Cadillac & LaSalle Club Discussion Forum

I might as well document the vinyl roof replacement episodes here. Perhaps this will serve as a warning to those to are tempted to mess with their own vinyl tops in the future!  :)

I'll start off with these pictures and then add color commentary as time goes along.

In the beginning, there was a 1967 Eldorado that seemingly had no rust. As you can see from the first picture, the top looked just fine from six feet away. But there were a few small oddities in the way it was attached to the car. Curiosity got the better of me, and I've been paying for it since.

The second post in a series of pictures.

The third post in a series of pictures.

The fourth post in a series of pictures.

Pic 36 is of a mold that I made with Kato Polyclay of the lower-right-hand corner of the rear-window channel. Some of the blobs are due to the fact that there are holes in the existing rusty channel. However, on the whole, the rear-window channel wasn't damaged as badly as I expected. I'll only have to patch it in a few small places other than the lower corners.

Once I made that mold (and baked it in the over for 30 minutes), I sit down with my calipers and play with dimensions in Autocad's Fusion360.

The CAD model produced a 3D print that I could then drop into the existing rusty channel to see if my dimensions were on track (pic #37).

So far, so good.

Boy, what a mess.

Another reason I don't like vinyl tops.

But, once started, it is very difficult to stop.   When does one bite the bullet, and abandon a project?

Congratulations for keeping on going.

Bruce. >:D

Thanks!

If I didn't already have $30k in this car, I probably would have called a halt a year ago. But now that it runs like a top, I figure it deserves a new top as well. :)

After I get the top finished, then the work on the rest of car can resume. I'm a looooong way from the Finish Line.

Moving forward very slowly and carefully …

Got the passenger-side rear-window channel de-rusted -- using a host of handy air tools (saw, grinder, cutting wheel, tiny belt sander, etc) -- and ready for its new patch.

Thanks for documenting the progress.   I wish I had done that with my 68.   But I had a trim shop do the work, and was away on vacation when most of it was worked on. 

As you can see my cars top was toast.   They had a glass company pull the rear window out first.  There were small rust holes at the bottom corners hidden under the moldings.   So that had to be fixed at the body shop next door (as well as the moldings repainted) and the trim shop put the new roof on and the glass company reinstall the rear glass.  Total cost :$1300.   

Quote from: D.Smith on April 18, 2018, 09:58:11 AM
Thanks for documenting the progress.

You're welcome! Had I seen a detailed breakdown of what is involved in taking apart and refurbishing a vinyl top, I probably wouldn't have started to do so. Let this be a warning to future generations! :-)

If you got away with a $1300 roof rust repair, count yourself as one of the luckiest folks on the planet. If I was doing this work on somebody else's car, I'd charge them at least 1.2 zillion dollars. Then again, I'm disassembling and reassembling the middle third of the car.

Bonus experiment!

Yesterday I tried a passenger-side, rear-view mirror experiment. I took a cheap aftermarket mirror and attached it to a sheet-metal hook and a big ol' honkin' magnet. I started with a cheap, plastic mirror, but its range of adjustment wasn't large enough to allow it to easily work. So I grabbed my funky clip-to-the-rain-gutter mirror, took off the rain-gutter clip, and attached it to the magnet.

This mirror setup stood up to 20 miles of driving around in windy conditions at speeds up to 60 MPH, but I don't think I'm going with it as a "permanent" (temporary) solution. Instead, I think I'm going to work up some sort of side-view camera + old iPad solution.

Magnets!

Man what a mess that was! mine wasnt that bad but it also wasnt very good either! i just patched it for now but really the back glass needed to come out! 
I have progress pics posted here on my drive tribe  https://drivetribe.com/p/started-fixing-the-roof-really-GQZbFJPTQMOF80B29EoQ6Q?iid=WxHK5_HOR421qC-d1WkamQ (https://drivetribe.com/p/started-fixing-the-roof-really-GQZbFJPTQMOF80B29EoQ6Q?iid=WxHK5_HOR421qC-d1WkamQ)
Im happy with the outcome for now!

Good luck, JRockZ! Keep that sucker dry from here on out.

Progress continues to be slow on my car, but hopefully we're getting it right.

The first photo in today's installment (#43) shows the driver's-side rear-window channel marked for cutting. The thing being cut along the sail-panel side (the vertical section of the "L") is the *top* layer of the two layers of sheet metal. We need to keep the lower layer -- which is part of the inner top structure -- in place to strengthen and locate the window channel patch. There is still some body putty and even some ancient lead filler (the really shiny area in the lower-left corner) that still needs to come out.

Photo #44 is a closeup of the corner of the window channel after most of the material mentioned above has been ground away. The reason I single this piece out is because there was *not* a matching piece on the passenger-side window channel. This appeared to serve no useful function, so it was eventually cut out because it got in the way of properly aligning my new patch.

Photo #45 shows the result of my panel-splitting first pass. Instead of legit pneumatic bodywork tools, I was using my Dremel and, where the long, shiny scar close to the top of the section is, an oscillating saw. These are not the tools to use to break spot welds and peel back a thin layer of rusty metal. So I got impatient and started yanking on things with some pliers. As you can see, the yanking ended up giving me sort of a roller coaster ride down the side of the roof. The lesson here: Don't get impatient!

Photo #46 Back in the legit bodyworking environment, I had to fix that mutilated lower panel before I could accurately lay a new patch on top of it. It turned out there was more of the old top layer to peel away (at the bottom) and sections at the top to patch with new welds. Unfortunately, I did not take a pic of the final product after I finished welding new metal in, grinding it down, and straightening it all out. But that took about an hour of non-stop labor with all of the best tools available.

Photo #47 is as far as I got last night. The new patch has been tacked into place and fits very well. I used a straightedge to make sure the left edge of the new patch was a perfect continuation of the original panel that remained in place above.

This doesn't appear to be much work, but appearances are deceiving! No wonder pros charge so much to take the rust out of GM rear-window channels!

 8)  keep on working! :-)

Thanks!

I'm in too deep. No going back now! :-)

Oh boy! When I restored my '56 Biarritz (called nice rust), I thought that I was very mad to do such a job. However, compared at what you are doing, it was enjoyment!

Quote from: 67_Eldo on April 18, 2018, 03:18:31 PM
This mirror setup stood up to 20 miles of driving around in windy conditions at speeds up to 60 MPH, but I don't think I'm going with it as a "permanent" (temporary) solution. Instead, I think I'm going to work up some sort of side-view camera + old iPad solution.

I'm thinking about doing a camera with my 67 as well.  I like the look of the single mirror, but backing it up and parking it is a pain when trying to align in a parking lot.  Let me know what you learn :)

Quote from: DaddyDeVille on April 27, 2018, 10:25:18 AM
I'm thinking about doing a camera with my 67 as well.

I'm printing up a side-view camera prototype right now! It should be finished printing in about eight hours. I'm going to try the same mount-with-magnet trick with it.

Last year, I created a few license-plate-oriented prototypes, starting with the standard license-plate-frame idea and getting progressively more complicated. I'll post a few pics of those too when this new one is out of the oven.

The beat goes on. The driver's side rear-window channel got one round of welding and grinding tonight. The passenger side got tacked and partially welded.

On the other tangent, the 3D-printed side camera is still being tweaked. I'll have a prototype photo sometime this week.

Photo #50 shows the finished first-pass run of welding new metal into the rear-window channel.

As time consuming as patching the channel was, I'm guessing that welding in the new sail panels (and refining the welds in the window channel) will take another 20 hours of applied welding/grinding/hammering effort to make sure the rear window is as solid as possible. At my previous rate, that would be about five weeks.

But since our last body-shop class of the spring semester took place last night, I'm not sure when I'll have access to a MIG welder again.

Needless to say, I won't be finishing up the top in May. :-)

Couldn't get along without my little MIG.

https://www.jegs.com/i/Eastwood/352/12011/10002/-1?CAWELAID=1710707916&CAGPSPN=pla&CAAGID=47430200350&CATCI=pla-324540474400&CATARGETID=230006180037477056&cadevice=c&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5Ljf3I752gIVyrjACh0_6A7TEAQYBCABEgLCcvD_BwE

Quote from: 35-709 on May 09, 2018, 01:08:13 PM
Couldn't get along without my little MIG.

That's a great price!

I'm looking at the $500+ Harbor Freight items. I've been spoiled by the Lincoln welders I've been using (on a Cadillac!).

Does the Eastwood MIG welder do well?

Mine does well.  Lincoln also makes a nice small unit.  Remember you will still have to get a gas bottle for it.

Quote from: 35-709 on May 09, 2018, 07:57:45 PM
Remember you will still have to get a gas bottle for it.

Yup. Last night in the shop, a big, fresh bottle of gas fell over and knocked its valve off. It blasted itself across the width of a dealership-sized garage and smashed into a concrete wall on the other side of the shop. Thank goodness it missed three people who were working on that side of the building. It was a large torpedo whose thrust was in line with its launch-time 2000-psi pressure!

I'll never forget about welding gas again! :-)

Pic #51 was taken during the cleanup of the rear window glass. Generations of butyl and silicone sealant had to come off as well as the overspray (primarily from the inside) when the previous owner got a bit too crazy painting the interior of the car white.

Quote from: 67_Eldo on May 09, 2018, 09:08:43 PM
Yup. Last night in the shop, a big, fresh bottle of gas fell over and knocked its valve off. It blasted itself across the width of a dealership-sized garage and smashed into a concrete wall on the other side of the shop.

I hope that someone in that shop learned an important safety lesson. I work around those cylinders at a university, and we ALWAYS chain or strap them to the wall. Now we know why.

The five-day repair estimate has now turned into six weeks. I took the rear glass to the shop so they can fit it into the car ... soon?

While I was there, I snapped photos of the work so far. The windshield was removed for sandblasting. No new holes were found up there (or in back) so that was a relief.

My notion of driving the Eldorado from Kansas to California and back in the first week of August has taken quite a hit!

ARRRGH!

So they're still plugging away at the Eldorado's rear window. Last Monday I delivered the rear window and rear-window trim for them to install. I visited the shop today to take a peek. The fellow working on it seems to be diligently going about the task of smoothing everything out with filler. He's a good guy.

Then he said, "I'm glad you brought that trim in. Your rear-window opening was about an inch too wide at the top, leaving quite a gap on either side of the window opening. I'm filling in the gap (with putty) and making it so the trim fits perfectly."

Of course, I immediately said "Great!" I want to get the car back someday with as few gaps as possible. They've already had it seven weeks for an estimated five-day job.

But then I thought about the rear-window opening. I have stared at that opening pretty much every day for at least six months. I know every millimeter of it by heart. There's no way that a rear-window opening could suddenly expand by an inch. There wasn't any rust up there. No metal was taken out of that part of the top. The sheet metal on a 50-year-old Cadillac may change shape a bit, but not by an inch across a rear-window opening. However, he was the expert.

This bugged me all afternoon. Then I remembered how I could check the situation: The 1967 Body by Fisher manual! Sure enough, he had overlooked the little corner sheet-metal pieces that fit into the top left and right corners of the rear-window opening. Without those corner pieces, you'd lose almost exactly an inch of rear-window trim coverage at the top of the glass!

AARRRRGH!

Of course I figured this out about 30 minutes after they'd closed for the day. So now I'm facing an evening of torment as I wait for them to open tomorrow morning ... to begin grinding away the putty they've been mistakenly putting into place for the last few days!

 :o :(

Do you have a page reference in the manual? I would like to look this up just out of curiosity.

1967 Body by Fisher Service Manual, Chapter 17, page 121, Fig. 17-125, #17.

Maybe print out the relevant pages for this task and any other task that the shop is doing for you and hand the copies to them to reference as they perform the tasks.

May help prevent a re-occurrence of this sort of thing...

Yup. You hate to insult their automotive knowledge right off the bat, though.

Every time I've taken it somewhere, I've told them, right up front, that all the extant documentation for that car is hanging from the flash drive on the keyring. They say "Cool!"

Then they never use it.

In this case, the shop's "show car" is a 1967 Riviera. I told them they'd even find Riviera body documentation in the same PDF file.

"Cool!"

I think in some shops, referring to technical data is considered a sign of weakness. Or the boss thinks you are wasting time and
not working on the car.

Of course, I am my most productive when I am doing research and reviewing the manual for the operation I am in the process
of.

In my industry, you don't specifically have to demonstrate knowledge, your have to demonstrate you know where to gain the knowledge.

Big difference in attitude. Nobody knows everything, but you should know where to find it.

This forum would be one example. You can see some techs reach out here  and ask questions.

I was kind of surprised at the one guy asking about the interior lights and he said he replaced the stop light switch and when it didn't fix the problem he started checking for power and ground and that's where he started to realize he was over his head.

I could write a doctoral thesis on Troubleshooting. And now, the basics are even more important with complex systems because the built in test usually points you in the wrong direction.

I got the car back! I didn't enjoy waiting 7 weeks past the 5-day original schedule but I'm happy enough right now not to care.

They did a fine job.

They were (justifiably) proud of their work. They also offered me a job forming sheet metal, thanks to the work I did creating the replacement sail panels they installed.

They wrapped up our meeting with the obvious: This is going to be one heckuva beautiful car when I'm finished. :-)

Looks great! Are you planning on painting it?

Yes. I'm going to repaint it the original Grecian White.

I still have lots of body work to do, however. So it will be a while before the paint goes on.

Thanks!

I had to rewire the dash so I can ... rewire the dash.

At least I once again know how much gas I have in the tank!

nice!  8)

Here's a long, pictureless summary of what has happened so far, including labor and $$ estimates based on *my* experience.

Your costs will probably be higher but your workers probably won't take nearly as much time as mine have. :-)

-----
As one of my two body-shop gurus kept saying, "Do you LOVE this car? I mean really LOOOOOOVE this car? 'Cause you better!"

Checking for rust is an imprecise affair. I assume you're seeing bubbles underneath the vinyl. Carefully prod those with your finger to see how "crunchy" they are. The more crunch, the worse your problem. Also run middling-strength magnets over the surface and see if there are sections where the magnet suddenly has no pull. That will be another trouble spot.

If you must take a peek underneath the vinyl, make sure you do it in an inconspicuous spot. Once you start pulling hard on the vinyl, there's no going back (easily or satisfactorily).

Every car and repair person is unique so my numbers might not apply to your situation. YMMV.

To work on rust, all the existing trim -- inside and out -- must be removed. In my case, I even removed the window-cranking mechanism for the quarter-windows. All the external chrome, the internal trim, and the headliner should come out. You should do that work carefully because it isn't easy to find replacements for some of those parts. If the rust is close to the windshield or rear window, the glass has to come out too because it is very likely that the window channel has rusted as well.

In my case, I'd say that my trim-removal preparation time would have been billed at 24 hours. I did it myself so I spent much more real-world time than that on this stage.

Then you pull the vinyl. In my case, two of us simply grabbed the vinyl and yanked. In other cases, having someone simultaneously blast the vinyl with a heat gun would be helpful. This is probably the easiest part of the whole process.

Without the vinyl, the top's surface will now be a combination of padding and adhesive. This crud has to be chemically removed or sandblasted lest your sanding equipment get gunked up with goo. I used a citrus-based adhesive cleaner. Even though the citrus stuff is "more gentle" than other removers, don't let it run down onto any paint (e.g. on the doors, trunk) that you want to preserve. It took 3 - 4 passes of the adhesive remover before I was down to ... body putty. That would probably be booked at 8 hours of labor.

Even though a vinyl-topped car may not be painted underneath the vinyl, the factory still has to smooth out any imperfections in the metal before applying the top. So there will probably be a thin (or not) layer of finishing putty over the primer. In my case, a prior owner had already taken an amateurish stab at replacing the vinyl top. He probably realized (too late) what he had gotten himself into and therefore laid on the putty pretty thick in the rusty sections *he* discovered.

At this point you have a couple of options:

* Sandblast the top. This is the preferred option if you can find a sandblaster who knows what he is doing. There is a huge downside to sandblasting, though: It will leave sand *everywhere* in your car. In my case, since I already had the car fairly well disassembled inside and I wasn't too concerned about the survival of the existing carpeting and dashboard mechanicals, I could live with it. But if I had a pristine interior that I didn't want to mess with, I'd be reluctant to expose it to a cloud of fine sand.

* Chemically treat & scrape & grind the top. This won't fill your interior with quite as much particulate material (although you should still seal up what you can to guard against the grinder's output). But it is lots of work and takes much more time.

Of course, I ultimately used both processes. I started with the treat & grind routine and then turned it over to folks who wanted to sandblast it.

If I was a pro, I'd have probably charged 16 hours for a treat & grind. For sandblasting, I think they charged me 2 hours (to go over what I'd already done). I'll say that a pro sandblast without the prior grinding would have taken 4 pro hours.

In my case, the sandblasting revealed no more problems. My windshield channel was OK, although there were the deep pits through the roof (up by the windshield) that I'd already discovered.

The two biggest problems were the sail panels and the rear-window channel.

* There are no sheet-metal reproduction sail panels available for a 1967 Eldorado. So I made them from scratch using the body-shop class's English Wheel. (First, I had to learn how to work an English Wheel!) The compound curves of the sail panels are not complicated on the Eldorado, but it still took me about 8 hours each to fabricate them. It probably would have taken a pro 4 hours each for a total of 8 hours fabrication time.

* The lower half of the rear-window channel wasn't in good health but the upper half was acceptable. There are no reproductions of rear-window channels either, so I fabricated various pieces and welded them into place. It took me a long time to carefully cut out the old rot and weld in new material, but it probably would have taken a pro only around 8 hours.

I removed the rear-window trim and cleaned off all of the various adhesives that had been applied over the years. There were also adhesives and other gunk smeared all around the edges of the rear-window glass. I'm guessing that it would have taken a pro about 2 hours to clean off all the old sticky crap from the various pieces. It took me two days because I didn't know which chemicals would work best. My garage is now a huge chemistry set!

Now we're at the point where we can start putting things back together. From here on, somebody else did the work.

They cut out the old sail-panel sheet metal and welded in my new replacements.

There were a few holes (about 1/4" diameter) that were filled in by welding.

Smaller holes, wavy sections of steel, and the carefully fitted regions around the windows were puttied over with All Metal body putty. (All Metal is putty that also contains bits of metal).

New clips were installed to hold the trim pieces that surround the windshield and rear window.

The whole kit and caboodle, front to back, was then sanded down and primed. White paint (the color of the car) was sprayed around the window channels so those channels would match the color of the rest of the car once I'm ready to get the whole thing painted.

A glass company installed the windshield and rear window, using the proper little metal-to-glass spacers and urethane sealant. (Nobody now uses the butyl rubber goo that GM used in the 1960s to seal the windows.)

This last section (in which I did none of the work) was billed at 36 hours. This was a screaming deal (although they spent eight weeks to put in the 36 hours).

Total estimated "pro" hours for my specific project = 66 (over a real-world span of 9 months)

This seems to align with the pros (who all declined to do the complete job) who were giving me estimates of 40 hours + undefined prep time to cover all the bases.

This does not include stitching and gluing a new vinyl top back on. One fellow estimated that to put a good vinyl top on would add another $1k in labor, plus the material cost of whatever vinyl was chosen, to the tab.

=====
THE MONEY PART

Therefore, if you are doing none of the work and your sheet metal was as (relatively) good as mine was, I'd expect a tab of $10k for a car with no vinyl (assuming your labor cost is around $100/hr).
If you have to replace the entire sheet-metal top, add another $3k (minimum).
=====

And I'm still not done.

* Headliner (and roof sound deadening) needs to be installed. I'm going to use Dynamat up there. Dynamat isn't cheap.
* Reinstall the mechanisms and glass for the quarter-panel windows.
* Intall the weatherstripping around the windows and doors. On a 67 Eldorado, this involves multiple layers of weatherstripping ("fuzzy" brushes and rubber gaskets).
* Redo interior and exterior trim for all the windows (front, back, and side)
* The courtesy lights (top and sail panel) need to be cleaned, rewired, and reinstalled.
* All those crazy little interior pieces need to be rounded up and popped back into place.
* The interior needs, at a minimum, to be vacuumed to within an inch of its life.
  [Sand will continue to fall from little crevices forever more.]
* Rear speakers need to be installed.
* The Parcel Shelf (which I've already redone) needs to be installed.
* The Dash Pad (with stereo speakers) needs to be attached (once I've overhauled my Instrument Cluster).
* Everything else I currently can't recall.

Executive Summary: It is quite a job. Find people you can trust!

All I can say is WOW!!  That made me tired just reading
all that was done.

Thanks for the summary and keeping us posted on your
progress.  This will be a real "eye opener" for folks that
think this is a easy 1-2-3 job -- also expensive.

I don't know what the labor cost at a reputable restoration
shop is these days.  About 10-15 years ago it was in the
$50-$75 / hour range, depending on the type of work.
You saved yourself a bundle.

Keep us posted as you go to the finish line!

Mike

Quote from: Mike Josephic  CLC #3877 on July 24, 2018, 08:18:28 PM
I don't know what the labor cost at a reputable restoration
shop is these days.  About 10-15 years ago it was in the
$50-$75 / hour range, depending on the type of work.

The average hourly work quote I was given was $100/hr. The custom hot-rod shops were closer to $125/hr while the place that actually did my work charged closer to $60/hr.

The tradeoff seems to be that, if they charge a higher hourly rate, then the job will be a top priority until it is finished. The custom shop would have completed this work within a week. The place I used apparently viewed my car as a lower priority. Hence the eight-week real-world time.

Thanks for the write-up!  8)

As long as this thread already exists, I might as well add the post-top-repair drama to the top episodes.

In fact, I might as well include a link to what is, in essence, a pre-top-repair summary to date: My "For Sale" post of December 2017.

http://forums.cadillaclasalleclub.org/index.php?topic=147838.msg379138#msg379138

Back to the present (27 July 2018).

My exhaust was officially converted to "dual" this morning, as Photo 59 illustrates. Seeburg Mufflers in North Kansas City is an excellent, no-nonsense shop!

They also added an O2 bung to my right exhaust header. Once I get the O2 meter hooked up, perhaps I can tweak the carb to squeeze out 1 or 2 more MPG?

Exciting!

Hello sdownie,

Do you have a left and a right exhaust manifold? If you have both, then why a bung in only one, or did I miss something?  What O2 sensor and meter will you be using?  Thanks.

Christopher Winter

Quote from: savemy67 on July 27, 2018, 05:20:56 PM
Hello sdownie,

You can call me Scott. :-)

Quote from: savemy67 on July 27, 2018, 05:20:56 PM
Do you have a left and a right exhaust manifold? If you have both, then why a bung in only one, or did I miss something?  What O2 sensor and meter will you be using?  Thanks.

I looked through a number of hot-rod boards to see how their members typically felt about installing 1 or 2 O2 sensors on their V8s. The tweakheads and hardcore racers who run direct fuel injection obviously went with using one sensor per bank.

But the vast majority of folks who are simply looking for a tool that will be generally useful to calibrate overall carburetor or TBI performance recommended not wasting the extra money and adding redundant parts.

My carbureted 429 is unlikely to develop a problem that affects one bank dramatically more than the other. I'm adding an O2 sensor to monitor the overall air/fuel mix, which will probably be pretty much the same on both sides of the engine.

Had I decided to add an O2 sensor to the left bank, there might have been a problem because -- on my car at least -- there seemed to be no obvious good location for it. On the right side, that spot is free and clear.

The unit I chose was Summit Racing's AVM-30-4110 Gauge, Wideband UEGO, Digital, Air/Fuel Ratio, Lean/Rich, 52mm Diameter (Mfr. AEM 30-4110). It seemed to be well reviewed as I checked through various car-parts sites.

The bung pictured on my car is not the one that came with the unit. An O2 sensor should be mounted to sit at an angle to the exhaust pipe to make sure condensation does not collect in the sensor and ruin it. The welder at the muffler shop found this angled bung which was perfect to use on that vertical section of the pipe.

Hello Scott,

Thanks for the information.  I have a '67 Sedan DeVille with a 429.  I "googled" the part number you posted, and it looks like a complete kit.

Once my car is roadworthy for more than a spin around the block, I may consider getting one of these.  After reading your post, and checking my shop manual, I agree that only one sensor should be sufficient.  Due to the split plane design of the intake manifold, the one sensor will "see" both sides of the carburetor.  Good luck in your pursuit of stoichiometric happiness, and let the forum know if you see "before and after" results using the gauge.

By the way, this week I will be putting a metal roof on my carport so I can finally get my Sedan DeVille under cover.  I also have some rust under the vinyl top, and will attempt to effect some sort of repair myself.  I enjoyed your thread on your roof repair.  From what I have been able to diagnose from inside the trunk, inside the car, and outside the car, I don't think my rust issues are as extensive as yours (here's hoping).

Christopher Winter

Quote from: savemy67 on July 27, 2018, 09:19:34 PM
From what I have been able to diagnose from inside the trunk, inside the car, and outside the car, I don't think my rust issues are as extensive as yours (here's hoping).

The SdV should be ever-so-slightly easier to deal with, vinyl-top wise, than the Eldorado because your rear window doesn't come to an unusual little "point." Still, it will be no picnic.

You will be considerably better off if nobody has attempted to repair your top before. The magnet test, in particular, should be more successful on an unmolested vehicle.

In my case, the previous owner decided to "fix" the vinyl top, got in way over his head, puttied over the rust, and slapped on quickie vinyl. With solid putty underneath the vinyl, my car didn't "crunch" the way a rusty top should. And then I wasn't diligent enough with the magnet to suspect Bondo-based mega-subterfuge!

Visit Harbor Freight (or your preferred body-tool vendor) and snag a set of plastic trim-removal tools. Those cheap Chinese hooks and pry bars will become your best friends as you carefully separate the surrounds from the front and rear glasses. Go (slowly) over every inch of vinyl-covered metal, looking for tiny irregularities, crunching, and "magnet-ing" with your most-paranoid mindset engaged.

The geometry GM used on practically all of their late-60s vinyl-clad products is perfect for catching and retaining moisture. Heave a sigh of relief every time you poke at what appears to be a bubble and it turns out to be nothing more than surface rust.

Enjoy the small victories! :-)

After all the talk about 429 engine hotness, it was time to actually see what was going on -- after my back recovered sufficiently to let me crawl around in the trunk.

Photo #62 (there is no #61) is a pic of the model of speaker I put in this time around: Alpine S-S69 6x9s. Are they great speakers? No, but they fit well into the original spots.

Most modern speakers project their center, mid-to-high-frequency drivers above the plane of the main speaker-cone's end. As you can see, the one and only metal I've cut from my car is the cross-brace across the center of the original shelf sheet metal. Had I had these Alpines at the time, I wouldn't have had to cut those slices out because the centers of the Alpines don't project that far up.

Before these Alpines, I installed Kenwood speakers that forced me to modify the shelf. Then, when my voltage regulator died, the excessive power that briefly coursed through the audio system welded the Kenwoods' voice coils into a fixed position. This is very bad for bass response. :-)

If you're intent upon maximizing your Eldo-Audio experience, mutilate the original shelf and buy better speakers. But if you want to preserve every single bit of your Cadillac-ness, these Alpines might work for you.

Excessive hotness: The Cooling Jacket

Everything in the cooling system -- pump, thermostat, hoses -- was either new or scrubbed to within an inch of new in 2017. For example, my radiator consisted of a new copper core welded into the cleaned-out original side tanks. Cooling-parts wise, it is a new 67 Eldo.

Yet the car would warm up to about 195 degrees and stay there until I hit the Interstate and held it at 3k RPM (~ 77 MPH) or higher for a while. Then the original temp needle would slowly climb past the midpoint and almost all the way to the 3/4 mark and cool off very slowly.

Likewise, my second temp gauge, mounted in the heater-core loop, would be courting with the 240-degree mark. Yipes!

It could have been a problem with the distributor's vacuum advance, but aside from having the distributor slightly massaged in the course of an $1100 "tune up," I had checked the vacuum advance less than 400 miles earlier. It had been working fine at that time.

Over the course of 51 years, who knows how a car has been maintained? In the case of my car, evidence indicates that it was not as beloved by some of its owners as it deserved. I know that, during one stretch in a Denver museum outbuilding, it sat for 10 years, probably never even started during that span. That gives corrosion plenty of time to form a thermal insulating layer in the cooling jacket.

Alas, the folks who performed the $1100 "tune up," as part of their much more expensive investigation of the rest of the car, never thought to flush or otherwise clean out the engine block. So, as far as I knew, tap water could have been the Eldorado's only coolant for 40 years.

Photos #63 through #70 show the results of successive flushes after four days of running Thermocure (two containers' worth) through my cooling system. Thermocure is expensive stuff ($16 per container) that makes bold claims as to the amount of crud they can safely dissolve out of a cooling system. So I gave it the full Thermocure 3-day treatment, driving around of a couple of hours every day to keep the stuff circulating.

Almost immediately, the average engine temperature, even keeping the RPMs in the low 2k range, dropped to the 180 mark. As it idled, you could see the points where the temp would dip below 180, the thermostat would shut, the temp would rise, the thermostat would open, ad infinitum. Pretty amazing! It appeared that the Thermocure dropped the engine temp by a good 10 degrees F.

After four days I began the process of flushing the Thermocure from the system. The eight pics show the progress. I'd drain the system, add tap water, let it run for a while, let it cool, drain the system, and repeat. What I thought would take a maximum of two flushes took eight. I probably could have done it more but three hours had already gone by and I was tired of hauling my little recycling pan up and down, up and down.

It looks like lots of crud was dissolved out. There were no "chunks" of rust because Thermocure's magic formula simply dissolves rust into a fine suspension that won't gunk up thermostats or petcocks. I'm impressed by the stuff.

After the final flush, I filled Eldo with the standard 50/50 old-car-antifreeze mix (the green stuff, not the yellow or orange stuff). As noted earlier, it looked like I gained a good 10 degrees F across the board. But I was still getting the heat bump at 3k RPM. The bump was 10 degrees cooler, but it was still there.

[Continued in the next post]

[Continued from previous post]

Excessive hotness: The Distributor

[These events -- cooling and distributor -- actually overlapped in time. But I'm telling the story in this sequence to make it easier to comprehend.]

As many on the board suggested (not to mention the shop manual), screwed-up timing (and the vacuum that controls it) is a primary candidate for higher-RPM heating problems. As I mentioned earlier, I'd checked the timing just as the dreadful rusted-vinyl-top saga began. If the car had been driven even 400 miles in those 10 months, I'd be surprised.

So as soon as my mending back would allow me, I whipped out the old timing light and checked. I revved the engine and ... nothing happened with the timing. Poop! The vacuum advance wasn't working.

Photos 73 through 90 illustrate my course of action, which was to -- what the heck -- replace the whole distributor assembly. My original distributor was definitely salvageable, but I wanted to drive around (with Thermocure in my radiator) while I prepared to swap distributors.

Alas, the Sun has set upon the supply of refurbished distributors for 1967 Cadillacs. They're still listed in a number of catalogs, but when you put one in a shopping basket, you'll see an alert that says something like "Out Of Stock Forever." And I didn't want to ship my distributor off to a rebuilder.

So I set out to find a used, un-rebuilt distributor for any 1967 Cadillac (not just an Eldorado). Even that took more than a day because I wanted to get my hands on one *right now*!

Eventually I took a chance on Easy Jack, a legendary junkya ... oops, salvage yard just west of Junction City, KS. I first visited EJ back in the late 60s with my Dad. They had the most amazing collection of old cars I had ever seen. When I inherited my Grandpa's 1940 Chevy Master Deluxe in 1972, I'd drive out to Easy's to get parts. Throughout the 70s, I'd stop by just to wander in their yard. I knew quite a bit about old cars but I knew I'd always find something at EJ's that I'd never seen before.

Fast forward 40 years. The trees that the original Easy Jack planted have now overgrown a number of their oldest machines. Many of those vehicles have been out there for a loooooong time and there's not much left of them. In short, it isn't quite the destination it once was for car fanatics. If you have any interest in going, I'd go soon because Easy Jack's son is the only remaining human on the property.

I've added three "EJ" photos just for fun. The hearse seems to be a relatively new arrival. The other objects aren't quite so recent.

Back to the main narrative: Easy Jack had a distributor! A nice distributor! So I made the two-hour (one-way) trip from Kansas City to grab it. [I was tempted to take the Eldorado but I'm not quite that crazy.]

Photo #73 shows the various parts I'd collected. I'm not really that big on electronic ignition -- the Eldorado already starts as quickly as a fuel-injected Honda -- but I figured I might as well go all the way while I've got everything taken apart.

Most of these photos need no explanation. Here's a general word to the wise, though: mark up relative positions between parts like crazy and take tons of pictures along the way. The distributor is as relativistic as it gets. Every part moves with respect to every other. If you don't have lots of reference points, you can very easily reassemble these  things the wrong way. In my case I had additional insurance: I had my original distributor that I could compare to the Easy Jack distributor I was assembling. It came in handy.

Photo #80 is of the gap between the magnetic ring and the Ignitor sensor. If you have too much vertical slop (as I did), you can use shims (or "bushings" in hardware-store speak) to diminish that vertical slop. The Ignitor kit itself comes with two shims. Although photo #84 shows two shims installed, I ultimately used only one.

Photo #81 is of a box of "roll pins" that I bought at Harbor Freight in case I was unable to reuse one of the original roll pins. Just knowing the term "roll pin" will help you in your searches. :-)

[Continued in the next post]

[Continued from the previous post]

Photo #85 shows the way I re-used the original distributor grommet for the new Ignitor wiring. The Ignitor kit also supplies a grommet, but my Dremel-tool-expanded one fits more tightly. :-)

Rust Mort is an acidic treatment used in the body-shop world. I used some on the rusted sheet-metal top of my car and it worked well. For the rust that doesn't come off after a Rust-Mort treatment, it converts the rust to an oxide that protects from further rust. I scrubbed the whole surface of the EJ distributor with a Dremel wire brush while working in tiny amounts of Rust Mort along the way. I think it came out OK. We'll see what happens in the long run.

Photo #87 is of the famous Resistor Wire (really two wires) that comes up in Cadillac conversations so frequently. Even though the Pertronix setup renders the Resistor Wire obsolete, I did not cut it off. Instead I wrapped the end in electrical tape, rolled it up, and (for now) hung it off the firewall. Obviously I've got lots of wiring management in my future. But first I need to get everything I want hooked up!

Result: Good so far (the afternoon of Day One).

Photo #91 is of my scary dashboard as I ran through the second leg of my first 3k-RPM test. To see if the heater core would affect things, the heater valve is closed. That's why my lower (aftermarket) temp indicator is hovering at around 120 degrees F. The original temp gauge is the one on the top-left. [The gas gauge is top right.]

I very much enjoy that temp reading (with an ambient temp of about 90 degrees F).

Conclusions to date;

I'd say the cooling-system cleaning was good for at least 10 degrees F.

I'd say the new distributor was good for 15 degrees F.

The electronic ignition seems to add a small amount of enthusiasm to acceleration, but my car ran pretty well before this surgery. If I hadn't been faced with distributor service already, I'd probably have stuck with good ol' points.

Thanks for reading all the way to here (unless you skipped some spots)!

[Two more Easy Jack photos are provided in the next message]

Two more Easy Jack photos.

Looks like you're making good progress.

As to your "flushing" and trying to get all the old crud
out.  The only way to really flush the block is to unscrew
the block drains on either side of the engine.  If you do
this and run the garden hose through the radiator while
letting the engine idle, you'll be surprised what comes out.
If you don't know where these are, they are on the boss
of the block just above the oil pan flange on both sides.

Hopefully you did this!

Mike

You might find that when you remove those block drains that --- nothing comes out!  On an engine I had (might have been a 350 Chevy) the holes were actually crusted over behind the plugs (Bar's Leaks maybe or just rust) and I had to poke them out with a punch and a light tap with a hammer to break through the crust and get them to drain.

Quote from: Mike Josephic  CLC #3877 on August 08, 2018, 08:06:53 PM
The only way to really flush the block is to unscrew
the block drains on either side of the engine.

I did not do this. Whenever I did that on the family cars way back in the day, it was, more often than not, another spot in the cooling system that would start to leak. :-)

Also, a number of the forums on which I've read Thermocure testimonials say that Thermo does its duty without requiring drain-plug removal.

Thermo doesn't create chunks of rust. Rust simply seems to turn into brown soup. It is pretty cool to watch.

If the hots return in a few months, I'll open the drain plugs too.

Thanks!

Those pipe plugs should not leak.  When I do this,
I thoroughly clean the threads and wrap a piece of
Teflon tape around them before reinstalling. 

They never leaked on me with this procedure.


Mike

Quote from: Mike Josephic  CLC #3877 on August 08, 2018, 11:02:02 PM
I thoroughly clean the threads and wrap a piece of
Teflon tape around them before reinstalling. 

Back in the 70s, I couldn't afford Teflon tape. :-)

nice! Thanks for this big update.   :)
Your interior is a mess!  :o :-X
What happened to the wiring harness?

Best regards,
Nicolas

Quote from: DeVille68 on August 09, 2018, 03:45:36 PM
Your interior is a mess!  :o :-X
What happened to the wiring harness?

My speedometer died. I had it rebuilt and then I reinstalled it. Then the speedometer died again.

Removing and installing a speedometer in one of these things is a non-trivial task. So the second time around, I didn't put it back together. Instead, I decided to run the wiring for my electronic experiments through one grommet in the dash (which is also hard to reach) while I considered other speedometer options.

Then I was interrupted for nine months while I fixed the rusty top. There was little point in subjecting the dash pad to whatever crud might be flying around during the rust-chemistry experiments and sandblasting.

So now I've got some stuff wired up and much more pre-wiring for future stuff. Until I see the light at the end of that tunnel, I figure there's no use in putting the old dash back together again.

It'll be great for Halloween, though, :-)

Hello Scott,

Good write-up.  I am always interested in the nitty-gritty of repair - especially when it comes to '67s.  If you are interested, my distributor rebuild is here (see reply 46):

http://forums.cadillaclasalleclub.org/index.php?topic=133691.40

I think Mike J's. suggestion about the block drain plugs is less concerned with the efficacy of Thermocure than with the elimination of same from the block.  If I drain my transmission, there is still a good deal of fluid in the converter.  Similarly, if the radiator is drained, there is still a good deal of "whatever" in the block.  Mixing new 50/50 coolant with the remnants of Thermocure will render the new coolant less than spec.  Just a thought.

My dash is not as "haywire" as yours, but I appreciate that fact that you have the gauges hooked up so you can measure/monitor what is going on with your engine.  I have a mechanical oil pressure gauge and vacuum gauge in my engine bay.  I have a tachometer where my ashtray was, and I have a pressure gauge outside my driver's vent window to monitor the transmission fluid pressure.  The latter two are temporary.  Once I am "finished" with my car I may leave the two gauges in the engine bay in place.

Respectfully submitted,

Christopher Winter

Christopher,

Thanks for pointing me toward your chronicle! I wish I'd seen it before I dug into my distributor. Not surprisingly, I encountered the same issues as you, including the frozen screw holding the vacuum advance to the distributor body. In my case, I heated the reluctant screw with a torch. The heat produced no immediate results, so I quit for the day. The next morning I was ready to grind away with my Dremel. Just for fun, I grabbed a screwdriver and twisted the now-mutilated screw. It came right out! So I got lucky there.

In the Pertronix system, the end play is much more important than it is when relying on the original points. The magnetic ring beneath the rotor has to remain consistently close to the magnetic pickup, so the shims are necessary. The range of permissible end play seems to be between 20 and 60 thousandths. Mine is set to 35 thousandths because although none of the literature -- Pertronix or otherwise mentioned it -- I'll bet heat expansion can be a factor. So I didn't want to take all the end play out of the system.

I agree that it wouldn't be a bad thing to remove the drain plugs. But between Thermocure's unusual (seemingly benign) chemistry and the number of times I ran through the drain-fill cycle, I'm not too worried about bad things happening. If there's any Thermocure remaining, it can't be much. And since I have two temperature gauges to provide information, I hope I'll get enough advance warning if I've made a coolant-system-draining mistake. :-)

In the next few days I plan on adding three more gauges -- O2 sensor, oil pressure, and voltage -- and at least one more switch to the mix. My 3D printer is currently printing up the next generation of temporary instrument-cluster management system (if you dare call it a "system"). I want to migrate the gauges to the ashtray opening and move the cruise control control somewhere else. But the wires will still be twist-tied up in big lumps inside or underneath the original dash for quite a while.

A transmission-fluid-pressure gauge is a good idea! Right now I'm falling back on the knowledge that a) the THM400/425 is a great device and b} my rebuilt tranny is still under warranty. But I should follow suit some day.

Under-hood gauges are peachy. On my 1995 Honda Civic Si, I left a fuel-pressure gauge under its little hood after transplanting an engine from a Japanese Integra Type R. For troubleshooting, it was the perfect location.

Thanks!

Things have been happening with the Eldorado since we last spoke. But they're boring things. I was waiting for at least the "excitement" of reaching a boring milestone. Today's is as boring as any, so I'll provide an update.

With the distributor and cooling system in order, it was finally time to take a crack at de-entangling some of the new "ghost" wiring that has been accumulating over the past year, both under the hood and under the dashboard. So I ripped out the wacky 3D-printed mounts (that had taken on an unusual shape), and created a new, simpler "rack" for the new gauges and switches that had been added recently.

Just as I finished my new set of gauge/switch mounting brackets, the windshield-wiper motor died. So it was time for yet another detour.

As we all understand now, if one goes looking for a part for a 1967 Eldorado with only a part number in hand, one will find "great deals" like a windshield-wiper motor for only $400+, provided by the friendly folks on eBay.

Of course, not even GM in 1967 was insane enough to design a unique wiper motor for the Eldorado. After an hour or two of crosschecking, it came as no surprise that the wiper motor from a RWD 1967 Fleetwood works just fine. A new (not rebuilt) wiper motor can be had from Rock Auto for $87 (part # WPM142).

Wiper-related pics are numbers 92 - 95.

While waiting for the wiper motor to arrive, I pulled off the cowl grille (or whatever you want to call the piece between the hood and the windshield. You have to be careful because the little bolts on the sides (inside the door openings) are "floating" bolts. If you remove the bolts without holding the retainers in place on the backside, the retainers will plop down into the void that is created by the front-fender sheet metal and whatever else is down there. Thankfully I was able to fish a dropped retainer out by using my lifesaving magnetic pickup tool.

It was a good reminder: Don't take *any* bolt, screw, or nut for granted on a vintage Cadillac!

The loosened grille required quite a bit of wiggling to remove. In particular, the clips that hold the windshield's lower chrome trim in place are fussy. Thank goodness my chrome trim was never reinstalled after the famous roof-rust-repair episode.

It was nice to see an absence of rust in the well that contained the windshield-wiper motor. Everything came apart without incident.

While I had no wiper motor to block my view of the firewall wiring, I decided to take the opportunity to reorganize the "ghost" wiring that I've added under the hood. I bought some "high-temperature" (350-degree F) and some "very-high-temp" (1000-degree F) looming to consolidate the various cables. I used the very-high-temp stuff for the wiring that sits along the edge of the intake manifold, hoping that will keep the coil and water-temperature sensor wiring happy. The high-temp looms went everywhere else.

Squeezing wires into those looms is a real pain. I 3D-printed a loom-wiring tool, but that didn't improve the installation process that dramatically. The underhood-wiring-reorganizing process took *much* more time than I anticipated. It is also very boring so no great pictures came of it.

When the new wiper motor arrived, I decided to 3D-print a new windshield-wiper substitute cover. (I abandoned the original wiper pump last year, replacing it with the standard $12 Trico aftermarket pump kit.) This gave me a chance to make sure my pump cover would fit the new "non-Eldorado" wiper motor. It also let me take a close look at how well my one-year-old ABS-printed piece had held up under the hood. The one-year-old ABS held up well, boding well for my future 3D-printing plans.

While I had the wiring "apart," I also took the opportunity to create a new passageway through the existing firewall "stopper" for my fat O2-sensor's bundle o' wires. The existing rubber plug was cracked so I decided to print up an ABS replacement for it that included a new passageway for the O2-sensor wiring. I also added a new gasket to replace some of the sealing flexibility I'd lose by moving from rubber to ABS. As time goes on, I'll probably print different "stoppers" as my wiring needs demand more wiring passageway space.

Wiring-and-gauge-related pics are numbers 96 - 101.

To put these new wires to use, I printed up a couple of brackets that use the existing ash-tray-mounting bolts and then slid the new (temporary) Instrument Cluster #2 into place. I should have angled up the mounting brackets a bit so I can see the gauges better, but that's an easy print-and-fix.

I separated the various groups of wires out but have not yet rolled them up into little bundles to hide away under the dash. This is because I'm probably going to route the vacuum lines out from the in-dash vacuum actuators and create a little vacuum-line "patchbay." On the patchbay, I'll be able to run vacuum to any actuator or combination thereof to send air -- hot or cold -- anywhere it can be sent.

I also have to create a new blower-motor control box since I think I'm going to pull out the rest of the original Automatic Climate Control mechanism. I'm not advocating this approach, by the way. I have Cadillac Tim's book and I think any sane person should repair the mechanism that's there. I'm power mad when it comes to heating and cooling, I guess.
There will be more on that once I start to assemble what I need.

As I mentioned earlier, this is all tedious, boring stuff. I've got a whole bunch of branching electrical "skeleton" pieces that look like pic #97 running through the new wiring. In the next major revision (hopefully the final version) of the dash wiring, those will go away and I'll have junction blocks to organize the wiring harness. But that revision isn't happening anytime soon!

The new windshield-wiper motor went in without a hitch. None of the new switches shorted out. The car started and ran without catching fire. So maybe we've taken a small step forward?

Actually, there was a sort-of hitch in which I learned to respect body-adjustment shims. Somewhere along the line, a previous body-shop worker attached the passenger-side fender without allowing for any gap between the A-pillar, the fender, and the cowl grille. Since I had to pull the grille to mess with the wiper motor, I was faced with the task of putting the grille back into proper position. But was is the "proper" position?

The gap widths are detailed in the Fisher Body Manual, but then I had my real-world example too. I chatted with my body-shop buds again -- who are old guys like me -- and they said shims were just fine. Every 60s car (particularly the expensive GM cars), in their opinion, were "one-off" cars because they were each shimmed differently and extensively. So I went to Harbor Freight, bought a box of shims, and adjusted the body pieces around the grille until everything fit. I now have more respect for shims than I had before and shall be using them where necessary.

With this round of wiring and windshield work done, I need to put the quarter-panel windows back in before the winter months arise. After seeking the proper body-to-glass "fuzzy" weather-resistant trim for months, I found the place in Kansas City that has just exactly the fuzzy stuff I need! I chopped off and bent a couple of sections that are one of the first items that has to be attached to the body before anything else fits into place. Now I know how to bend fuzzy stuff!

Fuzzy-related pics are 102 and 103.

Congratulations on getting it towards completion.

With your 3D skills, you will soon be able to create a better gauge mount so that the bottom left corner will be totally clear of your right knee, in the event of an unfortunate crash.

Bruce. >:D

Thanks!

The final gauge cluster will, I hope, be mounted completely inside the (former) ash-tray area. I'm working on a "Rolodex" idea in which I could rotate the less-important gauges (voltage, O2 mix) in and out of view to save vertical space. But that's a complicated endeavor that I may not ultimately care for anyway.

Perhaps a setup using mirrors? :-) We'll see.

We last discussed the newly bent "fuzzy" strips fabricated for the Quarter Windows (QWs). With those in hand, I simply clamped them to the originals and used the oldies as guides to drill holes in the new copies. Then I used the small, countersunk screws to re-attach the fuzzies to the sheet metal, making sure the screw heads were well-buried in the fuzzy material. We don't want metal screw heads making contact with our precious, oddly shaped tempered glass!

In picture 103b, we see the passenger-side fuzzy in place. We also see my red outline around a piece that, as far as I can tell, isn't mentioned in any of the Cadillac/Fisher Body material. It, however, is important in that, if you remove it, removing and replacing the QWs becomes much easier. If you haven't already done so, remove the little strip of headliner-stapling material along the top of Piece X (as I labeled it) and then remove the four little bolts that hold Piece X in.

Pictures 104 and 105 are from the manuals. They provide the most helpful exploded views of how the QWs are structured. But notice that my own Piece X is not depicted in either of these diagrams. Removing Piece X gives you a clear shot at accessing all these other parts.

Picture 106 is of the pertinent, fundamental pieces discussed in this log entry. (This post covers only the replacement of the glass-holding framework and the glass itself. The next step will be to add the power-window mechanism and motor. Stay tuned!) The "rail" at the top of the pic is what I call the "channel." The nylon guides run through this piece. The "rail" just beneath the channel I call the "sash." It is the gutter that holds and guides the bottom of the glass piece. Then you have the glass itself with the bracket still attached.

As a reminder of how the parts were originally situated, pictures 107 and 108 show the quarter panel as it was before I completely disassembled it way back in 2017. Although you can see the motor and a bit of the cranking mechanism, the important things to look at are the positions of the mounting bolts for the channel (the top rail) and the sash (the rail below the channel). Those positions are our goals!

Picture 109 is another view of the mysterious Piece X. It serves as a reminder to get it out of the way.

Picture 110 depicts both QWs along with the roller kit that I got from eBay. There are more pieces in this kit than I need because Fisher Body used the same pieces for other cars (such as the Pontiac GTO). Since the Eldorado's QWs are relatively puny, they apparently don't need as many guides as the larger windows on other cars. It is hard to tell from this pic, but two of the old nylon guides on my windows are completely gone. Also, the old weatherstripping is all there, but it is quite stiff.

So. How does one turn these crazy nuts, allowing the brackets to be released from the glass? This was a task that I thought would be easy but turned out to be not easy. I found a small scrap of thich sheet metal and drilled two holes though it in such a way that the screws would fit into the holes in those glass nuts. Then I tried to use my new tool to turn the nuts. But after 51 years in place, those nuts *really* didn't want to turn. I bent my new tool all to heck trying to budge the old hardware. No luck, as you can see in picture 111b.

It was time to go pro (picture 112) so I got an "adjustable pin wrench" (with the dark-blue handle) from Harbor Freight to see if it could break the glass nuts loose. The pin wrench was a good idea, but it kept popping out of the holes in the nuts. By applying pressure very carefully and very slowly, I got nothing but a couple of skinned knuckles when the pin wrench popped out of the holes and let my fingers whack the edge of some nearby surface. If only the pins had little hooks on their ends ...

The next step was to try a "pipe" wrench (with the red handle). I gripped the circumference of the very narrow glass nut right up against the glass so I was once again motivated to move slowly and carefully. After another long siege, I finally was able to turn a glass nut. Yay! But only one. None of the other three nuts were willing to budge.

Finally, I turned to the world's best tool: vice grips. I locked the circular section of my "needle-nose" grips around the circular nut and, very slowly but with as much torque as I could muster, applied pressure. It took a while but I was able to remove the remaining three glass nuts. I was reminded that, if one values one's time, son't mess with other tools. Go directly to the vice grips!

As long as I was replacing old hardware, I might as well replace the leading-edge weatherstripping (picture 113). This was a breeze compared to removing the glass nuts. All I did was place a QW in my lap and begin "working" the old weatherstrip like clay or putty. Wiggling it back and forth as I moved up and down the length of the strip, I gradually broke it loose from the chrome channel in which it runs. Once it feels free throughout its length, then simply slide the rubber blade out of the bottom of the metal channel.

I then cleaned out the weatherstripping groove, applied some soapy dishwater to the track of the rubber (as quick-vanishing lubricant), and slid the new rubber into place.

In picture 114, you see the scrubbed (with soap and baking soda) QWs with the new weatherstripping in place. I installed the new nylon and rubber pieces from the kit with the pin wrench because I didn't want to over-tighten anything. The QWs were ready to put back into place!

At this point, I really diverge from the process laid out in the Fisher Body manual. But as I mentioned earlier, the advice (on this subject) in the manuals simply made little sense to me. So here goes.

The first thing I'd put back into the body is the sash. It served as my safety net since the lowest edge of the glass travels within its groove. As you can see, I worked the sash through the opening in the lock panel. This photo is incomplete, however. Just after I pushed the sash though this opening, I should have looped the lower hole in the "support" (labeled with "Z" in picture 104 and "11.012" in picture 105) over the rear stud (visible here in the top-left corner of the photo). As it turned out, I forgot the "support" during the initial installation and had to go back later, after everything was in place, and wiggle the "support" into place.

Line up the front stud of the sash with the hole in the lock panel and the rear stud with the hole in the inner-rear sheet metal of the quarter panel. Loosely attach the nuts to hold the sash in place. Picture 116 depicts this from above (at an odd angle), with "support" "Z" visible in the lower-left corner of the photo. I put "support" inside quotation marks because it isn't apparent to me what that piece supports.

Picture 117 shows the next piece I'd recommend installing: the channel. Once you wiggle that through the lock-panel opening and figure out generally how it attaches to the sheet metal, grab the QW, drop it a short ways though the window opening (with the top of the QW glass pointing toward the car's interior, inside of the drip rail), feed the nylon guides into the channel slot, carefully fit the studs on the channel through their mounting holes in the sheet metal, and loosely attach the three nuts that hold the channel in place. Make sure the bottom of the glass is either sitting inside the sash or will drop into the sash when the channel is lowered.

I have no pictures of the delicate glass-installation process because I had no hands remaining to hold a camera. It can be frustrating trying to balance all these pieces in place while trying to fit the studs into the appropriate holes. Remain calm, firm, and steady!

At this point, something in my lower back popped. So I figured I'd stop working on the car, sit down in a comfy chair, and write this up.

The QWs are now in place ... sort of. There's still the rest of the motorized (in my case) mechanism and lots of adjusting to do. As soon as I figure that out, you'll be the first to know! :-)

nice! Glad you did not damage your window glass.

Progress is slow. My back "popped" twice in a span of less than two months, so that moderated my enthusiasm for wiggling around for a while. But life must go on so ...

The quarter windows remain unadjusted and motorless. But that's OK because now I can at least slide them into whatever position I want and cruise.

I had not taken into account all the time it would take to clean up all the window trim pieces. After years of vinyl-top and paint shenanigans, there was quite a bit of left over butyl, body putty, and paint to scrape away. Then I snapped and sealed the various layers of drip-rail and weatherstrip-retaining trim into place. That was so easy (and I was so lazy) that I didn't take pictures of that process.

I did, however, take pictures when I took everything apart and those were life savers. One of those old pics (118) shows the screw and bracket that secures the end of the window weatherstripping. When installing the new weatherstripping, replacing this bracket is a booger because there's no hole or marking on the weatherstrip rubber itself. You have to stick a pointy object through the rubber and feel around until you locate the screw hole. Then you have to blindly run the screw (with the bracket on it) through the rubber and find the hole. It isn't as easy as it sounds.

When replacing the weatherstripping, the manual recommends  squeezing the adhesive (pic 119) into the outer groove of the weatherstripping channel and then working the rubber into place. I did that on the driver's side but the problem is that, unless your adhesive-application skills are perfect, some of the goopy adhesive will drip out of the channel (which is above you) and onto your lap or head or whatever. Eeeewwww.

So on the passenger side, I dug out some syringes (pic 120) that I bought to do things like painting gauges or micro-oiling or other small, liquid tasks. I loaded the syringe with the adhesive (which is pretty runny), and injected adhesive to weatherstripping I'd already worked into place (pic 121). Since not much adhesive seems to be necessary, I think this (pic 122) is a better way to do the job than the original recommended technique.

When I got done with the weatherstripping, I had a seal that fit right up to the door-window glass on both sides for the first time in a year. Yay!

My last task for the day was to get the door-beltline trim piece ready to be reinstalled. The front rubber/plastic guide that keeps the window from rattling around had broken off. Alas, I could not find another piece like it. So I printed one up using nylon (pic 123). It seems to be flexible enough to work. I removed the remnants of the original piece from around the small pop rivet by melting the old rubber/plastic with a soldering iron. I wanted to leave the pop rivet in place to use as an anchor for the new piece (pic 124). I cut a "J" shape into the new piece with a Dremel so I could slide the new piece around the old rivet (pic 125).

I applied a bit of silicone sealant to the new piece (for a bit of additional attachment insurance), and slid the new nylon onto the beltline trim. It fit as I expected.

The next step, which hopefully takes place tomorrow, is putting the trim piece back onto the door. It is sort of tricky because you don't have much room to work the attachment screws past the narrow window slot. But it can be done!

Cool idea printing your own slider for the glass!

Thanks!

In those photos I have the new slider mounted backward. I finally found another beltline trim piece to compare and the slider was oriented in the opposite direction.

More than that, though, is the fact that the internals of my driver's-side door are slightly misaligned. The front part of the window glass is too close to the exterior skin. This means that the slider (at its full size) won't fit between the external sheet metal and the window-raising mechanism, forcing the window to stop one-half inch shy of its fully closed position.

To allow the window to fit, I ground most of the 3D-printed slider away to provide clearance for the window-raising mechanism. That's the nice thing about printing one's own parts: They can be mutilated with impunity! :-)

Ultimately I need to take that door completely apart anyway so it's no big deal.

Now that the weatherstripping is in place up the A pillar and along the roofline, the window fits just fine. I'll be able to survive the winter!

It's been a while since I've updated this thread. Unfortunately, that's because things have been moving slowly. Oh well.

One detail that caused a slight panic a couple of years ago when the vinyl top was revealed to be a scam was another easy-to-overlook smattering of rust spots on the lower cowl/firewall, down by the lower door hinge. [Door_1 pic] The spots appeared (to me) to be surface rust but when poked with an ice pick, demonstrated a lack of metal underneath. Oh no! My body-shop mentor said "Get rid of this car now." Those guys never did like the Eldorado!

I calmed him (and myself) down a bit by pointing out that the Eldo was not a unibody car. A frame runs under the first 3/4ths of a 67-70 Eldorado, so we weren't necessarily looking at impending structural failure. In fact, if you got underneath the car and looked up, everything seems perfect. Still, it sort of rattled me. But fixing the top took priority for the following nine months.

The more research I did, the less worried I became about the condition of the cowl. I'd disassembled enough of the front-end sheet metal to see that the A-pillar rust you find on some Eldos didn't exist here. When I pulled the cowl vent to replace the windshield-wiper motor, all the areas were peachy. So, for whatever reason, the rust seemed to be confined to that area around the hinge. [Door_2 pic]

I cut a chunk of sheet metal from the hood of a late-model salvage GM car and painstakingly bent it into shape. It is a complex shape that probably consumed at least 8 hours of work even though it seems you could knock that out in about 30 minutes. Tap, tap, tap. Fit into place. Note gaps. Tap, tap, tap. Repeat ad infinitum. [Door_3 pic]

With an endoscope, I peeked through the rust holes to see what I could see. It didn't look bad. [Rocker pic] So I blasted the whole cavity (as best I could) with Evapo-rust (cousin to Thermocure) a few times. Then I blasted a few blasts of Rust Mort (a rust-converting acid) and *then* a liberal multi-blasting of 3M Cavity Wax. With that level of chemical embalming, that section of the car should still be intact when the pyramids crumble. [Door_4 pic]

The conventional wisdom may have dictated welding it into place. But more and more these days, cars are glued together with "purple stuff," another amazing 3M chemical concoction. Gluing is not only easier, it eliminates heat that warps metal panels. And it is arguably stronger than a weld.

So I ground all of the paint from all surfaces, coated everything with "black stuff" (the brother of "purple stuff"), [Door_5 pic] clamped the patch into place, and hit it with a heat gun for 30 minutes (to accelerate curing). The "black stuff," in addition to being an adhesive is also a rust protectant so I didn't have to worry about adding primer to the mix. [Door_6 pic]

This post will cover a few odds and ends, not necessarily in chronological order.
In fact, the first item I'll mention here happened yesterday!

Two years ago as part of my Big Expenditure, the THM 425 in my '67 Eldorado was rebuilt. The rebuild came with a two-year warranty. For the past year, my transmission (and engine) have been leaking progressively more oil. Not a lot, but more than the no-leak-at-all mentality I associate with spending thousands of $$$$$ on Cadillac rebuilds.

In the meantime, I've been working on eliminating vacuum leaks. When I pulled the vacuum hose from the OJ that connects it to the THM, I found a *tiny* bit of fluid. Still, a "tiny" bit is more than one should see, so that sealed the deal: I took the car back for warranty work.

There were no major malfunctions. The vacuum modulator turned out to be weak and leaking. I figured that was a one-day job. Two months later, he's still looking for leaks. I'm pretty wound up by now, but I kept my cool during my increasingly frequent chats with him. He finally decided to replace the transmission oil-pan gasket Monday (July 29th).

I got the Eldo back yesterday afternoon (July 31st). It shifts better than ever, no longer feeling "mushy" off the line. If I wanted to, I could chirp the front tires pretty easily when the lights turn green. And the engine runs Cadillac smooth because the new modulator sealed what I believe to be the last of the vacuum leaks.

Most amazingly, when I looked on the driveway this morning, there were no leaks of any sort underneath where the car had been sitting! Zounds!

We'll have to see how long this streak of good fortune lasts.

While the transmission guy had the car, he apparently left the ignition on once while the engine was not running. My Pertronix Ignitor I and its matching Flame-thrower coil did not appreciate that. The coil apparently fried before the protective 10A fuse I installed kicked in. The Ignitor I was spared by the fuse, however. He installed a new mystery coil (for no charge) that seems to work. But not knowing that coil's specs makes me nervous, so I'll probably plunk for another Flame-Thrower 1.5-ohm coil and keep this one as a backup.

Sorry about the absence of pics for the above verbiage.

Just after I completed the cowl patch mentioned in the previous message, I turned my attention to the lower-rear edge of the driver's side door. Like the cowl, it too had spots that turned out to be more than surface rust. [Edge_1 pic]

I cleaned out the rust to see what I was up against. [Edge_2 pic] Like the cowl, there were holes alright, but nothing to worry about. I treated them with Rust Mort and primer and I'll probably have them painted this way. Since they'll effectively act as ventilation holes, I think they'll do more to help water escape, reducing the propensity to rust in other parts of the door. [Edge_3 pic]

My massive, scary, temporary "dashboard" welcomed another module: A Bluetooth receiver/four-channel DSP-powered preamp. Tunes! [Bluetooth_preamp pic]

The rusty dip in the middle of the vast Eldo hood was the very first body part I started working on more that two years ago. I cleaned and straightened up what I'd done a bit and installed the cross-brace I fabricated to replace the rusted-away original. [Hood_1, Hood_2, and Hood_3 pics] I'll probably end up putting the original trim piece back down the center of the hood.

The body-shop assistant at the school asked me if he could practice his pin striping techniques on my car. I said sure. [Design_1 pic]

I found a set of second-gen Toronado hubcaps for $80. Since Eldo hubcaps go for much more money, I figured I'll use the Toronado items in the interim. Of course, I had to replace the Toro emblems with an anonymous circular 3D-printed doodad. [Hubcaps pic]

Finally on the way home yesterday (July 31) gettin' some gas. [Gas_1 pic]

Nice! Keep it up! You will find that you will keep this car because it gave you so much opportunity to learn and meet people. Like my 68 that keeps me busy all the time. I have invested so much time and money, it's not worth it from an financial point of view. But it allowed me to meet and learn so much - I will never sell my car...

Best regards,
Nicolas

Thanks!

Which one is not like the others?

 ;D  Good one.

Good to see the update...thx

I'm tired of waiting for myself to rearrange the Eldorado's ductwork so I visited Wal-Mart and snagged a fan. Classy!

Also from Wal-Mart, their $20 AM/FM receiving, USB-stick reading, Bluetooth-connectable stereo unit replaced my DIY quad preamp (for the moment). I'm not even using the stereo's 18W/channel (four-channel) output. It's a pretty amazing deal for the technology offered, even though there is so little metal attached to the internal IC power amp that I'm sure the thing would cook itself in a hurry if somebody actually tried to use it to drive 8-ohm (or below) speakers.

The cheapy receiver also draws a serious 80- to 100-ma of vampire current when it is turned "off" (to keep the clock and the internal memory alive). If someone hooked it up according to the instructions, their battery would be dead within a week if the vehicle it is attached to isn't started and run. I'm going to make a little supercapacitor backup system for it, but I don't think my backup will keep the thing backed up for more than a few minutes. This means that every time I shut off the car, it forgets what song was playing from the USB stick or what radio station I was listening to.

Still. $20!

You can also see the 2.5" defroster hose that currently squirms from the 3D-printed adapter I made to attach it to the main ventilation output inside the dashpad-less dash. I think that, to provide myself enough room to run that hose various places, I'm going to have to pull the bulky Automatic Climate Control from its slot in the dash and fabricate something new. We'll see.

Things have been moving slowly, but I finally got new mirrors on my 1967 Eldorado. I snagged some driver-quality rear-view mirrors from a 1968 Eldorado.

As many of you know, there is a world of difference between '67 and '68 mirrors. In 1968, a whole new set of auto-safety requirements went into effect. The new requirements for external mirrors were extensive and relatively detailed. Mirrors in 1968 had to display a minimum area (which was a larger area than the '67 mirrors provided) and, more importantly from a mounting-on-the-door perspective, mirrors for the first time had to meet "breakaway" standards.

When you look at the simple and robust mounting arrangement on the '67, you wonder why Cadillac would change it. Well, the problem was that it was *too* robust. It some body or some thing was whacked with the driver's side mirror on a stock '67 Eldorado, they would definitely feel the pain -- if they survived. Therefore the '68 driver's side mirror will not bolt directly to a '67 door.

Of course, 50-plus years later, one would really rather not perform any modifications to the '67 door sheet metal to accommodate a completely different 1968 mounting philosophy. Therefore one needs an adapter.

After about a week of messing around with my 3D printer, I came up with such an adapter (photo #2). Since my printer is an old cheapie, the toughest material it can print is ABS plastic. Unfortunately, I don't think ABS is up to the task of supporting an external rear-view mirror.

Shapeways is a company that prints out 3D files in a number of different materials. In particular, their aluminum printing option uses lasers to create a piece of solid aluminum as opposed to the sintered outputs using other metals. I had never tried using Shapeways before (even though they've been around for a long time), so I sent them my file and $100 (!) and crossed my fingers. Three weeks later, I received the final product. It was exactly what I needed: compact and strong. The acid test was installing it.

Pulling out the remote-control cable for the original mirror was easy. I recommend tying a strong string or thin wire to the remote-control "joystick" before you pull the old mirror out. You will then use that string/wire to snake the new joystick back through the door.

I used a bench grinder to remove sharp corners and bits of metal from my adapter to make it easier to fit into the existing door openings. I made no changes to the driver's side door itself. Ultimately, everything fit together snugly. Yay!

There were no '67 passenger-side mirrors so the passenger-side upgrade proposition was simple: Unscrew the mirror mount from the '68 and screw it onto the '67. I originally measured the location of the new driver's-side door to determine the position of the passenger-side mirror. But when I looked at the passgener mirror from the driving position, the mirror was too far forward. Ultimately I moved the passenger-side mirror about three inches back from the driver's-side position. Mirror locations vary depending upon where and how you sit as well as how large you are. My passenger mirror is in a useful spot, so I'm happy.

I may make some new rubber gaskets for the bases of both driver and passenger sides.

Regarding your radio -- my '67 had a stereo receiver, and in "those days" it was designed with an electro-mechanical relay so that when the multiplex stereo side of the receiver determined that the signal was too weak, the relay would audibly click, and as you likely already surmise, the "serial clicking" would occur on marginal reception stereo.  I don't recall if there was a "monaural override" that would defeat the clicking--- Regarding the climate control and the a/c compressor system, it was incredibly durable. My rear engine seals leaked, which was an issue for my father-in-law, since his home had a lovely, spotless cement driveway. Mine was a daily driver, and I was commuting 90 miles per day, every work week from '72 thru '85--in rain, snow, etc... everything kept working, and I was never stuck with it.  Driving it in the snow was an incredible experience... only bumper high snow could stop it.  I kept the auto height compressor working (they carried the repair kit), and kept the vinyl top water proofed with "snake oil." Over time, the front floor pan required some DIY metal flashing... and then in the mid 80'sthe vacuum door locks decided to lock me in, and on occasion, I had to exit via the driver's side window--- so, sadly, I gave the car away, but it still ran silky smooth, and with the tires at factory spec (24-22 psi!), it was lovely drive-- I always felt like I was being "pulled rather than pushed" with that car, and that was a good and reassuring feeling.  James