The dash is painted, an artist I’m not, but if I do say so myself, it came out pretty darn good!  More on that in my next post, time is short and wanted to get this story out there today.  If I had this on video it would prob­a­bly be worth 10K.

I was at the garage wait­ing on one of my crews, had a lit­tle time to kill, so decided I was going to pol­ish up the head­light switch trim plate before putting it back in the car.  Got suited up, safety glasses, mask, gloves etc. and fired up the buffer mounted on my bench.  For those of you not famil­iar with it, it is a piece that tapers down to a very sharp point and looks a lot like a knife.  Shortly after start­ing, I had a momen­tary lapse of con­cen­tra­tion and in the blink of an eye, the buffer ripped it out of my hand and threw it who knows where.  My garage is 60′ long 15′ wide with a 24′ ceil­ing and 18′ over­head doors at each end.  Instinc­tively, I closed my eyes when it left my hand and had no idea where it went, stranger though was the fact that I never heard it land or clang when it hit some­thing.  I spent the next 30 min­utes look­ing for the GD thing, even going so far as to lower both doors which were open at the time hop­ing that I would find it up on top of the door.  Turns out it did not go in the direc­tion the wheel was turn­ing, it went com­pletely around the wheel flew back­wards miss­ing me, flew the length of the car with­out touch­ing it some­how (thank­fully) and right out the back door, land­ing in the weeds 20′ — 30′ out­side of the door.  I never would have found it if not for the fact the sun was reflect­ing off of the newly pol­ished piece.…..  Les­son learned, I think from now on the small parts are going to just be done by hand.

I was lucky not to get impaled by that fly­ing missle, but all’s well that ends well, and BTW I really wasn’t drink­ing until much later at home sit­ting there think­ing about the whole thing.

till next time.….

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Well, the rub­ber issue has been resolved, my final con­ver­sa­tion with Rub­ber The Right Way on Wednes­day had them blam­ing the snafu on Steele Rub­ber and telling me the ear­li­est they could expect the ship­ment was next week.  I can­celed the order and to their credit, they issued an imme­di­ate refund and the next day I placed the same order with Steele Rub­ber, all of the items were in stock (huh?) and they shipped it the same day with a deliv­ery expected tomor­row.  End of the issue in my book.….….….

This week­end I fin­ished tak­ing the dash apart and prep­ping for paint­ing, I had hoped to be done with it by now but the steer­ing wheel put up quite the fight and it took me more than 2 days to get it off.  I tried every­thing with­out suc­cess, finally I put the puller back on, had Paul help me and we cranked it down until it would not budge any fur­ther.  After swear­ing at it for 5 more min­utes, we decided to use a pipe on the ratchet for more lever­age and decided we would just keep crank­ing it down until it either let go or some­thing broke.  When it finally let loose, it went off like a gun­shot and I really thought the ratchet shat­tered, but it was in fact the wheel finally com­ing loose after 52 years.

I spent the rest of the Week­end clean­ing and paint­ing the rest of the inner fender pieces get­ting them ready to install, they have all new splash rub­ber on and a fresh coat of under­coat on the exte­rior sur­faces.  The inte­rior side of the roof has been primed and painted to elim­i­nate any rust down the road and it is ready to have the new head­liner installed at a later date, it will be one of the final items to go in.  I sent the rear pas­sen­ger side win­dow out for replace­ment as it had a small crack in it that man­aged to grow as I was putting it back in the door, the glass com­pany sent it back say­ing they were afraid to take the frame apart for fear of dam­ag­ing it.  Five min­utes with a screw­driver, a ham­mer and a block of wood and I had it apart for them, now they are able to cut the glass and I need to go back and pick it up tomorrow.

Final note, Sat­ur­day I left a mes­sage for Gary at Cadil­lac Inter­na­tional about the rear fender mould­ing that is still miss­ing in action since being ordered and paid for July 7th.  He never returned the call but I’ll give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt, maybe he was away for the week­end.  Accord­ing to my pre­vi­ous call, he promised that it was going to be shipped on the 21st or 22nd, we’ll just have to wait and see what the new week brings.…

Until next time.….….….

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Before read­ing on.. lest some think I am using this site in an effort to extract unearned dis­counts or ben­e­fits from ven­dors, it will never hap­pen.  This site is non-commercial and intended as an acu­rate reflec­tion on my own expe­ri­ences as they occur in the hope that it enter­tains and pos­si­bly helps oth­ers as I move along.  Those ven­dors that aid and assist me deserve any ben­e­fits they receive through the hun­dreds of hits a week this site receives, those that do not get what they deserve as well.  It is an accu­rate reflec­tion of events as they transpire.

I am mak­ing progress, but very slowly. The left rear fender mould­ing ordered and paid for from Cadil­lac Inter­na­tional more than 2 weeks ago has not yet arrived. When last I spoke with Gary days ago he apol­o­gized, said he was very busy and would get it out right away. I guess I will just have to walk on down to NY to get it, then walk back and I will prob­a­bly have it sooner.… Another nom­i­nee for our “Crappy Cus­tomer Ser­vice Award” would have to be Rub­ber The Right Way a Com­pany who has man­aged to never return a phone call or never call with an order update, inspite of hav­ing my $1,000.00 for more than a Month for an order they said was back­o­rdered and would be shipped in 7 days. Every time I call there I am told the order should be in this after­noon or tomor­row and I should call back then. They did how­ever make a par­tial ship­ment of stuff they had in stock, but none of which allowed me to move this project for­ward. Buyer Beware, if you are going to deal with these peo­ple, this has been my expe­ri­ence and “your mileage may vary”.

Stopped by the uphol­stery shop to check on progress and was pleased to find the seat cov­ers all sewn and ready to be installed on the frames, they sure do look nice. A cou­ple issues came up, we found 2 bro­ken springs in the front seat back and will have to delay until we can fix those. Not a prob­lem on this front, as the way things are going with some other sup­pli­ers, it will be some time before they can be installed back in the car. The win­dows are back in the car except for the driver’s door, which may have a prob­lem with the win­dow motor or reg­u­la­tor, I’m work­ing on that and hope to have it resolved soon.

I’ve begun tak­ing apart the dash in antic­i­pa­tion of paint­ing it before every­thing goes back in, the speedo clus­ter is out, radio, ash­trays and glove box door too. Prep will start soon and I hope the paint­ing will be fin­ished by the weekend.

Till then.….….

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I am mak­ing progress dress­ing up the “lady”. The photo is slightly dated but at this stage all of the body side chrome is installed along the pas­sen­ger side and the rear of the car. The drip mould­ing is up, both win­dows and vents are in, along with win­dow motors, lock sole­noids. The only thing miss­ing is the rub­ber parts which are cur­rently on back order (door seals, roof rail, etc.). The final piece to be installed will be the rocker panel. The com­ing week will be spent work­ing up the driver’s side.

The driver’s side will present some chal­lenges, the crown mould­ing on the top of the fender needs all new clips and I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to fab­ri­cate those as I write. As usual, delays are the order of the day, the mould­ing ordered from Gary at Cadil­lac Inter­na­tional has not yet arrived, and when I called he told me it had not yet been shipped yet as he had been “very busy”, he did how­ever promise to ship Mon­day or Tuesday.

The rub­ber parts ordered from Rub­ber The Right Way were par­tially shipped and arrived 2 weeks ago, but the back ordered parts are still miss­ing in action. I called Clay­ton today, he was sur­prised they were still not here, promised to call me back today when he checked it out and of course, the call never came. I sus­pect there is a prob­lem brew­ing here.

Finally, back in March when I picked up parts that I had left for plat­ing at New Eng­land Chrome Plat­ingI real­ized that one “L” from the tail fin let­ter set was miss­ing, I have called them 4 dif­fer­ent times and each time was told they were look­ing for it and would call me back. Again, no sur­prise, but they never did, I finally called them back today and asked them to just refund the plat­ing costs and I would find another set. No dice, they said they would find another let­ter for me, well if histroy is a guide I’ll be putting these on the car around New Year’s Day.….….….

Talk soon.…..

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It’s been a busy week, but when time was avail­able I have been busy putting more shiney stuff on the “Gray Lady”.  At this stage, the rear bumper is hung, aligned and adjusted.  The trunk vee, bezel, seal and lock are installed, along with the tail lights, tail light bezels and the fin trim.  The left front wheel well trim is on along with the front end lip trim on the fend­ers, hood and the hood orna­ment is on too.

I also spent many hours pol­ish­ing and installing the wind­shield and rear win­dow trim pieces, who knew instal­la­tion would be so tuff.  Geez, installing a wind­shield on this beast would be a two day project.  As time per­mits Sun­day and Mon­day I will begin to add the side body, door trims and rocker pan­els.  It will be time con­sum­ing rebuild­ing the doors, the win­dow motors, elec­tric locks, door han­dles and latches all need to be installed, along with all of the new rub­ber.  It takes time but man she sure is start­ing to look like a car again.  I promise when I roll her out of the garage again I’ll get some bet­ter pho­tos from a bet­ter angle.  Won’t be long now.…

While the inte­rior is out I’ve decided to mod­ify the sound sys­tem.  The orig­i­nal won­der­bar radio works and we will leave it be so the car can stay orig­i­nal, but I am going to install a small amp either up under the dash or the back seat that will accept input from my IPod and allow me to play­back through the car speak­ers which we may upgrade.  My elec­tron­ics wiz is work­ing on a work­able plan now, after all I can’t go crusin’ with­out the proper tunes.

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