Work Party Update

We had a very productive work party yesterday at Don’s. Don’s neighbor, Johnnie, the retired upholsterer, was on hand to give us some tips on the front and back seats. He has been a great resource and even knocked out the headliner for us. Thanks Johnnie!

Don, Clark, Ray and Josh were on hand to get some more work done. We are fortunate that Phil kept up maintenance on this car and kept it well stored so the mechanicals and body will need next to nothing. We are predicting a brake check and an exterior detailing and it should be ready to sell.

The interior, however, has been the area that needed attention. A few fixable mods to the package tray area and taking out all of the original, but worn, items has proved to be the focal point of the projects. There is more on this in the previous Spyder Web newsletters. If you want to read more about that, drop us a line.

Today, we tackled getting the plastic A pillar trim by the front windshield in. Like all things, this “simple” project turned out to be difficult as the passenger side didn’t quite line up to the screws. Don, Clark and Josh all took a swing at it. By the end of the day, we finally had it in. These things are fragile! No parts were broken and no tool were thrown during this process, but there may have been a swear word or two bellowed out.

Below is Clark carefully working on this install. You can see Ray and Don in the back seat tackling the package tray.

Luckily for us, the old package tray cardboard held out just long enough for us to use it as a template to mark off holes that needed to be punched for the new replacement cardboard.

We glued the carpet to the new cardboard tray outside of the car. It was a warm morning in the valley, so the adhesive set quickly. Once it was properly set in the car, it was fastened back in.

(Note: Since our last visit, Don installed a layer of Kilmat Sound Deadener along the inner roof and along the rear package tray. He will also put in a layer along the inner rear firewall behind the seats as we work our way forward on the car.)

Lastly, we decided to take a crack at the rear seat. The rear seat is actually in fantastic condition aside from the fading and hardening of the black vinyl over time. We had initially thought to keep it, but it was decided that we wanted the vinyl to match the fronts, so we got new skins.

We took pictures of placement of the “hog rings” that hold the cover down to the seat frame and then began removing the rings with a medium flat tip screwdriver. To make it more pliable, the new replacement was spread out in the sun. This made installation easier, but black vinyl gets hot! The inner wires on the skin were in great shape and re-used. One still had its original paper still wrapped around it!

Below, you can see Clark removing a difficult ring with a pair of snips.

Once we had the old skin off, putting on the new one was quite easy. It was easy because there were three of us there to push the springs down while one inserted the hog rings. It was agreed that it would be much more difficult with one or even two people.

We were quite happy with the result. Below you can see the new seat cover compared to the old one. Clark’s Corvair Parts reproductions are about as perfect as you can get.

We ran out of time to tackle the upper half of the seat, but we have confidence and a game plan going into it after the success of the lower half.

We do know our limits, however, and are going to sub out the front seats. We sent up the bat signal to our restoration expert, Gabe Lopez at Sterling Restorations. He gave us the contact info for two local upholsterers he trusts for his jobs. Thanks Gabe!

Another project that crept up during the day was to clean and lubricate the rear window tracks. This took some time and effort, but the rear windows roll up and down much easier than they did previously. This was a team effort with two guys working on the driver side and two working on the passenger side. We are happy to report that we did not have to remove the windows to perform this maintenance.

After that, it was time to clean up and call it a day. We thank the SFBA members that showed up to help out and want to thank Don for hosting and storage and Johnnie for his guidance.