My newly acquired 1974 Eldorado convertible project car

[MaR]

One thing leads to another . . . .   

I'll bet that hub bearing was your vibration.

It was harmonic so I think it was either the axle or the tire/wheel.

[MaR]

This car was undercoated when I assume it was new. The undercoating is a thick, almost waxy coating that either flakes off with the lightest touch or will not come off with a blow torch. It's also metallic gold for some reason. It makes the wheel wells look like they are permanently coated in light colored mud so it's time for it to go. The inner wheel well itself is in fairly good condition with only the lightest of surface rust around the edges.












After a thorough scrubbing, here is the undercoating on the inner fender. You can see where it's flaking in some areas.







Heat does almost nothing to the coating, even with MAPP gas it just barely gets soft enough to scrap some of it off.





Lacquer thinner just makes it clean.





I finally had to use heavy duty paint stripper followed up by lacquer thinner to get it off. It took days to strip it all off.

[MaR]

Here is another little thing I finally managed to source. As anyone that's following this thread knows, I'm putting quite a few Fleetwood Talisman parts and details in the interior of this car. One of those details are the stainless trim pieced that go between the carpet and the vinyl on the door panels and the rear armrest panels. The Talisman trim is of a different style and is wider than the standard Cadillac trim that is on all other models. The only other Cadillac that shares this trim is the d'elegance trim package on the deVille from '74-'76. What I needed was the trim from a '74-'76 Coupe deVille with the d'elegance package. On top of that, I needed extra trim pieces for the Talisman center console that I was installing also. After much research I discovered that the '71-'74 Oldsmobile Toronado uses the same trim as the d'elegance package coupes on the front door panels. That made finding the front door trim much easier and I was able to find a set in my local classic car junkyard. I also found out that the early '70s Buick Electra used the same trim on the sedan and the coupes so I was also able to source a supply of shorter trim pieces for my console project. That just left a small, bent piece that goes on the rear armrest panel. That part was unique to the Coupe deVille d'elegance so I was back to looking for that part. I attempted to bend a piece of the trim but it would require a special die to get it to bend without kinking so that was a last resort. One day recently though, I finally found a person parting out a rusted out d'elegance coupe and I immediately snapped up the rear armrest panels. That was the final piece of the puzzle for the lower trim. I also found out that the CDV and the Eldorado have different rear armrest panels. The CDV panel is about 3" longer than the Eldorado panel. Here is the pair of "mythical" trim pieces:





This is the standard trim on the panel:





And here is the new trim vs the old trim:

[MaR]

And here is yet another thing I'm working on. A 3D printed filler bezel for the tail lights. Like most of the aftermarket fillers that are currently made, they are marginal at best and this is one of the ones that can be absurdly poor depending on which one you buy. None of the aftermarket tail light bezels have the rear support, the lower supports that hold the inner lip to the tail light housing, the bottom support that sits over the bumper and most importantly, the inner lip that holds the chrome trim on the license plate pocket area. This is my first full sized prototype print of the filler to check for fit on the car. It needs a few tweaks but it's not bad for a first print.











The red material I used print it so over-saturates the pictures that its hard to make out but it does have the "REMOVE THIS BEZEL TO SERVICE TAIL LIGHTS" note on the bezel. All of the different trims from the '75 and '76 models will fit it and I will be making a reproduction of the correct style chrome trim also.

[James Landi]

Your attention to these fractional details really is paying off.  Thanks for showing the comparison. All worth the effort.  When completed, you'll hace CREATED a stunningly attractive car.   Thank you for posting,   James

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

Great job on the suspension and axle rebuilding.

I think the hardest part was having to clean your hands up every time you wanted to take pictures.   There is nothing worse than getting grease of the camera.   I sometimes neglect to take pictures when doing jobs, because of the horrible rotten grease.

Bruce.

[chrisntam]

Thanks for posting the update.  I'd say the undercoating did it's job as the fenderwell looks in great shape!

[MaR]

Great job on the suspension and axle rebuilding.

I think the hardest part was having to clean your hands up every time you wanted to take pictures.   There is nothing worse than getting grease of the camera.   I sometimes neglect to take pictures when doing jobs, because of the horrible rotten grease.

Bruce.

Yea, I really wanted to take more pics but taking the gloves off and getting the phone to take a picture every few minutes really eats up the time. I have seen several youtube presenters that say videoing and narrating a car repair can often make the process take four times as long.

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

Oh, so you use gloves.   That makes it a lot easier.

Bruce.

[MaR]

I did more things. While the drivers side fender is off, I wanted to do some body work to fix the numerous dents and dings that covered the panel. While my first attempts to repair the damage went quite well, I'm afraid that I got a bit too over confident in trying to fix a slightly sunken area that I mistook for body damage when it was just part of the deep draw from the stamping process. I though that I could shrink the area out and it would just flatten but the result was so bad that I just scraped the fender rather than trying to beat it back into submission. Fortunately, I had access to a decent condition replacement that just needed a small bit of rust repair in the same area that my passenger side fender needed so all was not lost. When I acquired the replacement fender, I also got a very nice condition drivers door shell. Mine has at least 18 dents and that's when I stopped counting...  On to the pictures! With what I learned from my previous "error" I decided that I was going to try something a little less "final" if it all went south. I skimmed and blocked this entire panel to make it just a flat as possible. I started out with a black guide coat after I stripped the fender.





After that, I blocked the fender to find the low spots, gave the entire thing a skim coat of filler, and then blocked it again.





I did the guide coat, fill, and block again until everything was nice and flat.





I also coated the entire rear with POR-15 for rust protection.





I then gave the fender a coat of 2K filler primer and scuffed it to smooth the entire surface.





And then a coat of epoxy primer as a sealer coat.






Finally, I gave a coat of single stage acrylic enamel to hold me over until I paint the entire car.

[MaR]

I did some more work in the wheel well area. Everything is torqued up and ready to go on the front suspension.






I also primed the inner wheel well while I was priming the fender.





And I gave the inner wheel well a coat of satin black and loosely installed it back on the car.





The wheel on that corner also needed some attention. I cleaned all the old grease and road grim out of it. There was so much gunk in it that it had to be rebalanced afterwards.





After I sanded it down:






And after a few coats of satin black paint, inside and out.





I even gave it a correct CAX type wheel weight so the wheel cover will actually fit back on.

[James Landi]

WOW--- much better than NEW--- your workmanship is really incredible.  You're an inspiration.   James

[Dan LeBlanc]

Looks great.

Just a pointer - put your epoxy primer down first.  Do all of your body work over the epoxy.  That does 2 things.  1 - it seals the metal.  2.  It prevents moisture from getting behind the filler and bubbling over time.

[MaR]

Looks great.

Just a pointer - put your epoxy primer down first.  Do all of your body work over the epoxy.  That does 2 things.  1 - it seals the metal.  2.  It prevents moisture from getting behind the filler and bubbling over time.

I actually put the fill down over the factory primer. The new paint strippers that are available now won't even shift the old factory primer at all.

[MaR]

Another longer project that I have finished up (for the time being) is the Talisman center console. As I had noted in previous posts, I had to make a riser that adapted the console to the Eldorado floor pan and raise it up to the correct height. Now that that was complete, I started with the upholstery. I wanted to duplicate the factory style but in the material that I'm planning on using for the seats. Here is the bare console with the foam reinstalled.





Next, I upholstered the front edge with the same pleats on the front upper corner.








I then added the caps over the center lock section and then the rear storage container lid.








I then did the rear cap and next, the side panel. The side panel ended up with a few wrinkles at the top edge, I will see if they come out on their own with some heat/steam and if not, I'll just re-stretch the panel when I take the drivers seat back out to upholster it.





And finally, the forward pad for the writing desk cover.





I also painted the metal supports and hinges and dyed the vinyl on the writing desk housing.








The next step is what took so long. Since in the correct application for the Talisman console has the unit mounted to a carpeted transmission tunnel, the standard upholstery goes all the way to the bottom of the console. In my application, I though that having the upholstery going all the way to the floor would look a bit odd because of the height. I added a strip of carpet that lines up with the carpeted sections on the door panels. That was not really that hard but what was much more difficult was the stainless steel trim between the carpet and the upholstery. Since I wanted the Talisman style trim and I now have a good supply of the trim pieces, I had to devise a way to mount the trim to the console. The trim is normally mounted with spikes that are folded over on the pressboard door panels. The console is much too thick to mount this way and in the end, I made a 3D printed bracket that I could screw on console that replicated the factory style of mounting that some similar trim uses and offset the trim the correct distance.








The next issue was with the trim itself. On the ends of the trim, it was beveled to match the sides. If I cut the trim to the length I needed I would lose the bevel on that end and all the pieces needed to be cut to fit. I toyed with a number of different ways to form the bevel and in the end, I 3D printed a die and used a little hammer to manually form the ends.






Here is the cut trim with the ends rounded to match the factory forming.





I cut away the inside lip so the piece could be formed. I also added a notch further back so the trim would not shift on the die while I formed it.





The end result turned out better than I expected.





With the trim pieces made, I could then finish up the console.





Next up was to make an adapter harness for the lighting in the console. I had some scrap harnesses left over from the seats and they had the correct connectors to make a splice harness that plugs in between the seat harness and the body harness to get power for the console lights. I also have a spare positive and negative lead for a future project that will require power in the console.








Now it was time to mount the console. It's mounted with four bolts, two in the front, and two in the rear. The forward bolts are exposed so I used stainless steel bolts that I polished. The rear bolts are under the stainless steel trim so they are not visible.







With the console in and the power hooked up, all the lights work as expected. I'm not sure what the floor of the storage compartment is supposed to look like as I did not get that part but I used a piece of the carpet I'm using throughout the rest of the car.







With the seat back in, the height looks correct as well as the forward/aft position.







It also fits nice and tight to the floorpan.







Other than a few wrinkles that may just work themselves out on their own, I'm please with the outcome.

[MaR]

Another multi month project that I finally finished was the radio. It took me a while to decide exactly what I wanted to do. I could use the stock radio (AM/FM with auto seek), I could use a different vintage radio (I already had an AM/FM 8-Track from the '74 CDV that I had long ago) or I could use a modern retro style radio. I'm not terribly fond of the look of the modern retro radios but I do want modern functionality. What I ended up with is a vintage radio but I'm powering all the speakers with a new amp that has it's own Bluetooth input. I'll run the speaker output from the vintage radio to the new amp and be able to switch between any input I want. Next is to decide on the vintage radio to use. I really like the way the auto seek radio works and adding the foot control intrigued me but in the end, what is a '70s car if it does not have an 8-track player? I dug the old one I had out of storage and started work on it. It was not in horrible shape but it had been removed in 1994 and put in a box since then.









First off was to see if it even worked at all. When I took it out, I knew the AM/FM part worked but I had never tested the 8-track part. As I suspected, the belts were completely shot.








I ordered new belts and that fixed the tape rotation issues. I acquired a few 8-tracks to test with started work. The head was dirty, the capstan had tape wrapped around it, the track switching did not work, the volume was crackly, the switching between tape and radio did not work reliably, the AM/FM slider was sticking, and the memory buttons were almost impossible to move. Time to take stuff apart! The tape transport came out first.





I think pull the transport apart to work on the mechanical parts that did not work. I started with the capstan. It's supposed to have a section that is just a little rough to provide some friction to move the tape. It was covered in tape residue and had gotten polished over time. I masked the entire capstan flywheel and sand blasted just the tape section.







I then cleaned and greased the track selector assembly.








I then cleaned the internal tape/radio switch with Deoxit and put the board back on the tape transport.






I continued the teardown until I got the station selector button assembly out. This required several things to be desoldered and many layers of mechanical components to be removed. Many of these pictures were for my own recollection while I took stuff apart so they are not exactly framed very well...























Here is where I made a critical error that caused this whole rebuild to get sidelined for quite a while. When I was getting ready to put it all back together. I noticed that the chrome on the buttons was not as good as the chrome on the buttons on the other radio I had. I made the decision to just swap in the better buttons without noticing that the bent section that extends the buttons through the face was not the same. Everything went together perfectly until it was time to put the radio face back on...
























Still working under the assumption that everything was OK, I continued on with cleaning up the face plate. I pulled it all apart and refinished everything.













And then when I went to put the face back on, it would not fit. I had everything working, the AM/FM, the volume, the internal mode selector, the track selector, the eject mechanism, it all worked. Once I realized what was wrong, I just sat it all aside for quite a while because to fix the problem, it required the entire unit to be completely dissembled down to the buttons. Finally, some time later I tore it all down again and fixed it correctly and finally put the faceplate back on it.

[James Landi]

Incredible patience and craftsmanship... beautiful results. James

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

And, looking at the complexity of the whole unit, it is no wonder that they were so expensive.

Plus, humans designed them, made them, and they worked beautifully.

In my own 8 Tracks, it was always the belt that succumbed to the ravages of time, especially from lack of use.

Bruce.

[MaR]

And, looking at the complexity of the whole unit, it is no wonder that they were so expensive.

Plus, humans designed them, made them, and they worked beautifully.

In my own 8 Tracks, it was always the belt that succumbed to the ravages of time, especially from lack of use.

Bruce.

The radio has more mechanical parts in it than the drivetrain...

[MaR]

I did a bit more on the front corner this weekend. I had the front turn signal filler printed and I reprinted the headlight housing filler as there was an error where that filler met the turn signal filler and I wanted to fix that. I had to prime and paint those parts as well as the housing for the front light telltale indicators. Here are the parts primed:










And here they are painted:










And here are all the parts loosely assembled. I need to get the gap at the drivers door correct first, next the hood, and lastly the front end pieces.










One last thing: I picked up a Fleetwood Talisman console latch assembly off of ebay and it turns out that it was NOS and it's for a '74 (it has the correct "K" key blank). The Talisman console key is like the key for the rear door of the limos: it has notches cut out of the sides so you can tell it from the door key. I would like to have the rear console like the '74 Talisman has but it would have to be almost completely custom to fit the Eldorado. With this latch, I can make a correctly styled console without hacking up a real one.