Just before my last hiatus to take care of yard work, rebuild computers, go to car shows and update websites, I received back from Royal Plating in Tucson, the pieces that I needed to finish off the dashboard. RJ’s guys did a great job with the die cast radio speaker grill and the eyebrow that fits over the top of the speedometer, not to mention the gold plating that they did on the little die cast Dodge emblem that goes on the speaker grill. This little badge and the fuel injection cover on the engine are the only two places on the whole car that gives anyone an idea as to what it is. I have yet to have a non car person walk into my shop and say, hey it’s a Dodge wagon! It has been ID as a several varieties of Chevrolet, a Nomad, and a Studebaker. No one has even mentioned any of the Mopars or FoMoCo cars of the era. Looks like folks have been brain washed into thinking only Chevrolet, I love to dare to be different!
About the time the plating came back, I hauled out all of the rest of the stainless so that I could get a good idea on what I needed in the way of trim clips and fasteners to get all the shiny stuff mounted back on the car. I found a place in Florida on eBay that had some good prices on various sized spring trim clips that come with rubber sealed PAL nuts to seal the back of the hole. Since all of the interior and glass is still out of the car, I can access the back side of all of the holes in the body to tighten down the trim pieces. The same out fit had a couple of nice chrome trim screw kits – #6 & #8 oval head trim screws plus an assortment of #10 screws with both #6 & #8 oval Phillips heads, which will be used to mount all of the interior trim pieces. I also ordered all of the hardware to install the tail and lift gates and the front and rear bumpers. Chrome carriage bolts and oval head Phillips screws are mighty spendy but are really needed to make the finished piece look right.
The Dash is Finally Done!
I did a test fit of the tailgate to make sure I had the right sized screws, and of course I didn’t, I had ordered several of them too short. After I took the tailgate off, I got to thinking that I had not ordered the rubber piece that fits between the rear splash pan and the body, so I looked through my boxes of bags of stuff that I had removed from the wagon lo these many years ago. As luck would have it, I found the bag with the aforementioned rubber piece which to my amazement was still in decent condition. I cleaned it up and lubed it with rubber spray and then found the rear splash pan and installed it. The rubber that seals the gap between the bumper and the splash pan wasn’t in as good a condition, so I cut some new pieces from the masticated rubber stock that I had ordered and attached them with #8 sheet metal screws.
While I was finishing up the splash pan I noted that it would be a lot easier to install the tail fins and tail light housings with the tail gate off, so I dug them out of the plating box. The tail fin for the passenger side was original to the car and was in pretty decent shape and it plated well. The one for the driver’s side was gone when I got the wagon, but after several years of looking I was able to find a replacement on eBay. Unfortunately it was in pretty rough shape. RJ’s guys did as good a job as they good do to bring it back, but it still isn’t as good as the passenger side. I also found that the 10-24 screw holes in the driver’s side fin had been stripped out as well, so I had to drill and tap them out to 1/4-20 and make up some new studs to fit. Before I could install the fins I had to install the tail light bezels. Again a PITA job. Dodge used some odd sized hardware on these pieces. The original screws were 1/4-20, but with 10-24 heads and the upper screw was a oval head Phillips and the lower one was a flat Phillips. They used a set of caged nuts in the body to bolt through. Of course these were strange too, they held as expected a 1/4-20 nut, but the size of the cage was more like what would hold a 5/16 or 3/8 nut, which of course I couldn’t find anywhere, not that it mattered since I couldn’t find any 1/4-20 screws with 10-24 heads. So, I used some 10-24 stainless screws from the helpful handy hardware place with some 5/16 flat washers and some of the 10-24 rubber sealed PAL nuts that I had ordered as extras. All of which meant that I had to hold the nuts and washers on the back side with one hand while tightening the screw with the other. The driver side went pretty well, but the passenger side doesn’t have the same clear access due to the gas tank filler shield that is welded into the back fender. It took a lot of contortions on my part to get it done but after a few hours I finally got it. Of course today my left rotator cuff is hurting like hell … the golden years again!
The Bling Starts Going Back On
Anyway the old girl has some of her tail feathers back on, which in itself is pretty encouraging!