well, it's been feeling a little bit like Monster Garage at our house this past weekend. we have officially started the conversion process on Skully, our 86 Caddy Hearse. the plan is to do some maintenance (trans flush, oil chg, etc), fix the roof rot, paint him 'rat rod' flat black with skull graphics, get some new wheels, put in a killer sound system... and basically convert him from a creepy stock looking hearse into a bad ass showstopping hearse
here's a before shot:
Scott removed the vinyl top (hard to see in pics, but it was cracked and splitting really bad allowing lots of water to get under it):
bad roof rot at the windershield and under the fiberglass overlay (whenever he was out in the rain, the windshield would leak all over you and give you a bath while you drove):
also down the driver's side A-pillar:
me removing the foam under the vinyl... kinda felt like skinning an animal cuz i had to use a scraper to get it off (and we had kept Skully out of the weather for about 2 weeks before we started this and that foam was still wet... hard to believe how much moisture that stuff holds):
rivets holding on the drip rail:
we went to the junkyard yesterday and found a roof in great shape on an 87 fleetwood. this will be our patch panel to fix the roof rot at the windshield and down the A-pillars:
Scott started Dremel-ing out the rotted sections of the A-pillar (until the Dremel died on him):
here's Skully after i removed most of that damn foam... took me a few hours to get it all off but eventually i did. thank goodness the roof is totally covered with a fiberglass overlay, or we'd have a lot more rot to fix. water must have been seeping thru that vinyl for years:
that's as far as we got this weekend. we'll keep plugging away at it every weekend... so this is "to be continued."
here's a before shot:
Scott removed the vinyl top (hard to see in pics, but it was cracked and splitting really bad allowing lots of water to get under it):
bad roof rot at the windershield and under the fiberglass overlay (whenever he was out in the rain, the windshield would leak all over you and give you a bath while you drove):
also down the driver's side A-pillar:
me removing the foam under the vinyl... kinda felt like skinning an animal cuz i had to use a scraper to get it off (and we had kept Skully out of the weather for about 2 weeks before we started this and that foam was still wet... hard to believe how much moisture that stuff holds):
rivets holding on the drip rail:
we went to the junkyard yesterday and found a roof in great shape on an 87 fleetwood. this will be our patch panel to fix the roof rot at the windshield and down the A-pillars:
Scott started Dremel-ing out the rotted sections of the A-pillar (until the Dremel died on him):
here's Skully after i removed most of that damn foam... took me a few hours to get it all off but eventually i did. thank goodness the roof is totally covered with a fiberglass overlay, or we'd have a lot more rot to fix. water must have been seeping thru that vinyl for years:
that's as far as we got this weekend. we'll keep plugging away at it every weekend... so this is "to be continued."
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