First Ride of the Year!

I picked out some felt at the fabric store for covering the seat "pedestals".  I cut, shaped and glued the felt to the steel and tucked the outboard edge into the metal tuck edge along the door on each side.  I left a flap on the bottom a the floor so it would lay under the carpeting.

On to the kick panels.  I used the original press board panels as templates.  I traced out the shapes onto a couple of pieces of the FRP and cut them out with my, now extremely dull, saber saw.  I sanded the edges and pupped them in.  They looked pretty good.  The white was a bit stark, so I scuffed them up with Scotch-Brite and painted them with some gray paint.  When they were dry, I just slipped them into place.

Next up was to re-install the seats.  I touched up the black paint on the tracks and mounting brackets and bolted them in place.

After the seats were in, I took the original rubber floor mat and traced out the shape into some carpet to make a new floor mat that matches the back carpet.  After a couple of attempts, this is what I came up with.

I scrubbed up the rubber mat that fits between the front seats and put that in for now.  It doesn't look very good, so I will have to make a replacement for that soon.
I had placed all the seat belts into a bucket and set them in the corner of the garage until I was ready for them. I looked in the bucket and decided that the seat belts looked just plain nasty dirty.  I poured about a cup of really powerful cleaner and about three cups of water into the bucket and started scrubbing the belts.  It wasn't long until the water turned the color of coffee!  Nasty.  I scrubbed them up for about 15 minutes and rinsed them with the hose.  I set them in the sun to dry.  While the belts were drying, I installed the glove box and my new sun visors.  It's nice to have a new clean set up there.  Once the belts were dry, I bolted the front belts back in and it was time for a little test ride!

The big day.  I started it up , let it warm up for a bit, and headed out down the street.  A quick lap around the block and return home to be sure everything was functioning properly and I was off.  I drove around for a half hour or so with a big smile on my face and the windows rolled down.  It was very good to get it out.  Being couped up in the garage all winter makes for pretty boring scenery.  After I got home, I decided to give it a bath and put it away.  It was a very good weekend for my old bully.