It’s start­ing to come together, despite a very busy weekI had some time this week­end and very del­i­cately began assem­bly.  I really don’t want to push it, the paint needs time to fully cure.  I began by installing the new trunk seal over the week­end.  I care­fully laid it out to insure it was long enough, then spent an hour try­ing to decide if the lip faced in or out and then began.  The adhe­sive direc­tions said to apply to both sides let set up and then press then together, well I put it together wet and it was a good thing because when I went to close the lid it was fold­ing the seal out instead of in.  Now I know why the lip faces out, any­way I had to pull it out and now had about 18 feet of rub­ber coated with glue.  Long story short, I reversed it, put it back in the right way this time and some­how man­aged not to get glue all over the car.  Ended up with a per­fect job, in spite of the idiot installing it.  I was a lit­tle late for the cook­out, but all ended well and for the first time in 30 years or so she won’t leak any water into the trunk!!!

Sun­day I installed the trunk bezel, V trim and trunk lock assem­bly and then I hung the rear bumper and boy it sure looks nice!  Today I spent the day assem­bling the tail lights, cement­ing the rub­ber gas­kets on and get­ting them on the car, installed the tail light lenses and spent about an hour look­ing for the reverse light lenses before finally giv­ing up for the day.  I told my wife that they really are not lost, I just don’t have a clue where they are hid­ing.  Ah well, tomor­row is another day.….

Paul is com­ing in tomor­row to give me a hand, with 2 peo­ple we will be able to do the final adjust­ments on the bumper to align every­thing and then lock it down for good.

Until then.…

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If you click on the pho­tos, they should open up to full size.

The “Gray Lady” is finally back home with her new gray coat.  Fin­ish is pretty good, if I decide to take it a step fur­ther and wet sand and buff her she will be per­fect.  The color is just what I hoped for, I’d say it is within a half shade of the orig­i­nal.  I opted to paint her with a stan­dard color that was as close to orig­i­nal as pos­si­ble because I intend to use her as a dri­ver and I wanted to be able to just touch-up or patch any dings or scrapes that may appear down the road with­out hav­ing to repaint the whole car again.  I could have opted for cus­tom paint and matched it per­fectly, but it would have pre­sented a prob­lem down the road if repair work was needed.

I would rate the body work at a solid 10, they did a great job and there are absolutely no issues that I can see.  How­ever, I was sur­prised with the over­age on the final bill, I knew we were going over time­wise but I wasn’t expect­ing it to be 35% over the orig­i­nal esti­mate, that kind of rained on my parade a lit­tle.  Turns out we had to invest about 90 hours in body­work and prep, but this far into it, it would make no sense to be cut­ting cor­ners, so I just gripe about it for a while and move on.  It turns out that the sec­ond coat of primer that we added at the last minute involved about an addi­tional 2 hours in the paint booth and prob­a­bly about another 14 hours of sand­ing.  Ah well, it is done and now we can move on.

The pip­ing and but­tons for the uphol­stery are due to arrive at the end of the week, and all of the new rub­ber parts should be here by Mon­day.  So not much will hap­pen for the rest of the week, but by next week we will be going full tilt again.

Until then.….….……

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We took a ride down to New­port, RI (well actu­ally Portsmouth, RI) to check out the Caddy’s rep­re­sent­ing the New Eng­land Chap­ter of the Cadil­lac LaSalle Club.  The show was a fund raiser for a local club that had an area set aside for the CLC.  There were many fine exam­ples there on dis­play, many from 1956 & 1957 and a whole slew of 1959’s among many oth­ers.  Again I was dis­ap­pointed to find no 1958’s, what’s up with that.  Either I am rebuild­ing a car no one wants or they are very rare, but they sure seem to be pretty scarce.  Ho Hum, guess I’ll just have to show them when the “Gray Lady” arrives.  Along for the ride were my friend Paul who has helped me quite a bit with the car and his son Adam, an 11 year old in awe of every­thing automotive.

My favorite was the 16 cylin­der Caddy, but there was a wide vari­ety of vehi­cles from about 1912 up through the eight­ies.  They had a good turnout with what I would esti­mate to be more than 250 cars rep­re­sent­ing many dif­fer­ent makes and mod­els.  After a cou­ple hours, we motored around the New­port loop down Bel­lvue Avenue past the man­sions before head­ing back over the bridge and stop­ping in Jamestown for lunch at the Acme Oys­ter House.  All in all we had a great day.…

The Gray Lady makes her trip back home next week and then we will be busy putting her back together.   Until then.….….…

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They painted the doors, jambs, posts, inside trunk lid and under the hood yes­ter­day.  I breezed by after lunch today just to take a peek, check the color and reas­sure myself that we had made the right color choice.  “We nailed it,” I’m tick­led pink with the color and it all looks super.  Every­one at the shop agrees that we are as close as we are going to get, it looks great in the garage and they tell me it looked even bet­ter when she was rolled out in the sun.

Even though I’ve still got plenty of detail work on parts back at the shop, I’m really get­ting the itch to get her back to the shop and start putting her back together, a project that I’m sure will be painstak­ingly slow.  I was informed today that tomor­row is D-Day, their sched­ule opened up and they intend to fin­ish paint­ing the body then.  She is sched­uled into the paint booth for most of the day and I wasn’t really expect­ing that to hap­pen until next week.  Looks like she will be return­ing home some­time mid­dle of next week.

We’ll know bet­ter on Sat­ur­day, but some­time Tues­day, Wednes­day or Thurs­day, weather per­mit­ting she will go back up on the flatbed for the ride home.  I was told today that my “pass­port” into the shop has been revoked and I’m not going to be allowed to see her again until she is fin­ished and ready to be picked up.…. Guess they can do with­out me stand­ing over the painter’s shoul­der telling him how to do his job   So this is the last body shop post until we have her on the truck on the way back and begin the next phase of our project.

Until then.…

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I was informed that she was rolled into the paint booth yes­ter­day and they began to paint the inte­rior parts.  I’m look­ing for­ward to going by tomor­row and check­ing her out, if for no other rea­son than to check the color before we get to far into this.  In the mean­time, my uphol­sterer called to say she had bro­ken down all of the pieces and had the cov­ers off and taken apart and asked if I wanted to come get the frames and paint them.  I made a quick trip over and picked them up to bring back to my shop.

The frames are all in great shape except for the back of the rear seat, which is quite rusted due to damp­ness from the trunk.  I will work on those and get them back to her soon, but she still has plenty of work mak­ing pat­terns, cut­ting mate­ri­als and get­ting ready to sew it all back together and of course none of the sewing can begin until we receive the pip­ing from SMS and I hope they are not going to delay me another Month.

I’m busy work­ing on the inner fend­ers, replac­ing the splash aprons with all new rub­ber, clean­ing them, paint­ing and putting a fresh coat of under­coat on.  Also have been work­ing on the head­light buck­ets and tail light fix­tures.  Things are start­ing to fall in place and I am really look­ing for­ward to hav­ing her home, hope­fully within the next 10 days so we can begin assem­bly.  Mary Lee will be really happy when I start tak­ing parts from the house and putting them on the car, she’s get­ting a lit­tle tired of hav­ing her house look like an auto parts warehouse.

Back soon…

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We’re back from Dal­las and I popped in to the body shop to gauge progress.  The rest of the spot prim­ing was fin­ished last week and on Fri­day she was brought in to the paint booth and had another coat of primer applied.  She sat over the week­end and Mon­day after­noon they began the final block­ing and sand­ing.  When I was there, they were they were a good way through it and hoped to fin­ish by the end of the day.  If they were able to fin­ish, the plan is to begin paint­ing the doors, sills, inside the trunk lid and all of the other inside areas tomor­row.  If that gets done on sched­ule, once out of the oven, she will set and cure for the rest of the week and will prob­a­bly be painted next week.

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We stopped in to Maaco today just to check on things before tak­ing off for Dal­las.  Good News! The body work is com­pleted all of the pan­els have been spot primed and they have begun sand­ing the primer.  We are hop­ing to have the whole car sanded by the end of the week so that she can go into the paint booth for another coat of primer.  If all goes as planned then next week will be devoted to block­ing and sand­ing and hope­fully by the fol­low­ing week we will be able to start apply­ing color.  I can actu­ally see light at the end of the tun­nel and really look for­ward to get­ting her back and start­ing the process of re-assembling her.

Mary Lee and I will be away for 5 days, but will get right back to it when we return.

Until then.….

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As noted in prior posts the front and rear bumpers are com­plete and back at the shop.  While the car is out I’ve been spend­ing time pol­ish­ing and buff­ing trim, work­ing on the head and tail lights and gen­er­ally get­ting every­thing ready for the “Gray Lady’s” return from the shop.  This week, I worked on all of the bumper pieces, I coated all of the inside areas with POR-15 to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity of rust from the inside out.  They look beau­ti­ful, and all I can say is every­one bet­ter get their sun­glasses on for roll out, those bumpers are going to be blinding.

Head­light, tail light, and direc­tional lights have all been bro­ken down, media blasted and are ready for paint­ing before being put on the shelf to wait for instal­la­tion.  Wiring, sock­ets and back plates have all been checked and repaired as needed, the bezels have been re plated, so we are ready to go there.  When back, the car will be com­pletely fin­ished, with the under­side com­pleted (may need a lit­tle touch-up), body com­pletely refin­ished includ­ing the door jambs, posts and the under­side of both the hood and trunk lids.

A big dis­ap­point­ment has been my asso­ci­a­tion with SMS Auto Fab­rics, when I ordered the mate­ri­als a month ago I was told they were in stock, but the head­liner and car­pet set would have to be made up.  I asked them to send the mate­r­ial and not wait until the liner and car­pet were ready, they assured me they would, but of course did not.…  I called them at least 4 times over the last 3 weeks and every­time was told they would check on the sta­tus and let me know.  I don’t have to tell you how many times my phone didn’t ring.  I was writ­ing a scathing review of their cus­tomer ser­vice when UPS finally deliv­ered the head­liner and mate­ri­als yes­ter­day almost a month after it was ordered.  My uphol­sterer is PO’d because the seats have been sit­ting there for 3 weeks with no fab­ric, so I ran it over to them yes­ter­day.  Of course, now I find out they would pre­fer not to make the pip­ing, we need 75 feet, and asked me to track it down and get some.  So yes­ter­day I had to call SMSand order it, I asked about the delays with the prior order and was essen­tially told that they were busy and things hap­pen, no apol­ogy, just excuses.  Once again they assured me they would try to expidite the pip­ing but I won’t hold my breath on that one and fully expect another 1 month delay.  I run a busi­ness and know that my cus­tomers would not tol­er­ate ser­vice like that from me, but I do have com­peti­tors to keep me in line, unlike SMS.  I guess when you pretty much are the only game in town, you don’t really have to be good, you just have to be open…  If you go here, the prod­ucts are good but be sure to build in plenty of lead time.

I will try to get in another body shop update tomor­row, but a fam­ily emer­gency requires an imme­di­ate trip to Dal­las and Mary Lee and I are leav­ing Thurs­day morn­ing for a few days, if not we will be back to it next week.

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Mary Lee and I took a day trip up to the Saratoga Auto­mo­bile Museum to check out the Cadil­lac Lasalle Club spon­sored lawn show and to tour the museum.  The weather reports were kind of shaky but we decided to go any­way and were rewarded with a very nice day.  There were many fine Cadil­lac spec­i­mens on dis­play, we saw a very nice ’58 Fleet­wood Sixty Spe­cial, some impres­sive ’59’s includ­ing a beau­ti­ful Eldo­rado and even got to check out a ’58 ambulance.

The lawn show was due to break up around 2:00PM because it was a really busy day up there, The Dave Math­ews Band had a con­cert sched­uled at the Saratoga Cen­ter For The Per­form­ing Arts that evening which abuts the museum and the crowds arrive early.  We did man­age our way around the dis­play with­out feel­ing hur­ried, had some bar­be­cue for lunch and packed it in for home late in the after­noon.  We spent about 2 hours in the museum which was fea­tur­ing a dis­play of Amer­i­can Wood­ies from the Char­lie and Marie Mon­tano Col­lec­tion, all 13 of the Wood­ies on dis­play are owned by the same cou­ple!!  What an impres­sive col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can Car His­tory, I’d love to own one of those beau­ties, espe­cially the con­vert­ibles.  Take a look at my Photo page to see more pic­tures of these fine auto­mo­biles.  If you are any­where near the Adiron­dack Region, it is well worth the trip to see all of these cars in one place, they will be on dis­play through Octo­ber 17th.  The most impres­sive one was the 1942 Oldsmo­bile Spe­cial Series 66 Sta­tion Wagon that is cur­rently under­go­ing restora­tion and will be fin­ished after the dis­play is over, that car is one of only two known to exist.

On a side note, I am keep­ing busy buff­ing and pol­ish­ing trim parts, work­ing on light fix­tures and gen­er­ally get­ting every­thing ready to start putting her back together once she comes back from the body shop, hope­fully within the next 2 weeks.

Back at ya soon.…..

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