1967 Eldorado Vinyl Roof Replacement & More!

[67_Eldo]

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!

[savemy67]

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

[67_Eldo]

Hello sdownie,

You can call me Scott. :-)

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.

[savemy67]

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

[67_Eldo]

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! :-)

[67_Eldo]

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]

[67_Eldo]

[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]

[67_Eldo]

[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]

[67_Eldo]

Two more Easy Jack photos.

[Mike Josephic CLC #3877]

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

[35-709]

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.

[67_Eldo]

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!

[Mike Josephic CLC #3877]

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

[67_Eldo]

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. :-)

[DeVille68]

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

Best regards,
Nicolas

[67_Eldo]

Your interior is a mess! 
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, :-)

[savemy67]

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

[67_Eldo]

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!

[67_Eldo]

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!

[67_Eldo]

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.