Lately, it’s almost like taking a miniature vacation when I can re-purpose a few hours to work on the car and yesterday was one of those days! I was able to get the passenger door trim installed and the latch adjusted.
I still have to play around with the arm rest mounting, but first
need to rethink a way to solve a couple of appearance problems.
At least the interior is beginning to look a little less barren.
I’ve already fit checked the rear seat and side panels, so once I get them in
place I’ll send the door and window handles out to the plating shop.
The new shop air conditioner makes summers more enjoyable in
out mid-nineties August temps, so maybe after my wife’s barbecue is history I can
re-appropriate a few more household hours to install the rear seats.
Then it will be back to checking for wiring errors! I’ve been putting
that off far too long. Doing it without a helper is going to take a long time.
This is the image sent by "unknown" in the comment below. Been there done that, and it works. I remember a neighbor kid back in the mid-50s who bought a $50 Henry J to drive to high school. The interior was trash, so he made a door panel out of quarter-inch fir plywood. He used a wire brush to bring out the grain and give it texture, then stained and varnished it. It actually looked pretty nice, and on a Henry J, there was no way anyone would criticize the results!
This is the part I'm having difficulty finding.
.... or keep it simple (not sure if this will work) I can email it ?
ReplyDeletehttps://imgur.com/8pUbOyc
I got it, but will have to publish as a new post.
ReplyDeleteMy first car, a '41 Chevy, had door panels exactly like that, except in lime green!
That door panel looks great Gary ! The trim,vinyl and fabric go so well together..is that a front fender moulding you have used there ?And,have you done this youself,or did an upholstery shop do the job ?
ReplyDeleteGeir
Thanks, Geir! I’m also quite happy with the way the combination turned out. When I ordered the fabric I was worried that the pattern might be too bold and wild, but using it as an accent it doesn’t overwhelm the look. The original '56 Plymouth fabrics were actually quite bold, and although mine won’t be original in appearance, I think it will pass for period correct.
ReplyDeleteThe flat door panels were done in the upholstery shop, but I did the trim, door handle cover and arm rest myself.
The stainless trim is from the Belvedere and I actually preferred it to the stock Fury version. It seemed to work better with the materials I selected. Unfortunately, the driver's side is missing the part shown in this photo, and the only one I found must have been gold plated as he asked not only a ridiculous price, but wanted $30 to ship that little 18-inch part.
I will have to rework the upper part of the rear panels. The upholstery shop used 1/8” hard board and it is too thick for the upper and lower parts to fit properly, so I’m going to replace the inflexible hard board with 1/16” plastic and that should work much better.
Some parts are really tough to find to these cars,but this trim part is probably used on both two and four door Belvedere's,so it must be one for you out there Gary ?
ReplyDeleteGeir
I have been trying to find out if 2 and 4 door models are the same, but the parts manual is very confusing when it comes to interior trim. There should be plenty of two doors being parted out, but I've only seen the one ad and no responses to my request.
ReplyDelete