Month: February 2009

In the last week or so,  I repaired the worn slots in the rest of the door latches.  The next step is to repair some worn spots on the main latch bodies and put everything back together.  I still need to find or make the correct rivets that go through the slots.

I also fitted the wooden roof ribs.  They needed a bit of trimming to fit up nicely with the wood around the edge of the roof opening.  I also had to drill some holes for attaching the wood blocks that hold the sun visors.  When it is a bit warmer, I can put a coat of varnish on them and they will be ready for installation.

I did some welding and grinding, and got the slot in the latch mechanism back to its original shape.
Then I cleaned up and took apart the other three latch assemblies. They will all need the same repair.

I took the most-worn door latch mechanism and cleaned off all the dirt and grease with Easy-Off oven cleaner  (great stuff!)  The mechanism is in pretty good shape, except for one metal pin that slides in a slot.  The pin and slot badly worn, letting the whole sliding part of the latch flop around and get out of position.  I’ll fix it by using my welder to add more metal to the worn portion of the slot and grinding and filing it back to the correct shape.  I’ll also make a replacement for the pin with my mini-lathe.

I also put a coat of varnish on one of the 7 wooden ribs that will go across the roof.  The other 6 will need some fitting before they are ready for that.

I fixed the two broken studs on one of the seat tracks. These studs are 1/4-20 bolts with funny triangle-shaped heads that are spot-welded to the track. To make replacements, I took some 1/4-20 flat-headed bolts and ground the heads on opposite sides until they had the correct shape. Then I welded them in place on the track.

The tracks were originally cad-plated, and one of them had gotten rather rusty. So I bead-blasted it and painted it with silver spray paint. Fortunately the tracks are completely hidden under the seat, so nobody will ever notice my fake “plating”. The other track still had almost all of its plating intact, so I left it alone.

It’s been really cold this month, so no possibility of doing any filler work or painting on the body. Maybe I’ll start repairing a couple of the door latch mechanisms. The front ones have some rather worn bits.