nice pick up with the wing Ben, what did it set you back? can't wait to see pic's of it on the wagon

I scored the complete tailgate for $60. Quite a bargain I believe.

Well the good news is that I now have a working handbrake. Finally!!!!

I finished adjusting the handbrake shoes and cable yesterday, and it all works well.

Another mod ticked off the list.

Now on to the Tailgate Spoiler, well, after a small seat repair.

BenJ

Howdy All.

I took part in the Tangcla photoshoot over the weekend.

I am very happy with the results, considering the old girl is still work in progress.







I am now getting quite motivated to fixing up the paint and other details as the weather warms up.

Cheers
BenJ

Me Again.

When I bought the Wagon, one of the things that I knew would need attention was the drivers seat. A previous owner, must have been quite large, as the seat base bolster next to the drivers door has been flattened. The seat centre also felt like it was lacking support, and I sat quite low in the car due to that. The seat back had worse than the usal wear on the bolster nearest the door with a big hole worn through the leather.

I have been on the lookout for some replacement seats. As the EB1 has the darker leather, these seats are much harder to come by in any condition, and a good drivers seat is near on impossible to find. There have been a couple of sets on Ebay, but have been in Melbourne or Brisbane, and when a set was available locally here in Sydney, I had no available cash. None have been for a Wagon, which only matters for the rear seat back.

While I am a patient fellow, and am happy to bide my time, believing that sooner or later the right parts will come my way at the right price, on this occassion I can wait no more.

Recently, my fat a*** fell through the bottom of my seat as it finally collapsed out from under me. Luckily, I had the seats of the same design, but of the later lighter grey, in the ED Ghia. So I swapped in the driver seat while I set about doing some repair work on my drivers seat.

Here is a pic of the bottom of the base from my seat.


You can see were the supports have snapped off. In addition if you look closely, the metal bar the forms the main shape and support for the right hand bolster has broken off at the weld and is poking through the foam. After dismantling the seat I found it was also snapped off at the other end.

The seat back is not looking much better.



This is the passenger seat. It is in OK condition, but has a hole in the left seat base boslter.



This was only going to get worse. With both seats looking bad I took stock of where I was at.

HMMMMMMMMM

Some time ago I was given a full leather seat base by fordebgt93, after his seat back snapped. Over the last week, I had stripped the light grey leather off this base, and on Saturday at Oran Park Raceway, watching the very last Day / Night racing, I had recovered this base with my seat base materials. I had planned on just rebolting on my seat back, including hole and all, but after a visit to Pick N Payless, have now come up with an alternative plan.

I found this, and picked it up for $60.


A very nice condition passenger seat.

The plan now is to use the original passenger seat back cover, and slip in on the drivers seat back frame. Punch a small hole for the lumber support handle, and it should come up nice. The leather is a little worn, but at least is doesn't have a huge gaping hole in it. Then I will strip off the passenger base right hand bolster cover, and cut the relevant holes in it to recover my drivers right hand base bolster. It is in nice condition and should last a fair while.

In the end I should have some reasonable looking, fully serviceable seats, for a small outlay.

I will have more pics of the stripped bare frame during the week, and some details of how the seats are assembled etc.

Cheers
BenJ

Good work as usual...


One comment --- Paint the roof rack and its supports BLACK dude!

Either that or bling them with shiny stuff.

I have considered black, but am leaning more to a bright shiney silver.

I will make my mind up sooner or later.

BenJ

I got offered the original chrome roof rack off an old X series wagon in perfect new condition the other week. It looks nice, but is just too weak to carry much on...! The chromey support bits at the side just about meant they got attached then and there..... Ho hum. Yours would look better with it than mine....

The wagon's looking good there BenJ, especially the front end in the tangcla photoshoot, looks awesome

What rims are on the wagon mate? Seen them before and love the look of them, but i just cant seem to remember the name of them..

benjs rims are csa prowlers..
they used to be on my ed

Hey Ben the photoshoot pictures are brilliant!
i did have a thought.. with the black colour and darkness of the BA headlight conversion. the indicators seem to stand out a fair bit and not quite blend.. had you thought of tinting them slightly?

nice pics ben, i was expecting 10 pages to look through since i have not been on here for 3 weeks. but there was only one page, whats going on man, slowing down in your old age

Hey Guys.

Thanks for the positive comments.

Re the front indicators, I have an idea on how to make them look darker. I will get around to trying it one day soon.

Re the roof racks, the feet are made of plastic, however the cross bars and front to rear bars are alloy, so they could be polished up. I would then paint the feet in a bright silver, giving a similar effect to the wheels with the silver paint and polished rim.

BenJ

Hi Mr BenJ,

I remembered that you said somewhere that the trip computer was annoying you because on gas it had nothing useful to add except incessant beeping.

Have you considered putting in a relay on the ignition wire feed to the trip computer and switching it from the gas switch so it only comes on with the petrol? That way it'd still look pretty backlit at night, but only annoy you if you are on petrol and actually running low.

Clock would still come up on gas when you pushed one of the buttons too.

just a thought, thinking of trying it on my own car.

Hmmmmm.

I will give that some thought. But I have a feeling the DATA line will still provide info to the cluster and make it beep all the time.

BenJ

needs more stainless exhaust tip & tyre shine

nah looking good benj, pics are horn !!