Bills 79 El Camino Page

Monday, January 11, 2010

Next project- polishing door sills and replacing door panels. I picked up upper and lower door panels and sills from an 85 Monte Carlo on craigslist for $20. The sills have no pitting and only a few minor scratches and dents. I'm going to sand off the anodizing and straighten them so i can polish them up.

My 79 was a pretty low buck car and had a bench seat and manual windows/locks. So the new door panels have carpet on the lower section and are cut out for the pwr window switches. No cracks or damage. Good replacements. I already have the lower panels shot in Black and now i'm just trying to figure out what to do with the upper panels. They are velour and you can't paint that and make it look like anything. Besides, i didn't really like the look of them. So i am trying to come up with a pattern to do some sort of raised black vinyl design. I'll use the left over vinyl from the console. in the meantime, i'll just retrofit the metal brackets for the window switches into my existing upper door panels until i get it figured out Not sure what to use to make the raised panels.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

clear coat

clear coat

It was 7:45PM tonight when i took this picture. Long day. But you can really see how the car shines compaired to previous pictures. I'm really happy with the way the color turned out. I think i've gone inside the garage to check on it probably 10 times in the last two hours. I soooooo much want to go and start stripping off the masking and start putting parts back on the car right now but I am excercising a little patience..... let it cure Bill..... let it cure. Man!, when all that polished stainless steel trim goes back on its going to look awesome with the Green paint and pearl. I'm dying to see it in the sunlight

base coat

base coat

Yup, everything is installed back on the car minus things like door handels and mirrors etc. this this after i had re shot the entire car today with the base coat. The color i chose is 1995 Impala SS Grey Green metallic. Something i found interesting today was that i used Omni paint and U Pol reducer. the color was much darker. But when i ran out of U Pol, and used the Omni medium reducer, the paint color was lighter and more correct to what it should look like. Not sure why this would have an effect on how the color layed down but it did. So my advice..... stick with the same family of products. Lesson learned

86 window regulator location

86 window regulator location

I found an 86 El Camino that was turned in on the Cash for Clunkers program. Someone had already beaten me to a lot of the good parts but they left both doors on the car which had power windows and locks. Score!!! I also picked up the tilt steering wheel, cruise control assembly, exhuast, and some seats (will get to that later) for about $100. This was taken to show the window gears for referrence with the window all the way up. I had to swap the parts from the 86 to my 79 and couldn't use these doors.

running wires

running wires

here i took the dashboard out of the car. Not hard to do. 4 screws at the defrost vents, drop the steering column, remove the screws at the ground straps by the floor lights, take the gauge cluster out, disconnect the heater controls and radio. And don't forget to remove the power for the glove box and the buzzer/chimes screwed in from behind the dash just below where your light switch would be. My dad and i removed the dash early summer in order to totally clean it and spray it in SEM's Landau Black

console 4

console 4

I took the center portion of the console and sprayed it to match the rest of the interior. Since i didn't need the shift lever, i built a box out of plexiglass. i used the mounting point for the light on the shift lever, cut it down to fit the width of the box. I then used 1/8 tape and covered the box where the light would shine. Followed by painting the exterior portion with gloss black. That way, whatever i put inside the box wouldn't scuff or scratch the paint off. And the tape allowed the light to shine in the box. looks kind of cool at night

Console 5

Console 5

this was the TOUGH PART. All along i felt there was enought room to bring the heater controls and radio into the factory cadillac radio opening. Lucky for me it worked out. I didn't have to modify much. i just had to trim enough out of the factory radio mount to get the radio down and then located the heater up as high as it would go. I used plastic again to build up for mounting locations for the heater. Made a radio/heater face plate from plexiglass and back painted it in gloss black. Put everything in place and finished it off by using the stock Caddy radio trim plate. Honestly, the hardest part of this was the cable for the temperature control. it needed to be extended by about 3 inches since the heater control moved forwards that much. I bought a universal choke cable from the parts store since it had the solid cable inside, cut it to length removed the factory El Camino plastic cable mounts with a heat gun and fused them onto the new choke cable. Now everything goes in its stock location behind the dashboard. I also tapped into the cigerette lighter to bring power forwards so i could hook up the Caddy lighter which is located below the radio. I need to come up with something to trim out the radio better but there isn't much room.