The wash & wax was long overdue - the car definitely looks a lot better. Unfortunately, the only way the paint on the hood is ever going to look good is by repainting the entire car. The sides of the car shined up a little better than I expected.
What else? I put a clear vinyl window in the top and cemented it in place with contact cement. That seems to work pretty well, though there is one small leak that I'll have to work on patching. I prefer to leave the car cover off, if possible, as leaves and moisture tends to get trapped under there and make the finish look really cruddy.
I really have to schedule a weekend to take a good look and adjust the top. It is not opening and closing very smoothly at all. Since I have the manual, I'm hoping it won't be too hard to figure out, but I plan on it being time-consuming to make all the adjustments correctly.
I also washed & waxed my truck, and that came out really nice!
What did I leave out? Marcia's Bug! Yeah, the rain arrived so I couldn't do her car, thus giving her another reason to hate the Eldorado.
A side note regarding her Beetle - feeling cocky after replacing the springs, shocks, water & smog pumps and belts on the Caddy, and replacing the rear view mirror on the Dakota (got clipped when somebody drove by too close and too fast), I decided that replacing her burnt-out headlight bulb would be a cinch.
WRONG! Oi, what a pain. I searched the internet on how to do this and what I found is that some of the Beetles' light assemblies are easy to take apart and some are very hard. Guess which one Marcia's is. SNAP!!! "Did this just break off!? Oops!"
Oh well, the guys at the local shop got things pulled apart and back together okay and didn't charge Marcia for the work, but it is another in her growing list of resentments about the Caddy.
But damn, I look good in that car, and that can't be bad, can it?
And finally, I took the car to a body shop to see how much repainting the beast would cost. The guy I talked to was not interested in working on the Caddy - he had enough business and dealing with all the chrome is a pain - if you take it off then it bends really easy and won't fit back on. He did give some advice though. He thought it would cost about $3k to get a decent paint job, but he said I should take it to a place that specializes in restoring classic cars and spend about $8-10 thousand for a good paint job, then about another $5-10 grand for the interior.
Which is a nice thought, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon unless I win the lottery. I guess I could take it to Maaco and get a crap job for $1000. Another option is to paint it myself, this would be cheaper, though time-consuming. It would be nice if I had a garage so I could set it up as a paint shop.
So, it looks like the goal for the next year is to keep the Eldorado running, keep it looking as good as possible, and enjoy driving it when I can.
Happy New Year!
Here are three photos after I waxed the car:
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