Slowly, but Surely

Last Sunday I was able to work on the LeMans. I continued working on the doors, this time pounding and prying the dents around the side view mirror on the driver's door. Click here to watch the YouTube video I posted. At the end of the video, I've finished applying the Bondo, but that wasn't the end of my car work for the day. After setting aside the driver's door, I moved on to the passenger door with it's nasty crease. Not shown in that video, but in a video that's in the works, is my whining about how hard it would be to deal with the significant crease in the lower part of the passenger door. The following images are screen captures from the raw video and compare the bad (creased) to the good (factory-made).


After spending some frustrating moments trying to pound the crease out from the inside of the door, I gave up and decided there had to be way, using my MIG welder, pull out the dent. I needed to do it on the cheap, so that's what I searched for a day later. Not surprisingly someone had made a video of their cheap and effective means of pulling dents out of car panels. I will make the lever shown and use washers I've got lying around. It looks like the only thing I'll need to buy is the s-hook.

Then, for something completely different, I proceeded to remove the carburetor and disassemble it. I'm going to give it a soak in carburetor cleaner before putting all back together with the new thermostat coil and rebuild kit that I picked up at the Hershey Swap Meet.

Bench or Buckets

Way, way back in the day, I had high hopes that the LeMans would be on the road before my daughters grew up. I thought, back then, that seating for six was an imperative, so I bought a bench seat and a steering column out of a mid-60s GM A-body (I think it was a '66 Buick Special - my memory is hazy on 20-year-old events). Well, time has flown by and the daughters have flown the coop, so it's just the lovely Loriann and me. Now that I’ve finally gotten serious about getting this car back on the road, I needed to do some online shopping for upholstery. Since it was my intention to still use the bench seat (so I could have the lovely Loriann snuggled up next to me during our rides together), I went shopping for a parchment (white) vinyl bench seat cover that matched the pattern my car came with.



Exhaustive searching ended up being more frustrating than fruitful. All I could find were the following images online without explanation as to whether it was original or reproduction. I had some hope that, since Pontiac made a front bench seat in vinyl, some vendor would reproduce it.



During my search I did unearth the following image from Pontiac’s Color and Interiors Brochure where they presented the offerings for ’65 A-bodies. This showed that only the LeMans and GTO got the top-of-the-line vinyl (Morrokide):




So, currently, the only ’65 front seat upholstery available being reproduced is for bucket seats. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since I imagine most, if not all, LeMans and GTOs were sold with the sporty buckets, so the demand for a replacement bench seat cover is probably pretty small.

From everything I've read and seen, at least '64 thru '66 used the same seat frames, so I  expanded my search and came up with another option. YearOne and Ames Performance sell '66 Tempest seat covers in black, red, metallic red, and gold vinyl that will fit my front bench and rear convertible seats. I'm thinking the following combination may work.

Does the pattern in the seat complement the pattern in the door panels? That is the deciding factor. I just sent a technical request to YearOne to confirm the same gold viny is used in both their '65 and '66 upholstery. We'll see.

In the end, is the best choice to stick with bucket seats?

I Hate Making Decisions

It seems like every video I've recently posted on YouTube contains some mention of my struggles to settle on the right paint scheme for the LeMans. It's been a monthly, if not more frequent, activity scanning the web for different colors. Currently, at the top of my list is Sunfire Red, offered by GM in 1964 on Pontiacs.



It was code WA3240, which also appeared on Buicks as Coral Mist.

Last spring I went to the Charlotte Autofair with my buddy, Bill. My shopping list included paint, so, with the above two images residing on my phone, I wandered the rows of vendors at looking for an affordable source for this color auto paint. Early in the afternoon I came upon a table stacked high with mixed cans of auto paint. Each can had a color name, but nothing else to indicate what shade lay within. The booth's salesman wandered over, and I showed him the GTO photo on my phone and asked if he knew if there was a match on his table. After a bit of searching, he unburied a quart can of Wild Pomegranate Red Metallic. He then produced a paint chart that convinced me to spend the $35 for the paint plus catalyst. Discount Autobody Supply carries Kirker paints, as does a number of other online sources.

The more I stare at it, the more I like it better than Sunfire Red. It's got some orange and gold to it.



These are the other colors under consideration.

Iris Mist

Go-Mango

Spicy Orange


Next I need to lay out the interior decisions that have to be made. Arghh!