If you can’t tell from this posts title, I like a good word pun. I was finally able to get some work in this month on the Monaco. At the end of October I pulled the trim off the car and the vinyl top. Surprisingly I found that the adhesive was in excellent shape. It was so well preserved that I would never be able to get it off with sandpaper without clogging a whole bunch of expensive paper!
So I resorted to good old fashioned elbow grease and mineral spirits. A lot of both in fact to get it all off. Now that it is done, my arms feel like they want to fall off, but seeing as how arm replacements are covered under insurance and sandpaper is not, I can deal with that.
Now that the glue is off I will be trying to focus on other areas of the car, and with the seasons changing I’ll have the opportunity to hopefully do some work during the winter. I’ve added some florescent lights, built a work bench, and have a couple of portable heaters in the garage to hopefully make it more comfortable.
Next up is the front end. The ’76 Royal Monaco looks vastly different than the ’74 Monaco. That being said, I will be removing the Royal specific header panel and hide-away headlights.
I already have the header panel, grille, headlight covers, and lower grille, so after I have the Royal pieces off I will start mocking up the ’74 front end, which will look like the car below…
Where I going a different route, and I believe this is out of necessity at this point, is that I will not be replacing my fenders with ’74 or ’75 correct pieces. Why? you ask? Well, because primarily the fenders are extremely hard to find, and even harder to find in good shape.
A lot of fenders and project cars I’ve seen, the lower fenders are completely shot. That being said, I could pay for fenders that are no good and cut off the front edge and graft it onto my fenders, but I have no experience with welding, and it is really expensive to ship fenders!
What am I going to do you ask? I will be making fiberglass pieces that will be grafted onto my fender! To be continued!
