Caulk another tasks down on the restoration of the Mustang.
I finished up the pillar post molding last night. Here is the before:
Pretty?
Now these were not as labor intensive as the dash-pad but here were some issues.
We’ll walk through them.
The removing the dash-pad was chronicled in my earlier post and that was pretty quick now that I’ve done it twice.
Once the dash-pad was removed there is an additional piece that needs to be removed, or at least a couple of screw removed on each side. That is the top molding:
Top Molding
In the picture above I’m pointing to one of the screws in the top molding that runs the length of the windshield. That screw is actually through the pillar molding which is partially behind it. The top molding has 5 screws, two on each end and on my coupe the fifth is in the center and holds the plastic snap for the ends of the sun visors. That screw does not have to be removed there is plenty of play after the removal of the four other screws, to safely (without forcing anything) remove and install the new moldings.
The next step is removing the two additional screws that hold the pillar molding to the pillar.
Screw Marked Remove
and this one:
Second screw to remove.
It’s tough see there but here is a good clear picture…that old mold was so deteriorated it actually fell apart.
Lower molding screw.
When I said it fell apart…….
Yup. It was in bad shape.
The other side came/fell off the same way, in pieces, nothing left to do but snap the other pieces on and…eeerrrrkkkk(insert braking sound)…”Yeah..anybody know if you can insert sound in there a WordPress blog??” ….cricket..cricket…cricket……huuummm where’s my…oh I have no staff…well, only when my son visits (he does some on my graphic design..more on my new logo search later..maybe you all can vote on one??) back to my eeerrkkk…we need to discuss quality of workmanship for reproduction parts. That won’t be a long discussion..”sucks”…there ya go, end of discussion.
But really I know that they try, and I am grateful for something that looks almost as good, especially for a rare car like mine (…meaning not very sought after..at least not yet…therefore the profit in making any unique parts is next to nothing.)
One of the first things about this particular molding is that is about 1/2 the thickness of the original and made of light plastic. This worked out because the holes are not exactly lined up and there was a larger problem.
Offset isn't correct.
As you can see the molding on the right (the original) where the screw driver blade is located, is recessed about 1/2 an inch, if not a little more. On the left (new molding) there is almost only about 1/4 of an inch..maybe a bit less. If the material for the new molding was as rigid as the original there would be no flex in the material and the lack of offset for tab on the new molding would not have allowed the use of the original screw, it would have been too short. Additionally, screw holes A and B in the picture below were not aligned properly and would not have enough ”give” but allow installation, if it was stiff as the original.
Improperly aligned.
Was this engineering genius or happy mistake?
Generally, the fit was close, not contours car show inspect-able close, but close enough for the local guys. But if you can find parts made from “original tooling” (we talked about that when I was install the dash-pad for the first time) buy those, if your Average Budget can handle it. These molding just aren’t available in any other tooling.
With the holes in the wrong place it took some pressure and jostling to get them into place. One tip I can pass on is do not tighten the screws until you have them all started. I had to leave the top two screws out far enough to allow movement to get the bottom screw in.
Keep the screw loose to maneuver the piece around.
In the end the result were pretty good. You be the judge.
Left side
Left side bottom (and my vette in the background)
Right side (and my neighbor's truck...like you need to know that!!)
Left Side bottom
Over all it took about 3 hours with interruptions with phone calls and neighbors stopping to chat. It’s like Soaring over on www.MustangV8.com forum said..”Those are the kinds of tinkering jobs I like. You get satisfaction you can actually see.” (BTW – I like that forum, the Classic Mustang section is great.)
Thanks for reading.
Tim
