus readout was also all over the place (actually the controller is outputting a signal representing accelerator torque demand at the moment so I'm not sure where that problem really is).

That started me fiddling with the speedo cluster. I added RC integration to both analog inputs and also did some averaging in software for both of them. They both now average over about one second. I'll try it again soon but there is not much more I can do. I also refined the low-trip-value range estimation - in fact I supressed the range display for the first km travelled on the trip meter.

Meantime, I took a small hacksaw to the narrow cracks in the steering wheel and filled them with epoxy putty. I'll file them out and sand the whole wheel this weekend and try to find a warm enough place to prime it. We have already purchased a custom made leather steering wheel cover from the UK.

Note how bad the rim was under the previous cover - I haven't sanded it yet, just cleaned it up with water and a light rub with a scotch-bright.

The old steering wheel cover.