Just Scraping By

The long dreaded roof insulation was finally on the agenda today for the '37, but first I had to go take care of the business of the new compressor that, after one month, went bad on The Caprice.  I essentially replaced all the air conditioning components to get the air working on The Caprice.  Yesterday, the new compressor locked up.  When this happens it's required that you replace the dryer, too.  Since the dryer and compressor were bought at two different places I have the hassle of dealing with getting the two different places to warranty each piece.  This doesn't seem to be entirely too uncommon with parts houses today for their new or remanufactured parts to be bad or quickly go bad.  With as much  money as I spent for these pieces and the labor it cost to have the dealership put them on it's pretty frustrating to deal with having the 134A removed from the system and now having to make time to take all the old parts off and install them back myself and then having the system recharged.  If the world were right, the parts house I bought the compressor from should have to cover the cost of the parts and the labor to make it right.

When I finally got home I started on getting the old vinyl woodgrain off of the sides of the wagon.  This.  Is.  Terrible.  I borrowed a heat gun from work and tried some yesterday.  Even just getting the trim off is pretty difficult because of the bolts and screws that hold on some of the parts. 

I bought some plastic scrapers, but in order for them to do any good it requires getting the vinyl so hot that it melts them.  In some places the vinyl took the paint with it.

April came out later on and started scraping on the roof insulation inside the '37.

This stuff is absolutely terrible.  It's a toss up between what's worse, the vinyl or the insulation.  It's made out of a thick, tar like substance.

After a few minutes April said her arms couldn't take it any more so we switched and she started on the vinyl.

She got all of the driver side door finished and started on the rear door.

I took over the insulation scraping.  I'm sure this stuff is made of all kinds of safe things, like asbestos and an entire host of other things that people thought was a great, safe idea in the 30's.  "Let's throw some arsenic in there with that asbestos, that'll really quieten her down."

The interior dome light had managed to stay in the car all this time, but it was finally time for it to come out.  It's a 70+ year old piece of wood screwed to two supports on the roof.