Not A Duster's Most Excellent Progress

Well - with the car languishing in the bodyshop, I got some time to turn my attention to some of the stuff I can do without the car sitting right in front of me...

For example, sanding and refinishing the steering wheel I got at the swap meet last year.

- And before anybody says it...Yes I'm really using it and No I don't think it's cheezy. It's actually exactly the same style wheel I had in my 71 Demon 25 years ago, so I'm pretty happy to have found it.

It's quite rough actually....nothing I could do about the pits in the chrome, but the wood is another story.
 
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Dying the rear seats black. This is a white seat from a parts car I got years ago. Damn near perfect with just a couple small tears.

I'm trying the spray-on black vinyl dye for the first time....first coat tonite - recoat tommorow. You can see the finished half plus the part that I havent done yet in these pics.
 
And the grille - the first pic is "before" It's actually a Dart grill with not enough blackout for the Demon. (of course this is the '71 Demon style grille...I hate the '72 style grille so I'm using this one that "383 Duster" provided me a couple years ago. -Thanks Fella - wherever you are.)

First step is masking all of the areas that are to be silver so that I can paint the black parts.
 
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Sprayed with two coats of semi-flat black, then the masking tape is removed. I'm gonna give it a couple days for the black paint to set & then mask the thing in reverse so I can paint the silver parts with mopar performance Argent paint..

You can already see the difference in the the grille with the center section blacked out as comapred to how it originally looked. A fresh coat of argent to repair the scratches and it will be as good as new - and certainly better than the '72 grille.
 
Damn dude! You do AWESOME work!!! :eek: How hard are those steering wheels to find?? Got a friend looking for an "other than stock" wheel for his base '92 Cherokee....think that would look right at home in his:)
 
That style of wheel always makes me think of Disco, Trans Ams and shag lined custom vans. No problem with that since it's your car and it's YOUR opinion that really matters here.

I DO happen to have a spare 2 spoke Challenger wheel in the parts car if you want it though. Just say the word and it's yours. It's always nice to have options sometimes ya know.

That grill is lookin great as is already. I agree with you on using the argent though. I think it will just smooth it out that much more when applied.

Was the shop able to give you an ETR on the paint job yet?
 
gomopar440 said:
That style of wheel always makes me think of Disco, Trans Ams and shag lined custom vans.
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:D Yeah - it reminds me of the same era - the mid/late '70's when I was in high school...

But I think of rock bands with members who could actually sing & play their instruments. (Disco was for chicks, homos and preppies...still is as a matter of fact...and punk never was as big a deal as so-called rock "historians" would have you believe.)

I also think of hundreds of cheap & available musclecars modified, hot-rodded and in the hands of young enthusiasts instead of 80 year old "investors." Yeah - the guys with the Burt Reynolds T- top Trans Ams got all the hot chicks... but that just made the stoplight wars even better, 'cuz their girlfriends were usually with them as they were being humiliated. :dance:

Vans? - no comment.


Thanks for the offer on the other wheel GoMo - But I like this one - it reminds me of good times from the past.
 
Not A Duster said:
But I like this one - it reminds me of good times from the past.
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Yeah, me too. :) Had one of those wheels in my '73 Javelin oh so many years ago...when I was young and carefree and......*sighs*
 
for some reason those "durring" pics of the grill taped off i was seeing one WILD paint job..of slime green with a silver "earthquake" effect with the same effect rolling into the black out..and i must say it was looking like one hell of a custom job.....the progress looks great...love the spoke wheel ...hate the wood..lol wood is for houses not cars :p
 
Thanks JD.

69.5:

Wood belongs just fine in cars as long as it's real wood. The plastic fake woodgrain applique used so much in the '70's and '80's is another story alltogether.
 
Re-dyed seat came out pretty good. A little too shiny when compared to the re-coverd front seat, but I'm hoping some time will fix that.
 
I had planned for new carpet and a dynamat-style floor insualtion, but that was yet another of the things to fall victim to the budget.

So for now, I'm putting the rubber floormat & insulation from the Demon back in (It was perfect) and laying the carpet from the Dart Sport over top it. The floor mat will not fit properly over the 4 speed hump, so I will have to cut it in that area. Fortunately, that surgery will be hidden below the carpet.

The carpet itself was faded, dirty, stained, but not too badly worn, so I am trying a fabric/carpet dye from the same people who made the spray can vinyl dye. Below is before/after dyeing pictures. The upper left corner has been shot with the first coat of dye in the center picture, showing the difference. It took two coats (two spray cans) to dye the carpet.

The back seat used 3 cans of dye to cover properly. mind you, I started with white seats, so it would likely take a lot less to re-dye a seat in it's original colour.
 
Rug in a can...:2thumbs: When I was young I use to paint the faded carpets in my cars all the time...they needed a touch up every couple of weeks but big deal...there were no carpets available back then other than SHAG carpet:bwuhaha:
 
69.5:

The two cans of fabric dye were a total of $20.00 CDN vs. $125.00 US for carpet and another $100.00 US for sound - deadener like dynamat. Add to those costs shipping (shipping carpet would be expensive) and exchange/brokerage and I'm sure it would be a $350.00 bill by the time it lands at my door.

RobR:

I'm hoping this stuff holds up a bit better than a couple weeks...we use it at work to cover water stains in our black drapery and it seems to hold up pretty welll - but we are not exposing it to hour & hours of sunlight either.

At any rate - the packaging claims it's resistant to fading, and they wouldn't lie would they??? :wtf: :D

Anyway, I will be happy if I can get a season or two out of it when hopefully I will have a little more dough scraped together & I can do it properly.
 
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