Eric Christie's Vettepage

By the summer of 2001 the car was ready to be primed. Then came the joys of continuous wet sanding. Fortunately for me, I am lousy at it, and was often sent off to due more menial tasks such as painting small parts and fetching food and drink. The car was sanded and reprimed, sanded and reprimed. Many times I considered torching the car, but common sense won out, and I picked up my sandpaper and went at it again.

Paint; the final frontier.

Aaron strapped on his spiffy white suit in October of 2001 and at 10 Pm began laying down the PPg black paint. I mixed the paint while the Big A layed it down. My secondary job was to run about the job site with  pair of tweezers and pick bugs and debris out of the paint. I guess the pole barn wasn’t the most sterile environment. 

We finished at around 5:30 in the morning. We painted 2 coats of black and 3 coats of clear, the last one quite heavy. This would leave plenty of clear to allow us to wetsand out the imperfections. All in all, a lengthy but tiring process. A success!

Now that the paint was done, I moved on to the interior. I had the new seat covers installed, the fit was terrible, but once they are on, they’re mine. I left the seats and carpet out while I reinstalled the dash and console parts, because there is no room for all of us in there.

Everything had to be worked on or rerouted. All the vacuum lines had to be attached, the wiring sorted out, and all the missing brackets needed located. Once again Gary Gruhala came to the rescue supplying me with a interior screw kit, some vents, heater controls, and other miscellaneous things.

The dash install went a little something like this:

1.)      Locate a friend

2.) Heat up the little corner ‘wings’ with hair dryers so they are flexible

3.) Quickly fold up the corners, tilt the dash, push it in, bend the corners down over the A pillars into position.

4.) Breathe heavy sigh of relief that nothing cracked.

5.)Lose temper when you realize you didn’t install any of the air ducts or venting behind the dash.

It was OK that I had to spend 3 hours installing all the vents instead of 15 minutes. I had the time, HA, HA.

My brain is slow.

I find it difficult to do multiple things at once, so I fear starting multiple projects, such as installing the interior, working on the lights and installing the side windows. My desire would be to have the whole car wet sanded, and then move on to other things, but it is March and the car was painted in October, and still needs about 50% of it sanded, so I will have to do something. 

I found I could not get the key to work in the ignition, it just wouldn’t star the car. Obviously the first thing to do is look at the least possible reason. Demonic possession? No, that’s not right. Starter harness thingie fouled up? No, after completely tearing it up, it was good. Clutch switch? No, the previous owner had already jumped that. The lock cylinder? Yes that must be it!!

Removing enough of  the steering column on a tilt\tele vette means removing approximately 7,000 small nondescript pieces while working your way down to the ignition lock. I then pulled it out and realized it was in perfect working condition.  Ha, the jokes on me.  

I whipped out my trusty, well-used engine wiring diagram and a set of testers and decided the problem was somewhere in the column itself. That sucks. So it was time to remove the column! Another job made more enjoyable by the tight confines of a vette. After disconnecting the rag joint, and unbolting the column from the dash, I pulled it out and found a bent plug. This had prevented contact in one of the harness plugs, and thus no starty. I bent it back, plugged 'er in and she fired up. Another problem overcome.

Pop up Headlights: A beautiful thing.

I next continued my ongoing battle with the headlights. They never worked, and when I got the car, nothing was hooked up under the dash. I used a Mityvac and found quite a few leaks, so I ended up biting the bullet and buying a set of new hoses. They were easy to route and hook up. My “coffee can” reservoir was leaking everywhere, so I bypassed it. It doesn’t really create any problems, just make sure to shut the lights off with the car running. I also needed to re-seal the rod in the driver side vacuum pot. I am still somewhat surprised that in the high tech 80’s, GM still used yards of vacuum hose and large canisters to actuate their headlights. But, as one reply to my post on the NCRS board said, “when you get them running, it will be a thing of beauty.” I must say, he was right.

But wait, no light. 

Ah, yet another wiring problem. The headlights come up, but he shine no light. This appeared to be a daunting problem, but luckily it was not. After testing numerous grounds, memorizing the wiring diagram, chanting and burning up one test light, my friend Adam found a plug that wasn’t connected under the dash. That did it!! Lights!! Lights that go up and down! Hooray. A very serious problem overcome. 

Meanwhile, the car is slowly being sanded. It is now ready for the cut and buff. My pal Aaron whips out the buffer and brings out the shine. Wow. Just amazing. I can’t believe how good the car looks. It is awesome. The sight of the shiny car inspired me to finish up the interior.