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Once the car was painted, the real fun began..putting it together. Here's a view of the front. This car is so big I can't take a picture of the whole thing when its inside the garage. The entire left side is complete except for a lower left chevron which I still need to locate. The left side rocker molding still needs to be installed. I got a bunch of NOS rocker molding clips off e-bay because the originals were to rusted. The original rocker moulding and lower wheel well moulding was damaged and I need to locate some replacements.

Out of the 11 chevrons that are on the car I had to repair all but one. Each chevron has 2 pins in the back and they are held onto the fenders using special twist-on clips. They are almost impossible to take off with out breaking the pins off, because of their age an because of the corrosion that forms when the chrome layer was broken by the installation of the clips by the factory. My trick to repairing them is to use a Dremmel Tool to grind the pin stub off and to grind down about 0.010" beyond that. I fill the entire recess behind the chevron with J-B Weld (an epoxy). On the fender I apply masking tape to the entire area where the chevrons are located. I then press a bunch of #6 flush-mount (beveled headed) screws into the chevron mounting holes. I apply some J-B Weld to the head of the screws and then I tape the chevrons inplace. After letting it cure, I remove the chevrons and trim the excess J-B Weld from around the edges. Then the chevrons can be bolted directly to the fender. You have now learned a trade secret!
Here's a couple more pictures showing the rear of the car. All that is missing is the rear bumper. The original bumpers were rusted beyond repair. The tail light lenses are both NOS Delco parts. Not the NOS repos you see on e-bay all the time. An original lens will say "Guide" on it.
Here's a close-up picture of one of the wheels. I had to sandlbast all five rims, prime them, paint the backs gray and then paint them with the body color before I could put the tires on. The tires came from Coker Tire. I polished the centercaps and trim rings. I also touched up all of the black paint that goes on the trim rings' ribbing.
While I was finishing up the trim I got a new set of carpets made. I ordered them from 1A Auto It cost me an extra $75 to have the carpets made with the correct material. The original carpets where blue which was peppered with black. They call this material Tuxedo for some reason. When the carpets came the box was labeled with a big ACC logo, which is the logo for Auto Custom Carpets. Now that I know their source, I can cut out the middle man the next time I need carpets.

The carpets weren't perfect, however. There was way too much material in the center, which made the hump way to high. I had to do what Oldsmobile did with their carperts, which was to cut a slit about 8 inches down the middle, take out some of the material and then sew the carpet together. I also used the original carpet as a template to cut out the areas around the brake pedal, steering column and the headlight dimmer switch.
The original headliner, which is made of a textured foam had deteriorated over the years. Refer to project page #2. It is not reproduced. What I had to do was use the standard headliner material that was used on cars that didn't receive this treatment. I purchased the headliner and the seat insert material from SMS Auto Fabrics ,after receiving some very nice samples from them. They also had some of the original material that was used on the seats as well, which was great because I needed to fix the seat inserts. All I did for the headliner was to scrape the old foam off from the cardboard backers and affix the new material to the backers using contact cement. Before I installed the headliner I put the Welding Checklist back where I found it so that it may be rediscovered someday...
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