Some car guys don't like four-door cars. Generally those are the same guys that use phrases like "IF IT AIN'T BLOWN IT SUCKS", "REAL CARS DON'T SHIFT THEMSELVES", "MOPAR OR NO CAR", and "I'M NOT GAY BUT MY MIATA IS", so you can't really trust their judgement. Four-doors are cool. Deal with it. But these crew cab cars do have a disadvantage. Not only will they bankrupt you if you have to buy new window and door seals, you'll then spend months replacing all the window and door seals. Which is what I did.
I actually did all of this a couple months ago, but doing the job was arduous enough that I struggled to write about it. I'm finally getting around to it, but I might just rush through it because "IF YA AINT FIRST YER LAST".
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Behold! Doors.
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And then I took the doors off.
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Door.exe uninstalled
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Removing the nasty old door panel
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Scraping off the rubber with all the suppleness of a dried booger
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Crusty rusty door trim.
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Stripping off the butyl rubber with mineral spirits
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Clean and prep for paint
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Take out the window glass
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Clean the nastiness
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Steel wool to get the crud off
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Cerium Oxide polish
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Polishing the glass
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| Shiny! |
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Taped off and ready to spray
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SEM Satin Trim Black
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Vent window seals
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Little bitta goopy glue to help hold the vertical vent seal in
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Pain in the butt rivets on the vent vertical seal
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All done, ready to go back in the door
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Vent window installed
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Window seal installed
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Lower window channel, except that it goes inside the door
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Window regulator gets finagled back up in this hole
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| Ta-daaa! |
And then repeat four times, without forgetting any of the many many steps I left out. Seriously, I worked on this (with carpet and headliner concurrently) from April to November.
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| Before |
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| After |
The last piece to the puzzle was to get the front and rear glass in. Back in the sixties when they were building these cars, they either had a wizard on each assembly line, or rubber seals that actually fit the bodies. Installing the glass is no small feat that involves a tube of butyl rubber, a piece of rope, and animal sacrifices. I'm not even going to attempt to describe the process here, if you really want to know, go look on youtube. Long story short, I got the glass in. I'm not sure how good a seal I got, but the glass is in. What more do you want from me!?!?
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Rubber
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Tape and trim
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| Rope |
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black goop that gets everywhere
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black goop before it gets everywhere
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Back glass ready to go in
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Ready for front glass
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Front glass in
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So finally, after an entire summer of interior work, I was able to put the interior back together and drive the car. We got an awesome weekend of 70 degree weather in November, so I took the car out several times and drove around to let the ECU auto-tune the fuel map. The car is still in need of a great deal of refinement (and an instrument panel) but it did feel really good to drive it. And it felt even better to take my small friend for a ride in "Daddycar".
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All done (well, mostly done)
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The best shot of the interior
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I left a ton out, but you ain't missing much. Just imagine a few months of tedium and you'll get a pretty good idea of what I left out. This isn't where this story ends, but the remainder deserves it's own post. We'll get there eventually, we always do.
