Interior redo on my wagon

[Luva65wagon]

Just thought I'd generate a May thread in this forum before it turns to June...

I'm hoping Jake @ OFI is soon to complete a new set of door panels for my wagon. I ordered fronts only from Dearborn, but because they had no rear patterns for the two-door wagon, they were only going to provide the fronts. Jake said he had the rear patterns, so I cancelled the Dearborn order in favor of Jake. So I hope I'll soon have a nice fresh set of gold-plated...eh, I mean Palomino door panels. The doors are going to get rebuilt inside and out and get new weatherstripping and everything else (sort of being repainted).

If you've ever wanted to partake in an interior redo or are an expert, you're welcome to stop by when I'm doing it. I'll post a comment when I'm at it. I hope I can figure it out.

I've still got to get that Mustang (I mentioned in a some previous newsletter) out of my garage before I can do this job. I'm one day away from squirting some paint on it - going with the Satin Black Rustoleum treatment on it. But then it's out of here. For that I'm thankful. I hope to get my wagon done in time for the forthcoming regional.

[Luva65wagon]

Jake at Original Falcon Interiors sent me an email today and said my new door panels are ready. Oh, I can't wait to see them.

[redfalken]

Let's have an interior party/tech day!

Actually, how many club members can you fit inside a tudor wagon at once? We may have to come up with a few exterior things to do so it doesn't get too crowded.

[Luva65wagon]

Well... why can't I just do small things? Before I knew it I had almost the entire interior on my wagon pulled out. I've sandblasted all the removable trim pieces and so far have etch-primed them. They've been straightened and all the little holes someone put in (for curtains?) have been welded/filled.

On a whim, went to Pull-a-Part on Saturday and after looking around decided to buy a bunch of door fuzzie (belt-line) material out of some Escorts and BroncoII/Rangers and have adapted these to fit my wagon. These will keep a lot more water out of the doors and should last longer that the cheap replacements I've done twice already. They look pretty good too.

One thing I have to fix is split door skin where it meets the brace that runs under the mirror/vent window area. Trying to do this and not get into a bunch of paint work is going to be tough. May have to paint the top of my door...

Hope I get it done in time for the Regional...

[Luva65wagon]

Well I finally bit the bullet and bid and bid high for a NOS gas cap for my wagon. They are never cheap. So $160 later it will hopefully arrive and be what they said it was. It looks nice on the web.

I'm still tearing things apart and cleaning and painting things. Ended up pulling the back window trim off and pulled the stainless off the rain gutter to clean those and repaint the gutter and straigten the trim pieces.

I repaired the broken "bridge" between the inner and outer driver door skins (just under the wing window) and decided to weld up the 6 extra mirror holes, which required doing some body work on the top ledge of the door. I did that already and now I'm waiting to finish the repair on the back window trim and the arrival of the gas cap and then I'll be painting all of these at once.

I've ordered back-up lenses and new buckets so I can to add back-up lights. Just have to figure out a switch now for the four speed shifter.

I'm installing driver side remote mirror and a matching passenger side mirror as well.

I'm debating on having a custom subwoofer "box" made for it. Patrick suggested seeing if I could mold it into a new spare tire cover, but there's not much room there at all, so as I mentioned to him I'm thinking about making a mirror image of the wheel cover on the driver's side. That would house a couple 8" woofers. Don't think I could get a 10" in that height. If it's too expensive I may have to go on the cheap until I save up a little more money. This is getting expensive. Being a musician and a lover of music in high fidelity, I got to have a decent sound system. My big weakness.

Well, that's about as far as I've made it so far. I'm going to see about 3-point seat belts while the interior is opened up, but that's going to be it for this pass. Really, it is. Although a new headliner would be nice and replacing the side/rear window rubbers would be a natural thing to do at the same time. And the rear floor is needing some work....

Ahhhhh.......

[Nathan289]

so wheres the pics of your door panals??

i called him to have a set made for my 61 futura as he is the only person that has the rear pattern as well..

I almost crapped myself when he quoted me something like $600..

I paid less than half that for custom panals for the ranchero..

Nathan

[Luva65wagon]

Well, here's the latest. Things are going together pretty well now that all the hard stuff is done. Still have a bit to do, but shoudln't be an issue getting it done in time for the show. May have to upgrade my charging system though...




Here's a picture of the new 1/0 gauge wire installed to feed to the amps. I've got yet to install the 1/0 gauge grounds, but they are made up.



Here's where the 1/0 gauge snakes into the car... just behind the shifter hump. The other wires in the hump will connect to the back-up light switch if it ever comes in time. The orange wire coiled up are speaker wires. Dynamat is installed front to rear, but I did that years ago. Want a quiet car? That's what you need to do.



Here's the amps installed and all wired up. I think if you look close to the left and the right of the picture you'll see the new retractable seat belts I added. They j u s t fit between the panels and the seat base.



Just a shot of what the interior is like today.



This is the temporary sub panel. They want (gulp) $1500 to do the mirror image of the spare tire cover, so that's going to have to wait for maybe a very long time. This one cost me $8 and one hour of time.



Just sitting there for the picture. The paint to match the vinyl doesn't exist, so I used three different colors and made it work. You can kind'a see the front panel just ahead of the wheel well.

And there's more to come...

[Luva65wagon]

Just a couple more pictures focusing on the other changes...



Items of note: The under dash deck mount and the new chrome shifter ring.



I set the system up to be able to turn off the amps and set the deck to power up these under dash speakers. Normally these are not powered up, but if I do a drive-in theatre (since I live next door to the last one in the world) I wouldn't be able to feed the amps for very long without running the engine. May not be enough (as I said) even if the engine is running. Hopefully it will, but I doubt it.



Here's the rear door panel(s). One thing I had to do was to add the new windlace and since the rear section of the rear door panels were not "finished" so I fashioned a length of windlace and glued it to the back side of the panel so it would cover the unfinished edge. Lookes far better that way, I think. You can see the seat belt retractor as well.



Here's the front window beltline modification with the glass in. Works really well. Don't know if I totally like the look, but the glass is snug.



Another view...

Well, that's where I'm at. Should have the car powered up again tomorrow. Only a few things left and then comes the fun job... rubbing out all the paint to remove the overspray....

[Luva65wagon]

So the vacation ends tonight and though I didn't get it 100%, I'd say I'm at about 99% for what I started. Still have a few things I plan to do before the show, but they're mechanical things. So here's some of the latest pics.

Hope you all are actually enjoying this... These pictures sort of speak for themselves.

[Luva65wagon]

Here's a couple pictures showing the new taillights I won off eBay. I need a switch to actuate them, which I ordered on-line... but when a package arrived yesterday - no switch. It's backordered! Kind of bums me out 'cause I could have bid on one from ebay that only went for $15. I could use one if anyone has one (hint-hint).









Also fired up the stereo. It rocks! These two 8" Fosgate speakers, as a sub, sound just fine. May not do the $1500 custom sub enclosure (like there was any doubt in my mind about that anyway).