Last night turned snowballed out of control, and now I had to finish it before moving on to the next thing.
So tonight after work I got busy installing the side view mirror so I could button up the door back to the way it was. Hard to believe that it looked like it was never touched! Most cars have the doors hacked up for speakers and what not. I can tell whoever owned the car originally really took care of it.
Remember that black foam that fell out form the door panel I took off?
If you ever see any of that stuff fall out of a car you are working on what you are doing IMMEDIATELY and PICK-UP that crap!!!
I neglected to pick it up last night and it chemically reacted to the fresh oxygen in the garage or something and turned into little puddles of goo.
Which of course I promptly stepped in without realizing it until it was too late and tracked all over the garage…
Where was I? Oh yeah, installing the mirror. Well this may surprise a lot of you that have been following this build, but cutting and drilling into the car makes me a nervous wreck! Whoever said having a hobby was relaxing obviously didn’t choose one that had to potential to go horribly wrong with one wrong hole or an inaccurate cut.
So far I have been lucky, but this one had the potential to go bad.
I made one of my handy dandy templates out of scrap poster board (I really love doing this! Flexible but strong!)
Went around to the drivers side and measured the distance from the front of the door to the front of the mirror base (17 3/8 inches). Then measured from the body line down to the top of the base on both sides (3/8 of an inch). For good measure I measured from the back of the base to the rear of the door (20 7/8 inches).
Went to the passenger door, marked the basic measurements and traced my template. Double checked and realized that I was off a little bit, and retraced.
Once I was certain I was in the right spot, I brought out the drill. Shit got real at this point. I made sure to start with a small bit in the center of the traced holes. I gradually went all the way up to a 1/2 inch bit. Along the way I would periodically check to make sure I didn’t make any huge mistakes.
Finally strapped the mirror to the side so I could install the reinforcement plate and the nuts. Tightened them up and was done! Very anti-climatic.
Now I have the drivers door lock to replace (the whole reason I started this!) still, but that will wait until the weekend.
As part of replacing the door locks, I will also swap out the ignition lock cylinder since they all share a key.
Which will be a great opportunity to change out the turn signal switch that no longer works. But I am going to have to delay that part for a little while since I do need to remove the steering wheel to access all of those pieces.
Oh and also because I found a ’74 correct steering wheel that should be in the mail being delivered to Chicago as we speak!
Now from the literature I have read said this wheel for the Monaco was all black in ’74. The movie cars had wheels that matched the interior. Since I have to paint the wheel anyway I am conflicted on what color I should go with.
Do I keep it Dodge correct or Movie correct? Let me know your thoughts, I would love to hear your opinions!
