Monroe's 70 GTX

[HawkRod]

This is a big reason I don't go to hardly any car show's (with my vehicle)..... There's always the VIN Police, Trim Nazi's, Mirror & Door Handle Connoisseur's and the rest of the Lawn Chair Warrior's that either have to question & second guess everything on your ride, or fulfill the need to brag about themselves and their car for countless hours. The two show's a year I go to, I park and then high-tail it to go look at others car's, before the choking swarm of Know-it-All Turn Keyer's move in. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of real cool fellow car guys to talk with....I much rather just find them on their own turf instead of being a target for the other clowns, near my ride.

I hear you - although my response has usually been: "Great - show me your ride so I can learn." 99% of the time they got nothing, or "it's in progress" or something like that. People who have really built a car are rarely haters because they understand the work it takes to build them.

...and to avoid thread hijacking, anyone who wants to pick on Glenn's car is nuts - it's a beautiful car. It'll be an honor if my car is worthy of sitting next to his at a show (a bit of a miracle too, since it will be a LONG, WET drive for me to get there!!!) :icon_razz:

 

[Ron 73]

I can imagine people standing around at a car show pointing inside and saying "look, he's got the trim the wrong way 'round". Aaargh. You can drive yourself crazy trying to get everything right. Your luck sounds like mine Hawk. I'm normally trying to chase it down as well, lol.

It's a shame some have to be the way they are and especially when they read books, look at pictures and then tells someone that's worked there tail off something is not correct!, The heck with it, this sign is for you and all to use, please now, don't use it sparingly

 

[NZ 70 RR]

Car is looking real sharp Glenn, great job on the front glass. The interior is coming together real fast and these pics you are posting are coming in real handy. Can't wait till the next installment.

 

[a68postcar]

lookin really gooooooooood

 

[tallhair]

Nice work as always Glenn. Thanks for the updates

 

[showard]

It is fun to see your car coming together. You are doing a great job. Keep up the good work.

 

[monroegtx]

'70 GTX grille repair

Been doing some repairs to the grille this weekend as it has suffered a bit of mistreatment in its past life. The two headlight pieces both had one of the ends broken off, one worse than the other, and one had the depth and screw guides broken on the rear as well. (I don't know what they're actually called but that'll do for now).
Cut some pieces off an old bit of car grille that I picked up from a smash repair joint. Cut them into shape and melted them together with the grille. Made sure that I got right in with the soldering iron and bonded heaps of plastic in so that I could grind and file down without taking out the repair plastic. Had to fill in the screw mount hole as the plastic there had been pulled right out at some stage. Just drilled a new hole into the repair for the screw. After cutting the end grooves with a dremel and then sanding down, they came up fairly good. Not very pretty but good enough to do the job, and I think once I repaint them they should look pretty good.



Still have to do the centre piece which has one tab at each end broken off. All pieces have a few of the stainless trim mount clips broken off so I'll have to work out what to do there. Can always silastic them on but I'd rather try to find a solution first.

 

[kiwigtx]

Nice work so far. Good luck with that grille repair....I don't envy you with that task. The older plastics can be very difficult to 'match' to modern plastics. Lots of practice and you'll be an expert in no time. :icon_thumright:

 

[NZ 70 RR]

Watching with interest Glenn, my grill is missing the SS trim clips too.

 

[HawkRod]

Great job Glenn. I think your repair job looks very good.

I have a little bit of grille repair to do as well, so this is great to check out. I tried some repairs on my dash bezel, but it took me several tries to get it looking decent. To be honest, I am scared to try the plastic repairs, but maybe I just have to dive in and go for it.

Thanks for posting the detailed pictures!

Hawk

 

[mikeyfrano]

you can check out how I fixed my tab on the center section of my grille if you want an idea of how it can be done, in my past post. Its still looking good and holding up. will be watching to see how you fix the chrome tab, I have 1 tab that needs fixed

 

[tallhair]

Nice work Glenn. I'm looking forward for the next round of pics on this

I've got pieces and parts of 70 RR grills so this may be in my future ;)

 

[monroegtx]

you can check out how I fixed my tab on the center section of my grille if you want an idea of how it can be done, in my past post. Its still looking good and holding up. will be watching to see how you fix the chrome tab, I have 1 tab that needs fixed

Thanks Mike, I checked out your post and liked your repair. I might do something similar I think. Here's the link to mikeyfrano's tab repair if anyone else wants to see it.
http://www.forbbodiesonly.com/moparforum/showthread.php?58607-70-GTX-grille-tab-repair

 

[showard]

I am working on my 68 charger plastic grill right now. You are doing a great job on your grill and I am taking notes on how you are doing it. I have been getting some great pointers. Thank you.

 

[Ron 73]

I think you are on the right track with this, it is going to look great when done!!!

 

[monroegtx]

The last couple of days I've been repairing the tabs on the grill centre piece. Took mikeyfrano's lead and used some JB Weld on some metal pieces I had laying around. That stuff works pretty good. I bonded the metal to the plastic after mixing the compounds and then let the paste sit for 10 minutes or so and built up the tab section. Leaving it to cure for a bit leaves it not so runny, and easier to shape.



I went off the position of the existing tab instead of placing the outer grille pieces on and measuring from them. The hole on the bottom tab is a bit further in than the top one. I should have made the tab sit a bit further toward the edge. But luckily after drilling the hole, it still connects up ok. Even though the hole is close to the edge it should still be strong enough because of the metal backing plate.



Once I give it a final clean up it'll be ready for painting. But before that I'm going to see if I can do something about the moulding clips that are broken.

 

[tallhair]

Well done. Very cool to see all the things your and Hawk are doing to these beautiful 70 Plymouth's .. this one is kind of in sync with his grill work too

2 Green 70 Plymouth B bodies getting finished on opposite sides of the world but with the same attention to quality and detail

 

[HawkRod]

Well done. Very cool to see all the things your and Hawk are doing to these beautiful 70 Plymouth's .. this one is kind of in sync with his grill work too

2 Green 70 Plymouth B bodies getting finished on opposite sides of the world but with the same attention to quality and detail

Thanks. And you can bet I am watching and learning all I can from Glenn!

Nice work on the tab!

Hawk

 

[monroegtx]

Little bit further into the grille repairs. The centre piece had two of the trim clips broken that needed replacing. Because it still had good anchor points either side of the broken ones, I decided to just put a couple of screws into it. I placed a screw into a piece of timber and then filed the sides and filed an angle underneath until the trim clicked firmly over the screw. Once it clicked on firmly, but not hard enough to distort the moulding, I screwed it into the grille. Sits pretty good, nice and firm.

The molding on the L and R end grille pieces is different than the centre piece so I didn't feel that screws would work very well. You pretty much have to put something where the old clips had been. The centre grille molding is on the left of the pic and the headlight molding is on the right. I had some clips from an old holden of the same era that were about the same height but a little wider. I trimmed them down with the good ole dremel and carved an angle into 'em so that the molding would lock onto them.

I roughed up the areas as best I could to help with the bonding and then got out the JB weld again. At the moment I'm waiting for everything to firm up enough so that I can scrape out the JB from the sides of the clips before it hardens otherwise I don't think that I'll be able to get a file in to put the finishing touches for fitting.

This one was the worst of the headlight grilles, and needed 5 clips repaired. Not really sure how well this will work so I'll wait till it all dries and see how the molding fits on before I try the other one. To be honest I'm not overly confident that they'll be strong enough but I'll soon find out. Will post the results soon. :icon_scratch:

 

[kiwigtx]

Looks like a damn good repair job so far mate....keep it up. :headbang: