I attached it with a few screws. The only tricky part is the screws that end up being right over the slider door track. These needed to be trimmed for the slider to operate nicely (at all!).
The next little project was to replace the nasty looking edge treatment on the "wooden" cabinets. These cabinets are made from plywood with a cherry colored wood pattern laminate of some sort. The edges/corners that show exposed plywood were originally trimmed out using a cream colored vinyl insert. Well, after 40 years, this vinyl gets a bit nasty looking and can no longer be brought back to it's original appearance. Over time, the plasticizers leach from the vinyl making it very stiff. When this happens, it shrinks and no longer fits the original opening. To fix this, I decided to remove the original vinyl and install a wooden corner cap that I stained and varnished to match the cabinet color.
I attached this to the cabinets with my pin nailer and filled the nail holes just like doing the trim on the inside of a house. There were three places I installed this material. I was able to do all three locations with one 8 foot long piece.
On to the curtain rods. I had a few curtains already made and, if you remember, I was using a bungie cord for a curtain rod. well, this just didn't cut it. It was not tight enough and would sag between the attachment points and the curtains would look horrible. I decided to try a piece of metal fence wire that is coated with a vinyl covering.
I stripped off the covering at the ends and looped the metal wire around a mounting screw.
The next problem to solve was the tension. The bungie, of course, tensioned itself, albeit not tight enough, but the wire would not. I came up with a turn-buckle mechanism to tighten the wires. It worked great. This also enables a re-tensioning down the road. You must be a bit careful not to over tighten the wires, the turn-buckle and wire are strong enough to rip the screws right out of the body steel!
I positioned the turn-buckles at the "fixed" end of the curtains (the end that doesn't need to slide along the wire.) and they seem to be working out great. Next job here is to make some tie backs for the curtains. They will spend 99.9% of their life in the open position, at least they should look nice that way.
Next up was the interior lights. The OG lights were pretty nasty and the switches and lenses were just plain bad. I found a couple of lights from a 2002ish. GM Suburban. They worked great. I made a hole template from a manila folder and taped it to the headliner. I cut out the holes using my Dremmel with a fiber cutting disk. Worked great. I reached behind the headliner and fished out the wires and soldered them to the lamps.
Nice new lamps now. I need to remove the lamps and paint the housings white to match the headliner next and that is complete as well.
I have been struggling with the front door panels for sometime now. I made the upholstery covers for these three times and each time I was disappointed. Anything from plow through stitches, to contrast stitches, to addition bolsters in vinyl and cloth and it all looked like crap. I finally settled on a foam back knit fabric in gray with a plow through stitch to simulate a bolster area. I am pretty happy with the outcome.
Here is how I did it:
First, using the original door panels as patterns, I traced out the shape onto a piece of 1/8" tempered Masonite. I cut them out using the saber saw. I them clamped the new panels behind the old templates and drilled out the attachment holes right through the covering on the original panels. Worked great. I then sanded the edges and cleaned up the holes with a small file.
Next I laid the Masonite panel on top of the back side of the fabric and traced out the shape of the panel onto the back of the fabric. I added about an inch of fabric material all the way around the perimeter of the panel for gluing surface, and cut out the fabric to the shape required.
After this, I made a simulated bolster templates (upper and lower) from a scrap of cardboard. I traced the "bolster" shapes onto the fabric with white chalk and added the horizontal lines with a straight edge and chalk. I then stitched on the lines and trimmed the threads. This gave a nice plow through look in a nice pattern. I used a matching thread color. The contrasting thread just was too much.
I then flipped the fabric face down and placed the Masonite panel onto the back side. I sprayed the edges with 3M Spray-90 adhesive and folded the edges. I cut out the door remote handle, pull handle and the window crank holes using a piece of steel rod heated with a propane torch. Lots of smoke, but no loose threads or fraying fabric.
Nice and clean. Reinstall the clips and pop them in place.
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