SURVIVOR vs. GROUND-UP RESTORATION!

[resq302]

Dave,

I thought the hardest part of restoring this car was finding the NOS parts?  Or at least thats what some people say.

Its amazing once you get into this, how many details there are.  Every piece of original weather stripping I have found on our GTX has either a molded in part or a ink stamped number.  Right now, our original trunk weather stripping appears to have come apart at the heat seam or however it was formed where the inner part of the weather stripping is where it meets the opening for the trunk. 





original spare tire / jacking instruction decal! (factory applied paint still on the underside of the trunk!)



original tire pressure / size decal (factory applied paint still in the door jambs!)

[resq302]

Some more progress on the GTX!  Our car still had original factory applied paint on the interior of the car as well as the door jambs!  Plenty of stuff to learn as not that many cars are left like this!

  pass side inner door frame and door jambs repainted!

latch reinstalled and cleaned up

  driver side inner door, inner door frame color painted first, then masked off and exterior color applied.

  driver side prior to disassembly of all the small stuff.  notice the lower left corner of the door where they must have had masking still on the corner of the door.  interior color showing where exterior color should be!

again, notice the masking pattern!

underside of the driver side door.  notice the lack of paint that was applied at the factory!

[resq302]

More pics of the restoration....

  another pic of the underside of the driver side door and lack of exterior paint!

  excellent condition of original door (as well as the rest of the car!  original sheet metal is nice!)

  passenger door almost completely put back together.

  door jamb and striker on pass. side door.  (Dave did I get the indexing right on the screws?)   

  driver side door jamb prior to disassembly, original factory tire pressure decal!

[resq302]

Debating on whether or not to replace the trunk weather stripping.  Its the factory installed original but as you can see, it is starting to dry out and show its age.  If anyone has any leads on an NOS one or an mint used one, please contact me!  I'd hate to have the trunk seal be the only non-original weather stripping on this car.

original trunk seal showing its age!







  more of the driver side door hardware.

  factory pass side door gasket, looks and feels like it just got installed back as it did in 1968!

  measuring of where original tire pres. decal was for replacement later.





piece of cardboard wedged or installed between the upper door hinge and the cowl



  more measuring of where the original decals were!





  removed the splash shield which was coated in factory undercoating in which we had to scrape it away to get the bolt heads exposed enough to remove them.  notice the red oxide primer!  Also, we found a piece of bail wire hanging from the mounting bracket hole on the cowl where the bolt "should" (key word!) have been.  Apparently, our car had a factory mess up as there was no bolt ever installed nor any shims.  Would anyone know what this bolt size was off the top of their head?  Worse comes to worse, I can always pull out the one on the pass. side.

  notice the 1" wide tape where they masked off the black lower body paint prior to applying the T3 Honey Bronze color.  located under the door sill plate.



  seems the metal covers for the wiring were installed after paint for some reason 

[resq302]

  driver side wheel well with original factory applied undercoating.

  (forgive the bumper brackets, Dad tried to repaint them to save me some time.  We'll correct that when we pull the bumper back off to do the rad support black out.

[resq302]

Oh, I'm sure that I could Dave.  With a little buffing here and polishing there, I'm sure it will turn out like brand new and totally indistinguishable from what was applied there at the factory.  lol   We all can't have that talent!   

[resq302]

More work completed......  Driver side interior color painted and T3 Honey Bronze door jamb color now matches the rest of the exterior.  Sad to cover up the original factory applied paint but it just didn't look right since the exterior color was a shade lighter than the factory applied color.

  interior color was applied first at the factory.....



  T3 being applied to the jambs.....







   some of the masking removed.....



   masking all removed, awaiting it to dry a few days before reinstalling the hardware and weather stripping.

[resq302]

Well, its been a week since I posted last and here are some updated pics.  Interior is all set to go back together and while I was at my job over the weekend, Dad got the door panels installed.  Man, they look great!  I'm really psyched to get the rest of it done now!  Anyway, here are some more pics of the progress.

(Dad wanted to leave the protective film over the mylar to prevent any accidental scratching.  This film will be removed once the car is finished!)

pass side door all back together!









freshening up the underside of the trunk lid.  paint is still the factory applied paint as well as the factory applied jacking instruction decal!  Also notice the edge closed to the camera which would be the rear most part of the trunk lid.  Notice the lack of paint as the trunk was in the up position when it was painted causing a lack of paint to get to this rear most part.  Also a lack of paint in the void where there was access holes for pot metal trunk finish panel and plymouth name.  You can see where some surface rust started and the factory dark gray dip primer was where the exterior color did not get painted.







lots of factory runs!  Also notice the bare mental area behind where the trunk latch was.  Supposedly they bolted a prop rod / plate to this location to keep the trunk up while painting.







factory installed jacking decal!  (seen better days!)

















Almost a perfect outline of the trunk latch which had zero paint on it!



Factory typo on the trunk weather strip rail!  Should read 9G, not G9!





All cleaned up from having some rust starting under the factory applied paint in the rain gutters!



Interior pieces which are down in Dad's basement waiting to be installed!





Restored factory console.  Original molded colored plastic.  Original chrome.  Just reapplied the wood grain and repainted the black paint.

[resq302]

So I was at Dad's house again today and he got some work done while I was at my job this weekend with removing the grille, bumper, and headlights so I could apply the black out to the rad support area since whoever did the exterior of the car was nice enough to leave this the T3 Honey Bronze color.  Once we get the satin black color from the paint jobber, we should hopefully get the front end back together and move along to something else that needs to be done.





I also got the console back in the car today making the interior whole again!





I also removed the wiper motor as I am getting a bunch of parts replated with the gold cad plating.  The wiper motor is the original to the car to my knowledge and never seems to have ever been restored.  Its a shame that the barrel is faded like it is as it is in fantastic shape!  If I remember right, the date coding on it is 267 of 1968.



I also got a chance to apply the decals for the trunk jacking instructions and the tire pressure decal and federal requirement decal on the driver side door jamb today too.  They were applied in the exact same location as the factory applied them.  (Thankfully I took pictures with measurements before I removed the old ones!)

[usraptr]

Very nice attention to detail, as usual!   

[resq302]

Thanks everyone.   I have to say I have had a lot of help through the years with people on this board and others so it has made me strive to do better on each build / resto.  The decals in the pics are from ECS and I gotta say, they are dead nuts to what was on the old ones in every way.  Now that the interior is back together, I can't wait to finish up the next phase!

[resq302]

Ok, so here's the latest update.....  got to spend some more time working on the car today at Dad's house and found out some VERY interesting things.  First I removed the headlight buckets and the front wire harness so they could all be cleaned and the bronze paint removed from a previous person who apparently did not mask that well.

Labeled them as I removed them as they are side specific.



Now here is the weird part..... each back side of the headlight bucket has a different colored stripe that appears to have been air brushed on there as there is a soft edge to the paint.  Does anyone know what these paint stripings were for?

Black and blue



Goldish yellow and red



Individual pics









Front sides of the buckets before I cleaned them.






While these were drying, I decided to start adhering the "skin" from the old trunk gasket back onto the new "core".  Its a long, tedious process, but if it works, it will be hard to distinguish from the original thing!  (special thanks to my daughter Hailey for taking these pics!)  first two are of me cleaning any little residue left over.





Bonding the skin to the core.  Again, tedious process as you can only do a small section at a time.




I also found out that the lower blacked out area on the car was repainted as I had been told it was original and not touched.  Again, I thank whoever did the paint work on the car for not doing a perfect job as you could tell exactly where the 1/4" pin striping was as there was adhesive residue left on the paint before they painted it leaving a nice ever so slightly raised line that you could see only on an angle with a glare.  It seems the stripe was put 3/4" down below the bottom edge of the lower body molding.

[resq302]

Headlight buckets all cleaned up and in immaculate original condition!  Galvanizing is still excellent.











Trunk gasket getting the "skin" reapplied....





End of the new weatherstripping and will eventually be cut off flush with the skin.



profile of the trunk weather stripping  (glue was still wet and had to be pushed back once I took the pic.)





original parts pulled and being sent out to platers

[resq302]

more pics to come tonight!

[resq302]

Grille is out and starting to be restored.  Don't pay attention to the blue stripe.  Thats just vinyl tape covering up the factory red painted insert.



broken corner which I've heard is pretty typical.  Easily fixed though.