LagondaNet

[Francis]

In order to upgrade Alvira to standards that I want, I have decided to add the roll down rear windows and the inner door handles. I will tackel the roll down window job after I get her back from the AML work shop.

To achive this, I decided to use the wood work from 13422, as well as the hardware. Since the chromed handles from 13422 are larger then the leather ones on Alvira, I decided to use the wood panels that already had the proper holes boared to the size of the chrome hardware.

I proceded in sanding down the wood panels from 13422 to have them re-veneered and re-varnished. That work was dirty work, but someone had to do it...

13422 did not come with a dash board so I was missing that plank. Yesterday I got the AML workshop in Montreal to remove the one in Alvira so that i could sand it down and prep it for the re-veneer job to start today.

To my great deception, I understood why the wood work of Alvira was redone in dark varnish...

Take a look at the sanded down pictures of the panels. The dash panel has been replaced by a panel from car 13456 and is in relative poor shape.

With a lot of precise glue and clamps I managed to restore it in relatively strait shape.

Please give me your comments on that job I did.

Also, does anyone know anything about 13456? How come this panel ended up on Alvira (13207)?

Remenber that I got Alvira from Bahrein in the spring of 2006 and the car had been sitting in a garage for 15 years before I got it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/WoodWork#


Francis

[Mitrovic]

brilliant job!

No information with me about 13456. May be we can assume it was dismantled.

If the panel is too bad, you might find a panel shop to remanufacture it?

Zoran

[Lagondanet]

Yes brilliant job Francis!
13456 might have been dismantled in the Middle East or UK but equally just the wood might have been removed and re-used. I don't know. Perhaps we will find out more in the future.

[Francis]

A work progress report for those of you interested:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/NewDoorHandles#

I was to take a trip to Quebec City last week end with Alvira but it was raining cats and dogs so I went with Cindy (my Wife's Jaguar) instead.

So I started last Friday night with some dismanteling inside the driver's door and did some cutting and reassembling Sunday night upon our return and spend some time last night to finish the job of changing the front door'd inner handles.

Alvira now sports some nice chrome inner door handles. Take a look at the pictures. I also took the wood ring on the stick shifter from 13422 and sanded it down to bare wood to have it re-varnished with the wood trims that you might have noticed are missing.

I am having a bit of an issue with the varnish guy...He is very slow. He has not yet started on the varnishing job...he has had the wood panels with him for over a month now.

Today I will bring him the shifter knob and retrive the front door wood panels to do final ajustments on the positionning of the handles. Then I will bring them back to him.

Francis

[Francis]

Here are pictures of the front door wood panels, not yet varnished. I brought them home to mesure fit on the door handles. Take a look:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/20081119080241#

Francis

[Lagondanet]

Good job!

[Francis]

Last night, after a grooling day at the office, being a stock broker, I was seriously depressed, just like the market...

So I drove on to my driveway and clicked on the button to open the garage door. It was getting dark but illuminated in front of me stood the object I love the most in the world. Seeing Alvira just sitting there with the front driving lights reflecting back the light I was projecting with my other car, made me feel better. Just the sight of Alvira in my garage had a soothing effect on me and made my blood pressure go down.

I just wanted to share that with you all.

Pictures of that view I had yesterday:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/20081121081854#

Francis

[Lagondanet]

Francis

We know what you mean.

[Francis]

Last week I started on phase two of Alvira's transformation.

The first phase was to upgrade the front door's inner handles and that task was dispensed in about a week's work over a week end and nights in my garage. I was impressed with the quality of the fit I achieved.

So phase two was to be a much harder project involving cutting up the inner metal frame of the door to replace it with the one that was inside 13422's rear doors. The inner metal parts are too different to just try to fit with out that modification. I am adding some pictures of the finished job on the right side (minus the wood panel, still not back drom the varnish guy...) and work in progress on the left side.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/20081201123757#


The rear door project had that first part to adress, involving creative reconstructuon using rivets and fine ajustments.

The other part involves the fitting of the rear door roll down windows.

So I went about starting with the passanger's side rear door and part one took me all weekend long last weekend. The fitting of the roll down motor, window frame (that had been repainted just a few days priar) the ajustment to permit a smooth roll down movement took me to the end of last week.

In order to test the mechanical movement I hooked up the electricity from the front passanger's door roll down mechanism.

Then I tackled the fishing of the new wires from the inside rear door to the dash board to connect to the switches in the center console. It involved removing of inner panels...

All of that was a lot of trial and error assembling and disassembling to figure out all the problems and finaly I think that by Saturday morning I was done. About 20 hours of skin cutting, scraping, bruising and metal splinters work. The rest of Saturday was spent on cutting the wholes in the center console, near the front ashtrays and on the back pannel of the console to install the switches and wiring. This part of the work was done with a Dremel drill and needed to be extremely precise to have a nice alligned finish to it. I achieved that!!

So yestedday I started on the driver's rear door phase of the project. I managed to start at about 8 AM with a pause for breackfast and one for lunch, I was done with cutting, reassembling, alligning the mechanism testing with electrical for a smooth movement and I stopped at around 2 PM.

I still need to ajust the inner door panel, (cut a grove for the center window frame pilar) install the inside finisher and fish the wire to the front of the car at the center console.

I think that all of the work on the second door will be achieved in 1/3 the time it took me doing the first one...I learned from my first trial...

All that will be left to do is the electrical hook-up from the switches to the wires comming from the rear doors.

That part involves relays and a hook up to the electrical (fuses box) of the car and I am not sure that I have the knowlage to tackle that alone.

Does any one have that confidence to guide me in the proper hooking up of all that?

Francis
_________________
Alvira's keeper

[Francis]

Just a refresher on my wood story. First take a look at the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/WoodPanels2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCI3JnNP_2JPPQg#

On the first picture is the wood that came with Alvira. The color was darkenned and the finish was redone poorly.

It was alright until I decided to change the door handles from the small leather ones to the larger chromes ones that came with car 13423.

The wood panels from that car needed to be sanded and re-veneered.
The door habdle holes needed to be ajusted and made nice and level.

I did that last fall but came January and the ajustments to the doors showed that the wood worker guy had gone a bit too large on the holes...

I decided to start from scratch... So $400.- down the drain, I went and got new lohan wood, new veneer and also decided to do away with the recessed hedges that I did not like.

Look at the picture with the dash panels one next to the other, I took out the kink and moved the sensor lower and out of sight. no more recessd hedge and a wonderfull maple veneer lackered with no dye, just the natural color.

On the next picture look at the door panel with the wood and the radio plate, also not original but much nicer looking!

Francis
_________________
Alvira's keeper

[Vincent]

Because I'm not really satisfied with the work I ordered about my wooden parts, I'll ask you more explanations out forum.
Great result !
_________________
Welcome to Paradise ! (FRONT 242)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS30BC3D5WM

[Francis]

Here is the final look to the dash board:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/WoodPanels20092?authkey=Gv1sRgCIGroeSH6KytJg#

Notice that I took out the sensor to relocate it below the leather panel away from view. I also removed the grooves on the uper and lower part of the wood panels. I widden the board by about 3 cm to have more wood between the dual air vent and the instrument cluster.

I always have difficulty reading the cluster on a sunny day so my solution to remedy the problem without removing the precius electronic display is to add a Garmin GPS ( wires hidden inside the vent and connectwed to a utility plug under the dash) ( all installed by Bibi!).
Garmin has this feature that gives you a speedomerter display so you can always look at that instead of trying to stare against the glaire and risk an accident while figuring what speed i am traveling at...

On the other picture you may notice that the panel underneeth the ashtrays and on each side of the stick shifter are missing, well I liked the work this guy did so much, on Friday I asked him to replicate those panels in wood veneer instead of the always dirty, tan leather that was original. I still have some of the veneer and the pieces that continiue from the radio board so it will be done from the same batch of material.

And I was promessed delivery by June 1st, so one month before my shipping dead line.

Francis
_________________
Alvira's keeper

[Francis]

You may also notice the shifter knob, it was sanded down and re-varnished. It is brilliant!

Here is a question for all of you: Above the radio is a nive wood panel that invites me to place a logo. I have a nice Aston Martin one Large or a smaller one. Or should I go for an other Lagonda logo. The flap just above the fuse box has a Lagonda logo screwed in. (so I could not remove that one. but I could replace it with the large Aston one)

Take a look at the pictures I just took.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/Logos?authkey=Gv1sRgCKK61JPX6oXHkQE#

Francis
_________________
Alvira's keeper

[Mitrovic]

Looks great. I can't wait to see Alvira!

And to leave it without a logo and just to marvel at the wood?

Zoran

[Vincent]