NEW RADIO

I am making the most of the good weather as I can only comfortable work on Stella in the open, my garage being too full of shelves etc. When I removed the passenger door card for spraying the sill, I saw that the door speaker had several perforations, no doubt caused by clumsy screwdriver wielding. This would account for the very poor sound quality so I decided to replace both speakers and the old cassette player radio. The top photo shows one of the new Pioneer co-axial speakers alongside the punctured one, the bottom pic shows the old Clarian radio.

I chose a classic looking, but thoroughly modern radio, a Caliber, it had Bluetooth, auxiliary jack, microphone, and a removable front cover. In fact it had everything except decent fitting and operational instructions, but I was able to find relevant instructions on line.

Getting the old radio out was easy, it was held in place by a black crackle finished fascia plate and a couple of sprung plates The hole it came from was much larger than the radio I removed, it was obviously cut for the factory fitted radio.  I had to modify the plate to fit the new unit and in doing so ruined the crackle finish, so I sanded it right back and gave it a couple of coats of satin black, there was going to be so little of it exposed, it looked fine.

Connecting up the new radio was simple, I replaced the punctured speaker with one of the two new ones and switched on to try it out. Great, even connected automatically to my phone through Bluetooth and started to play my music, sounded great even with one of the original speakers still fitted. I went for a drive to check it out on the road and all was good at first, but gradually an interference kicked in, a bit like the comedian, Norman Collier's faulty microphone sketch. Unfortunately it got to the point it was impossible to listen to the radio, even when using the Bluetooth connection to my phone it was just as bad.

As soon as I turned off the engine all was fine. I checked all of the connections to no avail and then posed the problem to the Stag Forum. I immediately got two suggestions, the first was to by-pass the old bi-metal voltage regulator that supplies 10 volts to the instruments and fit a solid state one. It only cost £11 and I bolted it up under the dash and connected up the wires, sadly the problem persisted.

The other solution was too simple to be true, maybe, it was suggested, my choke cable was rubbing up against a spark plug lead and sure enough the choke and throttle cable were coming up through the tangle of HT leads. I re-routed them over the top of the servo vacuum pipe and immediately the interference stopped, Result! just got to fit the remaining speaker and another job ticked off. Changing the timing chains is the next job on the list, that should take up most of the winter months.

NEW CARPETS

I got the left hand sill and door frame rubbed down and resprayed and the freshly polished trim all back in place and now it was time to fit the carpet. The carpet came from Coverdale and I opted for Polypropylene as the car is kept in a unheated garage which gets rather damp during the winter months, although I plan to put dehumidifiers packs inside the cabin this winter. The carpet was also having felt underlay attached in the necessary places, but when I unpacked it the top surface was rather fluffy with felt residue and I hoped this would easily vacuum off.

The front, back seats and seat belts had to be removed first and the floor pieces of carpet just lifted out, they weren't stuck down. the side and back pieces pulled away easily enough, with most of the glue being left attached to the metal work. I had to loosen the centre consul section so that I could pull out the tunnel section of carpet, now it was time for the clean up.

I eventually found that a kitchen scrub bud, one of those tangled pad of lathe turnings, cut through the old impact glue residue, although the paint did get a bit thin in a few stubborn places. After I vacuum it out I then washed down the whole floor area, mopped and rinsed and mopped again and a final vacuum.

I treated a few rusty spots with Kurust and then sprayed several coats of primer wherever needed. The main cable runs from back to front, ran in channels  set just below the door openings, so I reset the cables in these channels and gaffer taped them in place.

The first piece of carpet to be stuck in place was the rear heel board, no felt on this bit. I carefully masked off and sprayed the back of the carpet and the corresponding metal work with impact adhesive and gently positioned and smoothed out the carpet over the curves. Yep happy with that.

The next two pieces were for the sills, again no felt. I used the old bits as templates to mark and punch out holes for seat belts, I also needed to trim, no more than a centimetre from the edge to the front of the door opening. I first held the piece in place by the interior trim, lifted the carpet up and sprayed, waited a couple of minutes and pressed down, once glued, I unscrewed the trim and glued that bit down. I then replaced the long lengths of furflex trim/seal around the whole of both door openings, stood back and admired my handiwork and decided to call it a day.

The next day was still dry and warm and as before I used the old tunnel piece as a template for the various holes, handbrake, seat belts etc. I didn't glue this bit down as it would be held in place by the centre consul and seat belt fittings. It did take some tugging to get it tucked up under the consul and as you can see this bit was covered in felt residue.

One of the final bits was the centre section, that houses the seat belt fasteners and the ashtray, just visible in the photo, this was tricky, but got there in the end. all that was left was the small bits that covered the outer seat ridges and then the four large felt lined pieces that covered the floor.

The two front foot well bits did need trimming so that would tuck up neatly under the pedals on the right side and under the parcel shelf on the other side. A good vacuum and wow, it looked good, especially when all the seats were back in and as Ed China would say "JOB DONE".