Odds and Ends

I had always planned to do this restoration systematically, by starting with the front suspension, then rear suspension, get the wheels on to produce a rolling chassis and so on. The problem is that a few small things are holding me up on the front supension at the moment. So I can't resist tinkering with a few of the other bits and pieces that need doing.

The first part I "had a go at" was the steering column. It's from a Spitfire and relatively simple to dismantle and play with. It looked pretty grim when I got it:

But it just needed a clean up and repaint. I tracked down a new light switch on E bay, to replace the old rusty one with no toggle, and now it looks like this:

The next assembly I tackleds was the dashboard, whcih was also in a pretty grim state:

I stripped it of all the metal work and derusted and repained the demister vents. The side air vents were all gummed up, but a soak in warm water sorted them out, and now they even swivel and the covers move! The ash tray was pretty far gone. It cleaned up OK but the lid spring was broken. It took a while to track down a repacement but, by searching Google images I managed to work out that it comes from a pre "Air Flow" Cortina Mk1. I found a good one on E bay and repainted it, so that was all the metal work done.

The bit I was dreading was re-vinyling the dash top. But when it came to it, it was actually quite simple.  Having stripped the dash, I found that the glass fibre panel was cracked and the lip, onto which the dash panel screws, was not in good shape; so I repaired all that with new fibre glass. Then I attached a 10mm foam sheet to the top with contact adhesive and over layed it with new vinyl. The vinyl is available from Woolies Trim. Grained Black 25 was the one I used, and the match is pretty good. The secret is (i) use really strong contact adhesive to hold the edges down; the spray stuff is too wimpy to keep the vinyl attached while you stretch it over the dash top. (ii) warm the vinyl with a hair dryer and it will stretch and conform to the fibre glass panel with no problem. In order to clamp the front of the vinyl, while it dried, I screwed the dash panel to it.

I am really pleased with the result.

On the subject of the dash panel, I have a collection of switches that look like they have been stored on the beach for a couple of years!

 After a clean with a spray contact cleaner, and a little WD40, the toggles at least move. I am in the process of tracking down new switches, but I may have to rely on renovating the old ones. If any one knows another car that has this type of switch, I'd really like to know about it.