Grendel lives...resurrection of a 1970 Charger 500

I like the "how much do I need" questions. What, you can't do math? Don't know how to operate a tape measure or other measuring device? How much area do you want to cover? Floors? Doors? Roof? Trunk? Firewall? Quarter panels?

ckessel said:

I like the "how much do I need" questions. What, you can't do math? Don't know how to operate a tape measure or other measuring device? How much area do you want to cover? Floors? Doors? Roof? Trunk? Firewall? Quarter panels?

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It would sure be easier to know how much you need if your entire floor and door surfaces were completely flat and nice, easy 90-degree angles...no curves or bends, no holes, obstructions, etc.

True. But it can still be figured out if unsure. Thanks for the feedback.

If you went solely by measurements without somehow taking into account all the aforementioned obstacles, you could certainly get a ballpark coverage number, but I bet you'd end up with a LOT of waste leftover product.

Grendel is a good name. 7 letters, starts with G.
I have Griffon and Grolsch, both sail boats.
Noddy, one of my bikes, is British racing green, a similar colour.

Time to dig the seatbelts out of the bag they've been sitting in for over 20 years. Not a sexy update, unfortunately.

A pic of the rear belts, they looked pretty cruddy, but surprisingly no rust. I thought I'd have to give them a soak in black RIT dye to restore the color, but after a good scrubbing with stiff plastic bristle brush and Dawn dish soap and hot water, then a dunk & rinse in a bucket of hot water, they came out quite nice.



While they were still a bit wet, I dipped all the metal ends and buckles in a margarine container of WD-40 to chase away the moisture and gave the parts a wipe-down.
The buckles on the front belts all had some minor surface rust and both of these mounting edges were pretty rusty; I'll scuff it up a bit and brush on some Corroseal to prevent further oxidation.



Of course, I didn't come away unscathed; this rubber boot from one of the front belts was ripped; I'll see if someone has a spare in the WTB section:

Gas pedal refurb...I had 2 pedals, but my original was too far gone with rust everywhere underneath the rubber coating, I had to toss it. Another one I bought years ago and planning to install needed some work to restore it, though. The rubber coating on the bottom was peeling off, but fortunately the only rust was on the bottom raised rectangular part. I cut away the loose rubber with a razor blade and scuffed & degreased the rusty areas.



Then, followed that up with a few coats of DOM16 to kill the rust and prevent it from ever happening again. Lastly, I had an idea to restore the rubber coating I cut away, and improve the cracked rubber areas by applying a few heavy coats of Plasti Dip. I scuffed up the cured & hardened DOM16 with 400-grit, degreased again and slathered on a few wet coats. I also touched up the top surface of the rectangular part that bolts to the floor because the rubber there was showing some stress cracks where the pedal flexes with the base.

All in all, I think it turned out great, and should last the rest of Grendel's lifetime.

I kept running into niggling issues keeping me from wrapping up my new carpet job. One issue is that I discovered my body man drilled the holes for the accelerator pedal at least an inch and a half too far forward. I had to block off those holes and need to drill new ones for the pedal to be positioned properly relative to the brake pedal. Another issue was this grommet for the brake cable hole, it's old and brittle and won't re-seat. I fortunately had a grommet from a big body plug set that worked perfectly, and found another random grommet that worked for the bottom hole where the cable routes through the crossmember under the body.

When I installed one of the grommets (the bottom one in the pic on the right), I noticed this open hole in the crossmember to the left of the cable. Should there be a plug there? What's that hole for?

I got finished installing my carpets, the location of the accelerator pedal frustrated me. I figured since the pedal position is probably the most important part of the carpet installation, all I'd need to do is get it located at the top right corner of the heel pad, mark holes and everything else would line up...but with this ACC carpet, that was anything but true. With my carpet pushed as far forward on the firewall right up to the steering column, and even a bit higher than that, and cutting a curve around the column, the heel pad on this carpet was nowhere close to where the pedal needed to be. If I yanked the carpet any more forward, the way it was molded, nothing would lay down properly. I remember someone else on here mentioned they had the same issue. I had to settle and locate the gas pedal just above the heel pad, it's as far back as I could mount it and still have it function properly. Looking at lots of photos online, it seemed like most correct pedal installs had about 2/3 of the pedal below the adjacent brake pedal, and only about 1/3 above, so I tried to match that.



I then dielectric-greased all the wire connectors at the driver side kick panel, and reconnected everything.

My car's original interior was white, and looked like *** after so many decades, I'm re-doing the whole interior black. Here are some door panels with about 3 coats of SEM's vinyl dye, Color Coat, beside the original blue front door panels, I'll need to mask those off and do them next.

I replaced my roof rail weatherstripping this weekend. After wrestling with the passenger side, I wanted to document a proper how-to guide for the driver side, as most of what I found online pretty much amounted to "start at the front and press it in". There's a whole lot more to it than that, so here's a first-timer's guide to how to install your B-Body roof rail weatherstripping with clear instructions.

The old weatherstrip removes most easily from the rear, behind the quarter window; pull it up from there and move all the way to the front. The very front might be stuck in a bit, there shouldn't be any adhesive but maybe some rust might mean you have to tear it off from there.

The new weatherstrips are several inches too long, at least for a '70 Charger. Match up a new weatherstrip with the old one, and cut it off maybe a half inch longer than the one you pulled off.

For installing the new weatherstrip, all I used was fingers/thumbs and a plastic body panel tool like this:



If you look closely at the inside of the weatherstrip--note that there are obviously left and right sides--the front inside upper edge has a square notch in it. If you look closely at the metal channel where you need to install it, there's a square metal clip in there. That's where you will start, to line things up.



You see the metal clip on the left side of the channel above that upper screw:



While I was in here, I discovered the windshield corner trim retaining clip that I thought was missing; it's just not overtly visible as it's underneath the weatherstrip. I'd already bought new ones and installed the new one on the driver side, where the corner trim is raised up too much. Unfortunately it didn't make much difference, I will have to look into that at a later time.



Anyway, the way I found to get the weatherstrip seated properly, and it can be rather frustrating, is to seat in the bottom edge of the weatherstrip first, then press in some of the upper edge of weatherstrip with your thumbnail until you can carefully jam it all the way inside the metal trim channel with the plastic panel tool.



The whole A-pillar process will fight you because the upper areas of weatherstrip will want to fall back down until you get things firmly started. Just keep at it, an inch at a time, until you reach the upper corner. Once you have the weatherstrip tucked into the corner, the rest of it becomes much easier. Just tuck in the bottom edge first, then press in the upper edge with the tool. You can then run the tool back and forth between top and bottom edges and everything should smooth out. At the end of the quarter window, stuff the little extra bit of strip in the hole there and finish tucking in top & bottom edges.