Heater

h1.jpg After removing the heater from the car, the box needs to be taken apart and stripped down. Look over the casing and make sure that there are no broken tabs or cracks in the plastic. If there are they are not too hard to fix or you can find heater boxes pretty cheap. I gave mine a good pressure washing in the yard and it seemed okay. h2.jpg Don't worry about surface rust on the inside unless you want to go nuts. The little doors etc are held in by rivets and unless you want to re-rivet all the doors back on just makes sure they work freely and shoot a little white grease onto the pivot points. h3.jpg Once we got it back inside we started scrubbing it clean. I used Scrubbing Bubbles bathroom cleaner and a Prep Sol degreaser. To remove the rust stains I have used CLR rust stain remover with good luck. h4.jpg With the housing all clean, we masked off the parts we did not want to treat and sprayed the rest with SEM plastic coloring. The SEM plastic products get a great hold on plastic and will not flake off. We have already painted the metal parts with Eastwood's Detail Grey to emulate the natural metal finishes. h5.jpg Here is the heater case after it's new finish has been applied. The arrow points to the door, which was covered with a layer of foam to allow for good sealing. I was able to pick up this foam at a craft's store and attach it with contact cement and it worked great. Sorry abut the lack of pictures of this step but I was not sure where the camera had gotten itself to. h7.jpg I went to the local NAPA and they had a heater motor in stock so I spliced it onto the original connector lead and it is good to go. h6.jpg This is the assembly buttoned up and ready to go back in the car. I had the original heater core tested and soldered so it is good to go. The arrow in this shot points to the two little foam gasket tubular thingies that you really need to remember to put on BEFORE you install the heater. I learned that on my Roadrunner by having to remove and put it back in again. h102.jpg Make sure the vent seal lines up good and all the mounting bolts slide smoothly through the firewall. h101.jpg It is a little easier to get the wiper stuff in before you put the heater in so after putting in new seals I shaft bushings I bolted it in. The heater slides in rught under this with no problem h103.jpg Since we are under the dash I though I would show off my restored pedal set as after it is done most of this will never be seen. Kinda seems a shame to go to all that work and cover it up but that is the way the game is played. h101a.jpg So that sums up the heater now time to pile a dash and a bunch of seats around it so you will never see all that work....oh well I know it is right and that is all that matters.. v1.jpg Here are all the parts of the driver's side vent. Pretty crusty and rusty so the only choice is to blow it apart and blast, sand and paint all the parts to make it look new. v2.jpg Here are all the parts after cleaning and prep work. I use SEM plastic paint on all the plastic items and it leaves the natural plastic look that paint does not. v3.jpg The vent handles are plastic and instead of painting them, which would have made lettering them diffucult, I used plastic polish and it restored them to a great shine. As you can see mine were in pretty bad shape when I started but check out the next picture. v4.jpg A little Testors model paint from the hobby store flooded into the letters then a quick wipe and the lettering is nice and white again. Now all that is left is to mask off the handle and give the bracket a shot of SEM and bolt it back to the vent. v5.jpg Here it is all assembled and ready to bolt back into the car. Pretty good results for an hour's work and it is one of the little details that make the restoration complete. In the background of this shot is the little rock tumbler I got from Harbor Freight Tools for $19.00. I just fill it with nuts, bolts and fasteners that I plan on using then turn this sucker on with some polishing grit in the barrel, let it run overnight and the fasteners come out nice and clean. A whole lot better than having your wire wheel shoot the little bastards into your new paint job!