Seat belts are in.

Ok, I know this whole restoration kinda speeds up lately, probably because the finish is in sight… (not the end of this blog though.. :)) Today I also installed the Seat belt kit I received a few days ago.

Rooftop installed

You all still owed this one from me… Already installed the roof top last week, but because of the bad weather over here (NL) the pictures were all dark and not good enough for posting.

JDM Emergency Flare

Since we are talking safety, lets focus on a very nice and Japanese Domestic Market only item; the Safety flare. Due to Japanese traffic regulations, every Japanese car needs to have an ’emergency flare’. This is basically a piece of firework that can be ignited the way you lit a match.

New seat belts

If you have followed this blog for a while, you’ll remember how I did my best cleaning up the Factory original seat tan belts, they looked great (for the most part), but somehow sometime refused to work properly… And there’s something I won’t try to save some money on.. my safety!

Glove box part 02

As I’ve mentioned before, I was in the run for producing the original JDM 4 speed shifting plate for the dashboard glove box.
After some hard work reproducing these nice and iconic plates, they are finally finished. Took me a few days cleaning up the scans and convert the artwork into vector. But the result is as I hoped for, or even better..

Air Conditioning unit

The last step in finish installing all the dashboard components, is the Air Conditioning unit. A nice factory original Nippon Denso in good condition.

Vinyl Floor covers

A nice detail with this Japanese cruiser are its original floor covers, still in good condition, not dried out or teared whatsoever.

Glove Box part 01

I will give some extra attention to the glove box in this post. The main reason is actually not the glove box cover itself, but the shift pattern instructions plate on it. With nice instruction in Japanese Kanji, I like that a lot!!!

Instrument cluster refresh

After a few paint fails, the old paint didn’t like the new paint on top, I finally sanded the instrument cluster frame to bare metal and started from scratch.

Front seats

After installing the heaters and filling the system up with coolant fluid, I’m able to run the engine again. This means I can ride!!! Something that hasn’t happened for a long time, and that is exactly what I was planning last Wednesday!!!

Front and rear heater

After installing the dash knobs, I worked my way down to the front heater. The heating system is connected to the central engine cooling system, and this systems of tubes and radiators contains coolant fluid.

Build up, day 01

Dear all, Yesterday I had the best day in times, a day long awaited… The day I could finally start to assemble all the big and small parts that took ages to clean, sand, repair, sand again, level, paint… The day I’ve dreamed of from day 01. In the meantime I had collected many boxes with bought parts, prepared parts, cleaned parts…

New Parts: part 2

Last week I received the order of new parts form Cruiser Corps. Very nice and helpful company, with a great website: www.cruisercorps.com.

Painting tub: part 02

Yesterday was the last day in a series of 4 days of hard work! I began with sanding the tub, then lots of small items, painted those items first and finally yesterday I painted the tub to its final color. I must say; an energy consuming task… But thankfully, a rewarding task as well!

Painting small items and more…

Today I got through the box with all the small items still in need for its last paint job… and there are a lot!!! Like hinges, front fenders, spare tire rack and lots of small covers. Partly they were already sandblasted and prepared with zinc paint, so those parts only needed some light sanding.

Painting the Tub: part 01

I feel sorry that I haven’t posted for over 3 weeks… This was because I was abroad for a short while (Wales, UK) and had a very busy week at my work the week after. This week I booked 4 days in a row at my workshop, so this will speed-en up a bit from now on.

Retouch dash knobs

This weekend the workshop was closed unfortunately… but its not like there’s nothing I can do in the meantime. I still have a box full of small items that need some attention, for instance the dash knobs.

Seat Belts

Last weekend I continued cleaning and repairing all the small interior items I have stored in several boxes around my house. This time I was ready for the safety belts. At first I planned to buy a new aftermarket set

Disassembly final stage

Last weekend I worked on the dissemblance of the dash, All the knobs, Instrument cluster etc.

Seats and Upholstery

Yesterday I found some time during the busy work at my design studio, to give the seats a major cleaning. The seats thankfully were in great shape, but really dirty.