What’s up G body fam, Ole D back again.
So it would appear that I’ve been a pretty poor car crafter lately. Haven’t really been tackling the door projects with much enthusiasm. In fact, I’ve been downright dragging my heels on the whole mess.
However, the weather has really turned to complete sh*t here recently, and the snow nearly everyday has made it a little easier to get back out to the shop.
That being said, I’ve finally completed the drivers door assembly. Here’s how it went.
These are the vapor barriers that came out of the car, you can see they were in pretty rough condition, but not entirely unexpected for a 40 year old car:
Now I don’t know about you, but to me cardboard doesn’t exactly make a very good barrier from moisture. Not entirely sure what GM was thinking here, but definitely room for improvement. I picked up some real deal heavy duty 6 mil vapor barrier...
...and using the best of the old ones as a pattern, made my own new ones out of poly like the newer cars have.
Interesting fact here, the old cardboard vapor barrier that came out of the driver’s door wasn’t the original. The cardboard itself was thinner, didn’t have the black backing on it like the passenger’s side, and pencil marks were visible where somebody had marked it out to make it.
Interesting indeed.
All I can think of is it either got damaged beyond repair, or lost during the repairs from the theft recovery when the side window was smashed. I can’t see any other reason it wouldn’t be original. I cut the essential holes (door handle, wiring, remote mirror etc) out of the new pieces, but ignored the rest of the holes that were there. I didn’t want to put any unnecessary holes in the plastic than was absolutely necessary. The less holes in the plastic, the more efficient a barrier it’ll be.
I wrestled with the concept of how to improve upon the method of which to seal it to the door, I wanted something much better than the butyl that the factory used. I tossed around the idea of double sided tape, Velcro, foil tape and a few others, but ultimately decided on plain old clear silicone. It’s clean, cheap and almost always readily available, so why not.
Picked up this stuff...
...and after temporarily holding the barrier in place with some masking tape, ran a bead around the perimeter and stuck it down:
Bare minimum of hole penetrations:
Once I had the perimeter done with the silicone and the poly stuck down, I used some more masking tape around all the edges to make sure it stayed in place while it cured. This comes off after 24 hours.
Next the scratch made, doubled up new jute insulation/sound deadening went on.
Rather than use conventional Christmas tree clips to hold it on (yes, it’s actually supposed to be physically held on), I had some of these hood insulation clips tucked away in my stash:
These work great as they’ve got a larger surface area and the right depth to hold the insulation firmly in place.
While I was waiting for the silicone to cure, I disassembled, cleaned, prepped and painted the two plastic trim pieces that needed replacing. My old power window switch escutcheon was cracked, and one door pull trim cover had the retaining tab wore off on it. So these guys got shot with some VHT High Performance Graphite to match the rest of the interior trim.
Tonight I was able to finally assemble the whole mess, for keepsies this time. It shouldn’t have to come apart again unless something calves in there in the future.
Final finished product:
I’m very happy the end result, and the reproduction decals on the inside of the door from 69hurstolds really finish it out IMO:
This poor ole door really has come a long ways since I bought the car, the door itself had to be replaced due to rust, the replacement door had to be repaired and rust addressed on it, the lower door panel got replaced with a better candidate, and even the upper door panel was missing the “Cutlass Calais” emblem.
I’ve got all the pieces made for the passenger door now, so that’ll be next. The accumulation of snow out in the alley has made turning the car around near impossible now, so I guess I’m gonna have to put it up on the car dollies and push it over to make room to work on the other side.
Thanks for looking in on my glacial progress friends. Till next time,
D.
So it would appear that I’ve been a pretty poor car crafter lately. Haven’t really been tackling the door projects with much enthusiasm. In fact, I’ve been downright dragging my heels on the whole mess.
However, the weather has really turned to complete sh*t here recently, and the snow nearly everyday has made it a little easier to get back out to the shop.
That being said, I’ve finally completed the drivers door assembly. Here’s how it went.
These are the vapor barriers that came out of the car, you can see they were in pretty rough condition, but not entirely unexpected for a 40 year old car:
Now I don’t know about you, but to me cardboard doesn’t exactly make a very good barrier from moisture. Not entirely sure what GM was thinking here, but definitely room for improvement. I picked up some real deal heavy duty 6 mil vapor barrier...
...and using the best of the old ones as a pattern, made my own new ones out of poly like the newer cars have.
Interesting fact here, the old cardboard vapor barrier that came out of the driver’s door wasn’t the original. The cardboard itself was thinner, didn’t have the black backing on it like the passenger’s side, and pencil marks were visible where somebody had marked it out to make it.
Interesting indeed.
All I can think of is it either got damaged beyond repair, or lost during the repairs from the theft recovery when the side window was smashed. I can’t see any other reason it wouldn’t be original. I cut the essential holes (door handle, wiring, remote mirror etc) out of the new pieces, but ignored the rest of the holes that were there. I didn’t want to put any unnecessary holes in the plastic than was absolutely necessary. The less holes in the plastic, the more efficient a barrier it’ll be.
I wrestled with the concept of how to improve upon the method of which to seal it to the door, I wanted something much better than the butyl that the factory used. I tossed around the idea of double sided tape, Velcro, foil tape and a few others, but ultimately decided on plain old clear silicone. It’s clean, cheap and almost always readily available, so why not.
Picked up this stuff...
...and after temporarily holding the barrier in place with some masking tape, ran a bead around the perimeter and stuck it down:
Bare minimum of hole penetrations:
Once I had the perimeter done with the silicone and the poly stuck down, I used some more masking tape around all the edges to make sure it stayed in place while it cured. This comes off after 24 hours.
Next the scratch made, doubled up new jute insulation/sound deadening went on.
Rather than use conventional Christmas tree clips to hold it on (yes, it’s actually supposed to be physically held on), I had some of these hood insulation clips tucked away in my stash:
These work great as they’ve got a larger surface area and the right depth to hold the insulation firmly in place.
While I was waiting for the silicone to cure, I disassembled, cleaned, prepped and painted the two plastic trim pieces that needed replacing. My old power window switch escutcheon was cracked, and one door pull trim cover had the retaining tab wore off on it. So these guys got shot with some VHT High Performance Graphite to match the rest of the interior trim.
Tonight I was able to finally assemble the whole mess, for keepsies this time. It shouldn’t have to come apart again unless something calves in there in the future.
Final finished product:
I’m very happy the end result, and the reproduction decals on the inside of the door from 69hurstolds really finish it out IMO:
This poor ole door really has come a long ways since I bought the car, the door itself had to be replaced due to rust, the replacement door had to be repaired and rust addressed on it, the lower door panel got replaced with a better candidate, and even the upper door panel was missing the “Cutlass Calais” emblem.
I’ve got all the pieces made for the passenger door now, so that’ll be next. The accumulation of snow out in the alley has made turning the car around near impossible now, so I guess I’m gonna have to put it up on the car dollies and push it over to make room to work on the other side.
Thanks for looking in on my glacial progress friends. Till next time,
D.
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