Ok about a year ago my other half Claire sold her Mitsubishi Starion to buy a painted TF wagon from Lok, unfortunately Lok has been delayed with the jobs prior to doing the wagon for us so we needed to find a car for Claire to tool around in until the wagon was ready! She quite liked the size of a Gemini sedan and it would be more practical than a Starion for carrying her Circus gear around, she does all sorts of stuff and makes/sews her own costumes etc which would come in handy for what we got!
At the time we were looking, Elky just happened to find a local TC sedan equipped with the Fashion Pack option featuring the lairy blue and green tartan interior trim and "sports wheel covers". This little car was fairly complete and had very faded but unripped tartan, had minor rust in a few spots but had a near whole boot floor and interior floor pans, no rust around the windows etc, few dings here and there on the mostly original Cotillion White paint etc but a nice coating of what they call "patina" these days.
So off to my mate Craig at CC Customs to get the rust cut out and the Kenworth Cabover Aerodyne imitation bonnet fixed up (old mate previous owner had hit something dead centre of the bonnet giving the car the appearance of a Persian Cat). While the car was there we pulled the interior and Claire went to work, following knowledge from Darren "Mr Gypsy" ONeill we discovered that you could simply flip the tartan upside down and BOOM unfaded fresh colour! This car had some NASTY stains in the fabric from what we are praying was just sweat and maybe a few spilled Macca's cokes. Claire stitched the edge of the fabric after unpicking it and put the lot in the washing machine for a few turns. It came out good as new. There is only one small difference between the two sides of the tartan but you can't pick it unless you look real hard. All the black vinyl was replaced with the correct repro gmh long grain except for the heat pressed rear centre section which was luckily in great condition.
Unfortunately while Elky had it he sold the original tartan door trims off the car to a person in WA who refused to sell them back to us, so we had to find some new tartan to make the door trims, which are as yet undone, just running vinyl sprayed ones at the moment. Door trims will be done soon when we get Claire another sewing machine as hers broke down.
So we got the car back from Craig and went to work on the mechanical side of things fitting a few suspension and steering components etc and an engine pulled from a parts wagon we bought as the engine from Claire's car had a broken timing chain tensioner. I fitted a reco TX head cam and cam gear to the engine along with a set of pacemaker 4-2-1's and 2 inch exhaust courtesy of a van Elky wrecked. Claire gave the car 3 coats of Bowden's own wax to protect the "patina" aka surface rust. We did a bit of research and Ankor wax turns the paint a tad brown, clear coating just makes the rust worse and really looks quite crap. Waxing it with carnauba every 6 months or so is the best way to preserve em. Got it on the road in February 2015!
To Be Continued...
