Hi again,
Didn’t have time to post more during the last week.
Now is the time to continue the thread. Today I have around 100 pictures of the disassembly of the car. I really underestimated the impact a shed could do to a car in 15 years.
The more I dismantled the more I came to the conclusion to remove everything and make the car really clean and nice again.
Originally I thought to just vacuum-clean it and put new seat covers on the seats but I wanted a healthy environment inside so there was now other way than to remove everything and clean it as good as possible.
During the first steps of disassembling I was lucky to have my former corvette for some days. I took it for a ride with my daughters and I made some pictures with VIN 573 next to it.
After that I was motivated enough to continue with the disassembly.
Now was the time to remove the carpet. It looked still good and the smell wasn’t that bad. But it wasn’t good enough for me, so it had to go out of the car.
The seat guides left some surface rust on the carpet…
To remove the seat really only takes 5 minutes…
Before it was possible to remove the carpet I had to use a heat gun to carefully remove the vinyl (which is attached on the carpet) from the epoxy parts.
After approximately 10 minutes the vinyl section was lose….
Wow, there was still beach sand from California under the carpet inside the car
The padding of the carpet absorbed a lot of mice debris over time…
As mentioned, mice debris was in several corners. Notice the quarter a previous owner lost in the car…
Here you see the storage compartment without the carpet inside. Mostly glue is remaining on the surfaces.
BTW: I decided to use a dedicated vacuum cleaner for the cleaning job which I will throw away after the cleaning of all the mice debris is done. For health reasons I think that is a good investment and my wife was happy to get the latest high tech vacuum cleaner in exchange of our older one which is now the “D-cleaner”.
A mice meal behind a knee pad…
This speaker saw better times in the past. No wonder there was no sound from the rear section when I did the sound check…
Somehow I got scared a little what I put myself into. Notice the 500 series binnacle is still in place. You see that it is a slightly different design. I will come to that issue later more in detail.
More removal…
Me at work…
I cleaned all parts with the vacuum cleaner and spread a disinfecting fluid over every part just to store them I my garage. I took the parts for later restoration and cleaning more in detail.
Of course the screws of the sunshades made a lot of trouble. It took me a long time before I was able to remove the roof section.
This was a great find for me as my nickname is Don. Some worker engraved his name in the middle tunnel section of the car DON B. Awesome
Now was the time to think it would be best somebody would come along and make you a reasonable offer for your car. Ahhhh, the car looked now like a pile of trash. Those pictures were made around Summer 2010.
As the sound padding beneath the relay-section locked terrible….
…I decided to make an exact replica out of new rubber with the same height. As I was frustrated about the actual status of the car I had to make something new to see were I wanted to go with the project.
I peeked inside the ventilation openings and found of course evidence of the previous inhabitants. Now it was clear that I had to disassemble the ventilation section as well to remove every trace of the little fellows…
Believe me, if you had mice in your car for quite a while I bet your ventilation system would look similar inside. Forget about just putting some freshening-spray inside. The only way to make it clean, fresh smelling and healthy again is to disassemble it and clean it from the ground up. At least this was my way to go.
Also the fan motor held some mice nut-dessert….
This is the top view on the steering column bracket. The mice had a pantry at this location as well.
After picking off the interior from the left door the inside looked quite good.
The right hand side door was a different story. Mice built a “special swinging apartment” with a lot of mice-furniture inside….
To clean out this mess I had to modify the “D-cleaner” by attaching a garden hose and put some gaffer tape to make a good connection.
The vacuum cleaning was step one. Step two was to get out more hardened debris with a long brush and then use the “D-cleaner” again.
Now it was time for the putty knife. As all DeLorean restoration dudes know, you use a lot of blood during work inside the doors…
After using the putty knife and my “D-cleaner” for a while the surface looked much better. Imagine the doors were be made out of normal steel; they would never have survived the mice attack. At the end I used sanding paper and disinfecting spray to finish the inside of the door. Now it looks like new and smells great. Forgot to take a final picture. The work inside the door took me around 2 days.
Some of the wiring inside the door had also suffered from the former inhabitants. Now it was clear why the door lights didn’t work at the arrival of VIN 573 at my home.
There were a lot of parts where I just decided to go for the NOS replacement. Obviously you can see the mice debris on the old rubber pads. That is my favorite thing on a DeLorean, that you can get your hands on so many NOS parts that easy
Those ventilation parts for the front glass section had a factory modification with some duct tape put on. I think it should channel the air in the middle section to the side. With this method they saved the cost on an extra plastic tool.
Some of the handling brackets on the right hand side door were badly used as a mice urinal…
It was time again for disinfecting, cleaning, sanding and then painting. A hot air oven helped me a lot to dry things faster…
Now it looks much better. Even if it is hidden inside the door and nobody will see it ever again I prefer to have the parts in a nice shape.
Did I mention that I found a little mice nest behind the passenger side rear view mirror? Check this out…
Those handles can only be used as a core.
When the mice got bored in VIN 573 they sometimes started to eat the plastic inside the car…
No inch without traces of the little fellows…
As I smelled something inside a pocked in the roof section of the door I stared to use the “D-cleaner” again. There was a lot of stuff inside.
On the driver side door I found something, which didn’t come from the mice. This actually was a package of mints left from one of the employee back in Dunmurry Ireland.
For 12 pence you could buy a pack of mint in 1981.
I couldn’t believe how long it took to disassemble the interior to the ground.
I decided to make sure the electric in the car stayed in function, especial the electronic for the engine.
As it was clear that all the brackets had to be removed and redone even in this state I was able to drive the car in this state; of course only some meters inside the garage but still with it’s own engine.
The wooden parts behind the seats weren’t that nice anymore. I was considering to clean them and repaint them but after reconsidering I thought that still the shed smell would come out in the future as wood is a kind of living thing.
I ended up ripping the wood out of the car.
Here one piece of the old wood. Unfortunately those aren’t available as a NOS part anymore. It was time to activate Plan B on that issue.
I found a carpenter with an eye for details. He made an exact replica with the same wood of every piece, which belongs in the car. After I received the parts I painted them the same way the factory did 30 years ago for the final finishing…
Every detail is there and now I am happy with the color.
Even while the battery cover isn’t cleaned properly you get a feeling of the final result. Even the two Phillips screws that hold the lower bracket are NOS parts. I love to have NOS screws
For me a difficult thing was to find the correct screw anchor which was used in the factory when VIN 573 was assembled. The old ones were so bad there was no way to reuse them.
Finally I got them in the correct size as DMCH had only a larger version and I didn’t want to go bigger when it is not original/correct.
I saw other DeLoreans with other fastening methods in the wood area, I think they changed that during the production time. Anyhow I found the correct solution for my car
The carpet
From the looks of it the carpet was in good shape.
Behind the surface you can see that the little fellows had time to eat there way through the foam
After I removed all the carpet parts, I tried to clean it as good as possible.
For that I used soap, disinfection agent and my high pressure cleaner.
I dried all the carpet parts in the sun….
… and put laundry detergent to absorb the old smell.
At the end I was able to get my hands on a complete NOS carpet set that I will use in the future for my restoration efforts. I come back to the carpet in time.
The seats
With the seats I had a lot of work as well. It was clear that the old covers couldn’t stay, so I removed them. I was able to get a very good set of NOS covers, more on that in the near future.
First I had to remove the old covers and clean everything as good as possible.
Here you see that the rubber underneath the seat is still in great shape…
Interesting markings found during a more detailed inspection…
One cover removed, one to go…
Check out the production date of the foam.
All the small parts were carefully cleaned and stored properly for the steps to come.
Bottom side cleaned and repainted…
To clean the foam, I used a lot of stuff.
I borrowed a wet vacuum cleaner, which was a great thing.
Here you see the impact of the wet vacuum cleaner. Top side only after normal washing. At the lower section on the picture you see the effect after using the wet vacuum cleaner.
I putt the foams out in the garden for several weeks used my ozone generator and after a certain time any old smell was gone and the foams smelled neutral again
During my restoration efforts I had visitors from time to time. In this case a DeLorean owner from Munich visited me. This was a great afternoon…
After I removed a side marker light I discovered more evidence of the small fellows. So everybody can imagine what was necessary next -> Remove all stainless panels and look behind it to clean everything properly.
As a lucky father I had additional helping hands on this job.
Amelie on the rear fender…
Alina checking the side section…
There was literally a fight between my daughters which one of them was allowed to remove more screws. So I decided they had to hand over the tool after every removed screw to the sister. That worked great and we made good progress that afternoon.
Amelie on the front left fender…
Suddenly during the afternoon the postman handed Alina a box over. It was a shipment from the UK with NOS rear covers for the seats
But now back to the disassembly of the stainless parts.
Now it was Alinas part to go on with the front left fender…
If you like you can check out this video (sorry it is in German)
One of the worst source for bad smell was behind the front bumber. So it had to go as well.
During that day all the exterior parts came down….
Interesting markings…
Final steps…
More markings…
The only dead mouse mummy I found behind the right front fender.
So we had a “black car” again and could start with the cleaning and refurbishing process.
More will follow….
Best wishes
Don
Reply With Quote
. Keep those Irish mints away from them ;-).
