The Restoration of #1768

[Dangermouse]

Thanks for the back story. Good project.

Is the pic from an Alpine?

[vwdmc16]

Yes I think so,

Aug 19



Back again in many pieces, This time for more electrical work, but not because something is broken. Im adding a door popper system so that I can open the driver door via the remote on my key chain. I purchased this 45lb solenoid to pull the door latches, Its a bit more powerful than I need but I dont want this to burn out and if i adjust it correctly it wont break any of the linkages.



Now to power the new solenoid I will use this yellow/white wire that is located in a great spot and is a unused wire in the harness.




But for some reason the wire just stops up in the roof box, it seems they installed the wire in the door harness but did not continue it into the rest of the car's harness.





So once again I had to remove the T panel and now I have to remove the headliners to finish running the Y/W wire down to the relay and keyless module. ive never removed my front headliner, time to recover them now!




Near the rear window you can see where the harnesses come through the roof and split to go down the B pillars.




Since so many things are apart I decided its a good time to remove the old door-T panel weather strip, I need to drill out the rivets, and replace the rubber and re install.

I wrapped a few layers of vinyl tape over the drill bit so I dont nick the priceless torsion bars which could shatter if scratched.



Now this stainless strip is missing on my driver side and since its not available new I will have to use this one as a template and make another.




Recovering from the heat of the garage I began to strip off the headliner material inside.




Back in November 2009 I re made the rear headliner board out of foam board as the original was not salvageable. You can see it easily here, I may re do that again.

[vwdmc16]

September 1



Door poppers are done, It was alot more work than I anticipated. I got back into the roof access to soldering two new 14ga wires, one for each door.





Now they both run down the passenger B pillar with the stock driver wiring too the fuse box area. In the future It will be much easier to add a passenger side popper, but first I need a remote control with more buttons unless I want both doors to open at once.






Door wiring done




I added a 20amp circuit breaker and a relay to the fuse board, After a few more hrs of searching, I found the wiring pin out of the keyless entry and the right wire for the Option button, pretty simple wiring.




Finally I sealed up the roof again.





And finally here is a video of it in action:



Right click to open!

[Domi]

This is great, good job!

[DavidProehl]

Impressive amount of work to pop the door. I think we should call this mod "Clint-a-Loft."

[CEOofawesome]

Okay, I could understand none of that was cool car falling apart fixy fixy cool car good! That is awesome that you put all that time and money in to that Delorean! Good for you!

[vwdmc16]

Impressive amount of work to pop the door. I think we should call this mod "Clint-a-Loft."

How about "pain in the ass popper". So after a few weeks of using the system, the remotes range is hit or miss, and if the car stays out in the sun for a few hours the solenoid doesnt seem to get full amperage and doesnt have the strength to pop the door. Very frustrating.

[vwdmc16]

Sept 7

A friend gave me a old Stainless thermos that he had laying around to try and replace my failed overflow bottle idea, this thermos was pretty near perfect for what I needed, I simply had to drill the large inlet hole and one small one for a vent facing the bulkhead so it wont be visible.





Then I added a random steel spacer I had to push the bottle away from the bulkhead near the top as its a tapered bottle and I wouldn't be able to unscrew the lid otherwise. Then just clamp it in as the old one, I think it looks sharper and is certainly stronger. I began testing immediately and found it to do the job very well, However the coolant header tank still seems to allow alot of coolant to trickle out after a long hot drive, Time to try out a different radiator cap.

[vwdmc16]

Sept 7


Tonight I refreshed my driver side upper door panel, the Foam behind the vinyl has turned to dust over the years and the panel is no longer padded as it should be, here's a quick fix:


Stripped the old cover off and spent 10 minutes wiping off years of soil accumulated from all the arms that have rested on it






Originally there is a layer of thin foam sewn in between the vinyl and this fabric backing, this give the puffy look, all that is left in these pockets is dust that can be swept out.





This new foam ( this is scrap headliner material available for $5/yard) will work perfectly.




Simply cut out new pieces that can be slid in these empty pockets, I numbered them so they feel special.




And I slid them in, they do not need to be glued as they will have nowhere to move.




Now the cleaned plastic backing board and the back of the material gets a spray of good adhesive, Not the $5 a bottle stuff, it needs to be the real heavy duty good stuff if you want it to last more than a few months.




Carefully placed the cover on excatly as it was before, It should fit perfectly as this been wrapped around this part for the last 30 years. the glue should be set in about 10 minutes




Once again these panels have some cushion to them, while not as snazzy as if they were reupholstered with new material and had the foam stitched in, this easy method should give the panels new life for only $20 and an hour of time.

[Kenny_Z]

That is an awesome fix. I'll have to try that.