In an effort to fundraise a bit for this project, I started selling some parts from the huge lot of Nomad and 55 Belair parts I bought in the spring. The lot came with a Nomad rear liftgate that I had listed for sale with the lot of parts. I had a gentleman who was interested so I pulled it out and thought it might be worth a shot to test fit on my car to verify the degree to which it was bent. Well to my surprise, it wasn't bent at all. In fact it fit the car incredibly well. So well, that I decided to keep it rather than sell. (Sorry Carl) The downside is the chrome is in much worse condition than the one that came on my car.
But the tradeoff is how well it fits on the car!
I got out some steel wool and polished it the best that I could and it actually turned out better than I expected. Still much worse condition, but something I can live with.
Before
After
Now that the liftgate was fitting so nicely, I got sidetracked and decided to finish pulling off the rear strikers for the tailgate. I don't believe that they had ever been removed from the car and most of the hardware was frozen when I got it. Several months ago I started to remove the bolts with the impact tool. That loosened the bolts, but they still couldn't come out all the way. I used a lot of tools to get them all out. Impact, welder, heat, and etc. I got lucky that I was able to remove them all without the need to drill/tap new holes. So they are all the factory threads. You can still see the original color too. I'm leaning towards it being Sea Mist or Regal Turquoise. Any thoughts?
I cleaned up the strikers and reinstalled with some new stainless hardware. Should be good for another 70 years!
My next update is something I've been waiting a long time to do. Now that the rear of the car is tightened up significantly, it was time to start installing the eyebrows and spears. I've had the eyebrows test fit no less than a dozen times, but wasn't able to work up the courage to drill into my fenders/doors until this past weekend. When one of the previous owners restored the doors, they cut the skin halfway down and blended it together with a new skin. On the driver's door thankfully they cut below the original holes for the spears, but the passenger side they cut above that line, so I was missing the original holes. I took a bunch of measurements from the driver's side and transferred to the passenger side. I marked where the eyebrow hole needed to be, and then held up the trim as best as I could to get me into the ballpark.
I used the driver's side keyhole as a reference guide and transferred that to the passenger side. After a bunch of test fits and being mocked up with tape, I laid out the holes and drilled the holes. I used a flexible metal ruler that I bought a while ago to get nice crisp lines. I got a little more delamination around the drill sites than I would have liked, but no turning back now.
After the holes were drilled, I went ahead and drilled the eyebrows and fender spears. I used some blue painters tape under the fender and eyebrows then let the studs mark where they needed to be. It worked incredibly well and the trim nearly fell into place.
There was a little nub left on each eyebrow and I wanted to figure out a way to use it to mount if I could. I found these little couplers at Lowe's that were made of aluminum and threaded #6. I was able to tap what was left of the stud, and threaded on this little extension. It seems to work great and is holding firmly.
I didn't get any pictures of the during process, but the door spears that I have are reproduction aluminum pieces with no provisions for mounting hardware. So what I did was taped them to the doors where I wanted them, marked the back with a sharpie, then drilled/tapped the holes. I used some small fender washers and #10-32 studs/nuts. It worked really well and holds very firmly. I got in a hurry to install them, and probably should have done some epoxy in the threads so I don't have to worry about them coming apart. But I'm going to likely pull them to try and polish to match the fender spears and paint the middle at some point. I got excited to have the trim installed. I also used some thread cutting nuts on the existing studs and it worked beautifully on the fender spears.
The tricky one was the driver's side for one reason or another. The eyebrow fit tighter to the fender, so it was harder to manipulate without cracking. When I drilled the inner hole for the eyebrow, it allowed the side mount to slide back about a 1/4" which threw all my other holes off. So I had to redrill to allow everything to shift back. Which was great becuase it made the trim fit much tighter at the door gap. The driver's side was in fairly good condition, but I didn't notice until I went to install and the front most stud that holds the eyebrow was about 1/4" shorter than the rest of the original studs. That caused the threaded nut to not have enough length to grab. After thinking on it for a while I realized that it would fit if I flipped it upside down but wouldn't have anyway to tighten. Then it occurred to me that I could Tig weld them together and allow me to tighten them! It worked beautifully and I added a washer so it didn't dig into the fender.
I noticed that the original driver's door panel was starting to fall apart right where the upper trim meets the waffle panel. I found some thick material (cake display pieces at Wal-Mart) that was a similar thickness as the original card stock and used some contact cement to attach to the original. Let it cure for 24 hours and then I was able to reinstall.
I also got sidetracked with other projects with the door panels off. The passenger side garnish moulding never quite fit right, so I had to weld a hole shut and then redrill. Also added the door locks and a new glove box liner.
After driving my family a little crazy this weekend with things not going my way, but fighting through I was able to get the trim all buttoned up and installed and the interior back together. I pulled the car into the driveway and snapped a few cool pictures. They turned out way better than I thought for being my driveway.
We took the car out for a big loop and put maybe 25 miles on it. Was beautiful driving through the back country roads with all the fall leaves. I'm hoping to take the car out to drive on Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains this weekend.
Seems silly, but a huge milestone for me to have the car riding with the original trim once again. Most people will have no idea or ask why my trim is so pitted, but if you know you know. Fender trim is hard to find regardless of condition.
Cheers,
Ryan
