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Starting on my 79 262c

You didn't misplace them. The thieving garage troll stole them.i have delt with them for almost 50 years. A very old Swede told me to put rat poison in with ginger snap cookies. Good luck.
 
You know how when you look for for something you can't find it ? But if you don't look for it it just shows up. I'm not looking right now. :lol: Very frustrating.
 
Well major milestone today. Finally got all the panels painted and cleared, yea! Perhaps tomorrow will be color sand and buffed. What a relief. Still plenty more to do. Need to have a vinyl
top installed, front glass "glued" in, clean up the chrome trim for front and back glass. But main thing is to find my A pillar trim. Here are few pics of what happened today. Patch panel installed on RR lower 1/4 then primed.

trunk area primed
The shop is located in an old building. Always dust falling from the cement ceiling. Not ideal for painting. So you always get some trash in your clear. It should all sand out. Here you can see the damage to the hood, right in the middle, from where the makeshift tent collapsed on it. Had to redo the hood. Damaged down to primer.


clear going on. You can see some trash in it. But it should all work out.


To be continued.
 
I want to paint the underside of the hood but that will happen at a later date. The repair to the RR 1/4 panel also involved adding a patch to the inside of the trunk. The welds were ground down and then a skim coat of short strand fiberglass added. Not sure how much more bodywork I'll have done to that area because it will all be covered by carpet but I think I want it to look nice. The problem is the new paint is brighter than the old so the color will be off. Don't want to paint the entire trunk area. Suggestions?
 
So the good news is the car is back at my house. Paint looks good. My friend and the body guy wanted the car out because one , no room and two accidents happen . Painter said take it home and he'll finish it in the driveway this weekend weather permitting. Getting car home was another adventure. No taillights, no wipers, bungee cords holding the doors closed. Did I mention it was pouring rain? As soon as I got home I had to seal, with masking tape the front windshield, put some plastic where the small 1/4 windows go. Also seal up the few holes where some of the trim clips mount to. And cover the openings for the taillights. Can't fit the car in the garage because of the mess and a non running coupe blocking it. More pics when it stops raining.
 
Brief update. Waiting for better weather for final cut and polish. Good news is after a more thorough search of the garage I've found my A pillar trim :). Bad news is this morning I somehow turned a certain way and pulled a muscle in my back :grrr: so no playing with cars today. Tomorrow???
 
Taking small steps. Still waiting on color sand and buff. Today decided to paint some of the inside parts of the car known to rust. I had some Rustoleum gray paint left over from a previous project so that is what I used. Painted the inside bottom section of both doors. Also I can see where water intrusion and puddles can be an issue. My 1/4 panel windows are not installed and the windshield still isn't permanently installed so I still get a little water in the car. I do have sheet plastic on these locations but still have a little water, whatever. That being said I was able to follow the path and paint along it. It was actually where all the seam sealer is. No rust but wanted to make it more resistant. I thought of painting the entire floor then had a moment of clarity and said no. I would have had to grind away all of the underlayment and then buy all new S*it to make it pretty only to cover it all with the carpet. So no. Next up was reinstalling the door latch assembly. With a few small adjustments I was able to have the door actually close properly. This proved to be a PIA because I was used to securing the doors with bungee cords. I still didn't have the door handles on so every time I closed the door I had to reach inside via the 1/4 window opening and slide the "bar" back to open the door. I couldn't reach the actual interior handle. Like I said a PIA. I installed one drivers/ outside handle but it will need to come off again. Both handles have damage to the chrome trim rings, didn't remember seeing that when removed. I do have 2 new trim rings but like everything else can't find them right now. The door lock cylinders threw me for a loop as I forgot how exactly they unlocked the door. Also didn't help that I was using the opposite side parts. Duh moment.
One thing I also didn't remember but noticed is that the 79 coupe doesn't have the central locking feature. Anyone with a 79 to confirm this? I do have all the parts, I think , to make this happen. Is there a relay? Too lazy to get the books out. All the locking mechanisms were cleaned and lubed as well as all the moving parts of the power windows. The goal was to button up the doors with everything back in place but the outside door handles put an end to that.
I did a better job, with new plastic sheeting , of covering the 1/4 window openings. I hope with that and the fact that doors now close properly that there will be no more water leaks, expecting rain Tues and Wed.
Sorry no pics this time.
 
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Looking back on pics I took before taking the car apart I see that the the small rear windows will have to wait. The vinyl top, which I'm not ready to do right now, needs to go on first. Then the rain gutter trim and finally the small windows can be installed. Also the stainless trim on the front and back windows goes on after the vinyl top is installed. So it looks like I'll be concentrating my next efforts on replaces the door panels, dash, overhead trim and all interior panels. If and only if I don't get any water in the car after the next 2 rain events then I"ll install the carpet and seats. Got to get it done!
 
Still no pics. We got 3 inches of rain yesterday and sure enough some of it found its way into the car so no carpet anytime soon. May have to do the top sooner rather than later. :grrr:
 
So today I took on a project I've been putting off for a while. I removed all of the old butyl from the front and rear window trim. This is a Mike Rowe job, very messy, thankless job. The tools needed were a can of Naptha, wooden stick ( in my case it was a shim ) some rags, paper towels and many gloves. Also a container for the Naptha and a paint brush.
One by one I would brush on some solvent and then carefully use my shin to scoop the old butyl out. I was trying to get it out little by little by creating a strand of it then pulling some out. I went through maybe 8 pr of gloves if not more. My shim proved very effective because it broke off in such a way that I had wide section and a narrow section at the same time. Think of it like a fork with mismatched tongs. The amount of goop on theses things is insane.
Small surprise on the rear trim. There is are two plastic filler strips for lack of a better description. It is barely visible when installed. This was confirmed when I checked out my other coupe. Also needed to look at the other car because I wasn't sure if it went on the top or bottom of the window. It goes on the top. I got the back side of trim pretty clean, maybe 90-95% . That is clean enough. There should now be enough space back there to accept a good amount of new butyl. Next step will be to polish all of the parts.
A word to the wise. Work outside, maybe set up some saw horses and use something you don't care about as the top. Have plenty of gloves on hand, you will be changing gloves often. Tilt your work table away from you in case you spill your container of Naptha. I did twice but had very little solvent in the container. Oh, you will also need a toothbrush to get into the creases of the trim. Go over any stubborn butyl with your wood tool then brush on more Naptha and scrub with the brush. Bounty select a size was better as you'er not using so much paper towel trying to clean the channel. When you flip your trim over it will be black. A towel with solvent will clean that up. Change gloves frequently. When wiping down the trim it helps to have a solvent wet paper towel in each gloved hand. Hold, wipe, chase, wipe, etc. Any residual butyl will get sticky very quickly when dry. Try to keep your can of solvent clean. There will come a time you will reach for the can without gloves and get butyl on you. Keep a plastic bag near by and throw all your dirty rags in there. Don't drop any butyl on the ground, you may not see it, then step in it and the rest is a mess. This didn't happen to me. Check your gloves often. I was using cheap HF gloves, 5 mil. The first few minutes I didn't realize that I had used too much solvent and it thinned the glove enough to let the black goo in. The Naptha will clean your skin but you can't really get your cuticles clean with that stuff. Can't stress enough to change gloves often. Maybe tomorrow I'l polish the reim on a buffing wheel.
This one had the least amount of goo
the fronts also had goo because I had the trim stacked when stored

here is the mess it makes

the front of the trim

channels all cleaned
here is that rubber gasket

and how it will look when installed
 
What a mess! BTDT!

I found the little gasket around the rear lite also. Mine had been destroyed by a previous glass replacement effort and nothing like it seemed to be available.

In my efforts I found that pulling as much off as possible dry with a small ball of butyl got it down to much better amounts. There is a product sold in AP stores called Tub O' Towels that will take the last butyl off like the naphtha but at least it is captured in the fiber towel.
 
I may look into that ( maybe not, ha ). I think I got it plenty clean. I just wanted to make sure the new butyl had place go. The front window had been replaced before and I don't think they ever clean the trim before installing it. I was able to remove it without any effort at all. Same went for the back.
 
A little more progress today. I polished the stainless trim for the back window. The front will get done tomorrow. My grinder is set up as buffer. The arbors have extensions on them so I can polish wider, longer items. This time around the right side has a sisal wheel for more aggressive buffing and the left has a loose cotton wheel for polishing. I didn't have any stainless compound for buffing so I use jewelers rouge, it was aggressive enough to take out the light scratches. Then I used some white polishing compound on the loose wheel for final polishing. Since the buffer is on a rickety narrow stand I'm able to get close enough to maneuver the trim any way I need to. I actually had it wrapped around me, held very securely, and slowly got it all done. Can't stress enough that you hold on to the piece very securely. Also there is a sweet spot on the wheels where the trim won't get ripped out of your hands. If you are standing on the side of the buffer at look at it straight on, it will be between 3 and 5 o'clock. Anyplace else and you're asking for trouble.

The bottom one is the polished one.

Once again the bottom piece is finished.

The two on left are done and somehow I missed placed one of these:grrr:

Been looking at some videos about installing vinyl tops. Not sure If I'll attempt this although it doesn't look too hard. My only concern is that I'm dealing with the original top so there is NO extra material to pull.
 
Lookin' good! If I'd read this 30 minutes earlier --- I had two of those that came off my trim. I bent the trim removing it - but the clips were ok, until I further bent the trim to get it into the trash can.....
 
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