1979 308 Repaint Odyssey

This was completing reassembly and waiting for last coat to fully cure before application of ppf (paint protection film) over front of car. Originally I was only going to have the nose of the car done, but to get full protection from any rock chips etc, we covered the whole front of the car from just forward of the doors. It turned out very well and comes with a ten year warranty. Again, while I am extremely satisfied with the paint, the issues would start from scheduled pickup after ppf and final detail, approximately 54 weeks after initial drop off of the car.

 

When my wife and I drove up to the shop to pick up the car, it looked stunning. As I wa stalking around looking at all the details and double checking areas of concern I had, I noticed that the dash cover was removed from over the fuse blocks. Hmmm. Wonder what that is about…

the owner of the shop came out and said they were double checking that everything was working correctly with the lights, but they kept blowing a fuse when they checked the hazard flashers. So began to help troubleshoot the issue. After about half an hour, I determined that there was an issue with the wiring to the door marker lights. I found a rogue wire just taped off going nowhere. Told the owner I didn’t have time to mess with this (5p on friday) and to have the door panels taken off and I would be back in the morning to fix it.

next morning after inspecting wiring in the door I found the marker light wiring just laying inside of the door, connected to… NOTHING.

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After closer inspection, there were wires missing nd rather than run the hot wire into the door marker lights and the ground back out to the contact switch, they left the wires laying in the door and wire the hot directly to the contact switch (ground). Well, there is your short problem. It still baffles me that the guy doing reasssembly thought that it was okay to just leave wire harnesses unhooked in the door and tape off wires in the door jamb.

 

Additionally, discovered headlight switch was broken somewhere between ppf and detailers….

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you can see at the base of the switch a piece has snapped off and with it the spring and ball bearing. Currently awaiting a replacement from Verell at Unobtainium Supply. Thankfully it is just the knob and not the switch assembly, as I know that can get very expensive, very fast.

 

BTW, you can see in the picture above, part of the re-upholstery of the dash and armrests in black alcantara. This looks awesome (to me anyway) and completely eliminates glare off the dash.

 

After this, I thought all was good. So the wife and I took it for a spin down to Newport Beach. When we came back to the car, she went to open the passenger door, and the external pull handle had no tension and was not opening the door. Inside handle worked fine.

Next day, door panels back off to figure out “what now.” This is what I found….

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Rather than cable passing behind the lever and through the bushing in the back of the bolt, they decided to”why not just wrap it around the bolt and cinch down on the nut?” This of course frayed and broke the 46 y/o cable. After going and getting requisite supplies, I pulled apart the door latches, threaded a new cable (this time through the bushing), reassembled and adjusted tension. This is what it should look like.

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Of course I needed to pull off the drivers side door panel to make sure they hadn’t done something similar on the other side…..

 

…So I opened up the drivers side door panel and no problem with the door latches cable or the courtesy light. (Did I mention that when I was checking on the passenger side latch, the insulator boot for the courtesy light was off and shorted out when stuck a wrench in there?)

But what I did find was that they had drilled my door so they could use a monster sheet metal screw to secure the middle of the armrest. The armrest is actually supposed to go over the stud and secured with a washer and a nut. So I went in, cleaned it up and put in a heli-coil to screw in an M6 bolt from the back and voila! A new stud. Of course I didn’t take enough time to really look at it to see that they had drilled the hole too far to the side to really fit correctly for the armrest. So then had to go back, drill out the broken stud and place a second heli-coil in the right place. Now the armrest is secured properly with two studs in the correct placement. The picture below is before I went back in to place the second heli-coil. You can see the broken stud to the right:

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They had also stripped out one of the screw holes for the armrest on the passenger side, so went back and put in an M5 heli-coil for that…

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There were also some other hardware issues with using incorrect finishing washers, but that was easy enough to fix. I guess generally though, it seemed a lack of attention to detail of things that shouldn’t have been that hard to do right the first time. I’ve been over most of the car though, and these problems seem to have been confined to the doors. BTW, it seems impossible to find #4 finishing washers anymore. So on the edges of the door panels I just used flat #4 Washers instead.

 

The #6 finishing washers they had used chewed up the leather on my door panels a little bit, so went back and replaced with #4 flat washers. Not perfect but better than before.
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Here is the repair work under the front air dam

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I ctually did the binnacle years ago to reduce the glare but then went back and had the whole dash and armrests done as well to complete the look. If you just do the binnacle it is pretty easy to get that off by itself.

 

I’ll get some outside pics next time but here’s some pics of the final product. I did have a bit of electrical troubleshooting to do. It turns out I had some parasitic draw from the fuse block draining the battery. Found it and problem solved. Also got some euro front lenses that I wanted to try out. Plus I’ve been wanting to re-wire my lights to put parking lights on without raising the headlights so I could have daytime running lights available if I want. I used the under dash inspection light socket to mount a toggle switch to raise the lights independent of the light stalk. Also everything completely reversible with quick disconnects behind the relay board.

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