1969 Imperial progress thread

[ceebuddy]

Without the small rear window, I guess there is no room for the reading lights anymore.

Just make sure you requested a glass for a Crown or for a Chrysler two-door hardtop.

You'd need the Chrome trim for the regular-size two-door hardtop rear window. Not having it would probably look a little rough around the rear window.

As was written above, the interior rear window fascia is probably different. Perhaps find a good one from a Chrysler two-door hardtop and dye it to your interior color.

 

[vdk2010]

no, no reading lights anymore. And no other dome light as well. hmm. How does a chrysler dome light looks like? I have to find the chrome and interior panels from a chrysler 2-door car. Should be impossible to find the crown parts...

 

[ceebuddy]

I never checked that out, but I doubt there would be differences between a Crown and a Chrysler in that respect.

 

[Chryslerdude]

What a wonderful thread.. Thanks for enjoyable reading..!

And good luck with this very interesting project !

 

[barnfind]

Just read this whole thread, some great info on the Imp, looking forward to your updates. Keep up the great work.

 

[vdk2010]

Just a little update:

As mentioned in the for sale add the other day, I don't have much time to work on the car lately. Too busy around christmas at work...

According to temperatures below 0°C it's to cold in my unisolated, unheated shop so I had to stop working on the body until spring... But I set up a little workbench in my livingroom to work on the parts I removed already.





I got a package with spare parts from a 70 Imp from sublime 68rr (thanks again for the parts). The outer dash vents and two fender mounted turn signals.


On my vents, the little gears to open and shut the doors were eaten by rodents:


All I needed from the spare vents to repair mine:

Assembly pending because I'm searching for the right felt to go around the rotating sphere...




(Thanks to sublime 68rr)

All of the wires on them were rotten and eaten, so I had to renew them. I cant find new connectors so I used the old ones, cleaned them, removed the old wires and soldered new ones to the old connectors. I'm going to replace all old, outdated connectors in the engine bay with modern weather pack connectors.

Assembly pending because I'm still searching for the right gasket material to make new ones.

 

[Fratzog]

Nice score on the parts. I too in my late middle age have no tolerance for laying on a concrete floor in the winter.

 

[vdk2010]

I bought laundry net bags to separate the seat belts in order to wash them in the washing machine.

They were nasty, moldy and very stinky but came out pretty awesome and are now smelling like a flower field ;)
Next step is to remove the rust on some of 'em. Hopefully this will work!




Meanwhile in the livingroom, I cleaned up and rebuild lots of small parts, swiches and cables...

 

[tallhair]

Nice score on the parts. I too in my late middle age have no tolerance for laying on a concrete floor in the winter.

When I was younger I would dream of laying on a cold concrete garage floor. All our work was done on a rock drive way LOL

The cars always seemed to need something in the winter months!

I have no tolerance for either anymore either Fred

 

[vdk2010]

A bummer: All my chrome is pitted like this:

I tried a lot of tricks I found on the interwebs, but unfortunately without success...

 

[vdk2010]

I disassambled the cruise control unit in order to derust and clean it.


Assembly pending becasue I ordered the right grease (I hope) to grease the gears.


One last thing. I had a broken off pin on the circuit board... I fixed and enforced all of them with a paper clip.

 

[70bigblockdodge]

That is some nice detail work keep it up.

I would solder the topside of the pins also to the printed circuit board.

 

[Fratzog]

From my experience (and you probably know this) the further south you go the better the used chrome parts are. Finding good used or NOS is like hens teeth. If you are shooting for a #1 car you may need to bite the bullet and get it re-chromed.

 

[vdk2010]

Nice score on the parts. I too in my late middle age have no tolerance for laying on a concrete floor in the winter.

When I was younger I would dream of laying on a cold concrete garage floor. All our work was done on a rock drive way LOL

The cars always seemed to need something in the winter months!

I have no tolerance for either anymore either Fred

I'm maybe "young enough" to do that... but I don't want to ;) Maybe, I would do it when there were no other work to do, but I have a lot of other things I can do in my warm livingroom!

 

[Mr C]

So does other back windows will fit when I remove the fiber glas insert or not? Becasue I don't want to keep the vinyl roof and the small window would look studip with a painted roof, I think.

You should have gotten a Crown then. LeBarons had the privacy backlight and the vinyl.

 

[Fratzog]

I have a couple boards like that with busted pins and never knew how to fix them. Is that aluminum wire that you soldered into the open hole first then slid over the pin?

 

[vdk2010]

Nice score on the parts. I too in my late middle age have no tolerance for laying on a concrete floor in the winter.

From my experience (and you probably know this) the further south you go the better the used chrome parts are. Finding good used or NOS is like hens teeth. If you are shooting for a #1 car you may need to bite the bullet and get it re-chromed.

For now, I will use the pitted chrome parts. I'm fine with that. And someday, when I don't have to spend my money for more importent parts, I will re-chrome all the parts. It's crazy expensive to re-chrome parts over here. €1200+ a bumber if you want it done right.

 

[vdk2010]

You should have gotten a Crown then. LeBarons had the privacy backlight and the vinyl.

I passed on a nice crown during my search for the right car because I wanted the "better version"... Now I know it better ;)

 

[70bigblockdodge]

Can you go to a neighboring country and get chroming done without the crazy enviro hassels.

 

[patrick66]

The nice thing about Winter is that is the perfect opportunity to do exactly as you are doing - detailing the small parts, and getting all that out of the way in a warm room!