Thursday, January 21, 2010

Interior restoration: finding the parts

I have been in touch with Wally at L&S here in Gainesville about getting the inside of the car redone. I had toyed with the idea of doing it myself, which would have been educational. I am trained as an artist, after all, so I should be able to restore the inside of a car to some extent. However, there is a lot to know about taking the car apart and back together again, and most of my attempts just to remove the dash have failed. And restoration is a skill set, and talent, which takes decades to develop. I think if I were able to do it at all, it would take me a very, very long time. In any case, L&S will do a great job.

I showed Wally the car and he had reservations about the dash, and many of the plastic parts. The plastic had been painted once before and it is very difficult to remove that paint. It has to be removed, not painted over, because the plastic actually gets more stained than painted, if I understand correctly. The dash also has cracks, which can't really be fixed. Plastic shrinks and expands daily and over the years, so any fix to the crack, will also move, but differently, and eventually show another crack. He did a test on one of the pieces and said he wouldn't be willing to go ahead with it as is, because it wouldn't be a good job in the long run, and his reputation is at stake.

Wally recommended finding again all the major parts, like the dash and the front pieces again, somewhere, with the original color on them.

This was a major blow, and I started imagining having this crummy, smelly interior to live with. Eventually I did find a seller on VWVortex.com who seemed to have all kinds of parts. His name is Scott and he is located south of Orlando. I contacted him via the site and instant messaging several times, but communication was slow.

After a lull in communication (and trips to New York and Europe, which put me out of touch), I asked which day of the week was good for picking up and we were able to agree on thursday. He was reluctant to ship, and I wanted to see what other stuff he had, so driving out seemed best, despite the long distance. In any case, I drove out there (3.45 minutes from Gainesville) with my son Bruno. Scott had all the interior parts, except the seatbelt and seatbelt components, in a very nice greyish blue, which was almost exactly the color I had imagined for the truck. This would mean that whichever stain went on top of the first color would work much better in terms of possible unevenness. He even had the window washer reservoir, which I had been looking for. He also had the AC vent knobs that I was in the middle of recreating. It was very exciting to assemble all these parts which had been hard to find for so long. Things sometimes become worth more than gold, because one has looked for them for so long. His backyard was like a priceless treasure in my eyes. Never before had I seen an assortment of car related objects that seemed so familiar to me — familiar because he, too, was dealing with the same model car. He had several VW caddies in various states of disrepair.

He was nice enough to accept my offer of $120 everything. At first I said $100, but I was so happy have completed so many of my searches, that I gave him a little more, for the great condition dash and all the interior parts, plus steering wheel, fluid reservoir and AC knobs. Individually I would have had to pay more for each, and he was glad not to have to list them all on ebay or elsewhere.