12/26/03
Door Panels, and Interior Trim

I started the day by mounting the right side door panel. The left one is mounted, so the right one followed the same procedure. The door panel is held on with blind clips, but the top of the panel gets screwed into the door with screws that will be hidden with the loose piece of leather you see in this picture. When everything is in place, the leather gets glued to the door panel. I better make sure everything is where it is supposed to be when this is all done, because I would hate to have to pull this piece of leather back off!

Since the door panels were made from scratch, I had to drill new holes for the screws. A trick I learned from Frank on how to locate these screw holes on the back of door panels is to use a piece of chalk. First, install the screws in their respective holes. Next, mount the door panel. Pull the door panel away slightly to rub the chalk on the screw heads, and press the panel onto the screw. Be careful not to rub off the chalk from the panel when removing it, and you’ll have perfectly positioned marks for drilling!

The next step is to install the water shields onto the doors to keep moisture from warping the door panels. There has been some discussion on the message board on this topic, and I will be using some thick plastic sheeting from “Home Depot.” There is some stuff that has adhesive on it made for this purpose, but I don’t trust that I won’t be going into the door sometime in the near future! Years ago, I remember reading about not using regular garbage bags for the use of water shields because the the plastic they’re made of is designed to deteriorate over time. Although I’ve never seen a garbage bag disintegrate over time, I do feel that they’re too thin for this kind of application.

Since I’m still waiting for the pulls to be sewn by Frank (Some people take time off for the holidays!), so I started laying out my trim pieces that need to be covered by headliner material.

The first piece I wanted to work on was the rear trim piece that finishes off the transition between the rear panel, and the rear window. I had to check it for fit before covering it so the material would allow the piece to curve correctly.

Here it is covered, and mounted.

The next piece to work on was the part that mounts above the front windshield where the rear view mirror mounts. Again, the Pininfarina build number “682” can be seen written in red grease pencil. I highlighted it in “Photoshop” so it would read better. I tried hard not to remove all of it when cleaning off the glue on this piece, but most of it was gone when I was finished. I always get nostalgic when I see signs of the last person who worked on this car over forty years ago!

I mounted the front trim pieces to check for fit. I needed to make sure all the screw holes lined up, and the profiles were correct. Since these pieces were out of the car for several years, they got bent and twisted from all the moving, so now was the time to make sure all the pieces fit correctly before they are covered with material.

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