Turbo Odyssey Part 25 -- First Cruise

October 8, 2005

Today is one of those overcast, cool fall days when the trees are just starting to turn.  I should be at the office, but I spent some time on the Corvair instead....

I started with the interior quarter panel trim.  In a late convertible this consists of three parts:  a square cardboard trim pad, a lower panel and an upper panel.  The lower and upper panel cover the top mechanism.   The ones I took out of the car looked like this:

I ordered the material to recover these from Clarks.  While you do get directions with the material, there is still a learning curve to this job.  The first panel I recovered was the upper passenger side panel.  When I peeled the vinyl off, I also ripped off all of the old padding underneath, which was one of two mistakes.  I decided that I would prefer to sandblast and paint this old sheetmetal, and I spent probably and hour or two blasting off old glue, padding and rust.

This was a waste of time.

Once the sandblasting was done, I painted the sheetmetal.

This was another waste of time.

Since I had destroyed the old padding, I used some felt I also ordered from Clarks to replace it.  The felt is thinner than the old padding.  Rather than brushing on glue as Clarks suggests, I used 3M spray trim adhesive, as pictured below:

Excess glue can be removed with WD40 and a little elbow grease.  This picture also shows the two types of padding used on the lower panel.

I first attached the padding to the panel using the spray adhesive, and following the directions on the can.  Next I attached the vinyl cover, and here I made my second mistake.  I sprayed adhesive all over the felt and also the back side of the cover.  I thought that the vinyl was supposed to adhere to the padding, which it is not.  While the result is not too bad, it does not look as smooth as it should.

So, having identified the mistakes I made so that my constant reader will not repeat them, let me walk through the method of doing this that worked better on the remaining pieces.  First, remove the old vinyl, being careful not to pull off the padding.  The best way to do this is to start at the rear of each panel (toward the back of the car) and work your way toward the edges.  The padding is not glued to the cover, but at the edges where the cover is glued to the metal there may be some glue on the pad.

Once the cover was removed, I used a wire wheel to clean glue and rust from the areas I would be gluing.

Here is a before and after shot:

Here are the two panels completed:

After I finished with this task I went back to tinkering with the motor.  First, I installed the head to crossover pipe gaskets that I, uh, kinda forgot.  That didn't solve my start problems.  Then I adjusted the choke.  It took about two turns of the black round choke cover before the choke began to open.

This did the trick.  I got the seats bolted down, bolted in a set of seatbelts, and took each of the kids for a ride around the block.

It drives smoothly and the motor sounds great.  The transmission is tight and smooth.  The car feels as solid as granite.  I'm looking forward to driving this thing constantly next summer.

I do still have some issues to sort out with the idle being too high and a bit of run on after I shut it down.  I think these will be resolved with a bit of fine tuning.

I need to align the windows so that they seal properly, get the carb and timing sorted out completely, fix a few electrical gremlins, empty the sand from the media blaster from the tunnel air duct (the heater currently blows dust) install wiper arms, install the right rocker panel molding, install carpet and trim pads.  I am sure there are a few dozen more little tasks, but this car is nearly done.

Just in time to put it up for winter.

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