Brake and Clutch Pedals/Pedal Towers

Before, as they have been for 33 years (except for the new dual circuit master cylinder):

Removed, cleaned up and ready for painting

Final product--stripped, primered, painted and ready for reinstallation, some day...

The vacuum booster had about half a can of brake fluid sloshing around inside of it. I removed the plug and let it drain over night.

New pedal pads are also installed. I am glad I did that before the pedal towers were reinstalled--those pads are hard to work with!

New Headliner for the Roof

The headliner was in very good shape considering its age. There was only one small tear in the rearmost panel, about 1 inch in length. But a big part of this re-framing project was to minimize noise as much as possible. I had read last year a post by MercedesRover on the Guns & Rovers forum about how he replaced his headliner with closed cell foam and felt so I decided to do the same thing.

The first step was to remove the original headliner and clean all the black tarlike glue Solihull used to stick it in place back in 1977. When I removed the actual headliner, I learned it was not in nearly as good shape as it appeared--most of the metal framing along the drip rail had rusted and the fabric in those areas had disintegrated (nevertheless, I was able to find a buyer for the old headliner "as is" for $40). I had to drill out the rivets in the roof vent surrounds to remove the center panel. The black tar glue came off pretty easily with a wire brush on a drill but there were some thicker bits that took a little more work and provided justification to buy one of those vibrating scraper tools from Harbor Freight. The tool is loud as hell but it did get the job done.

Then it was time to cut the closed cell foam. A tip on work like this--measure and re-measure alot. Then make one cut and test fit. Then repeat until done. Hear are the three panels ready to be glued in place.

My wife (the 109's owner) thankfully removed one level of complexity from the project by deciding that the new headliner could just follow the lines of the original liner. This meant I did not have to deal with cutting and fitting the materials around the alpine windows. As for the roof vents, I cut the closed cell foam so that the surrounds are countersunk into the foam and, when riveted back in place, will pinch the hull liner material between them and the roof.

PerfectFit, the shop where I bought the foam and hull liner, recommended that I use this Wilsonart contact adhesive, which can be purchased at any Home Depot or Lowes. It is, they told me, the same adhesive used in the 3M spraycans but you get a full gallon for the same price as one spraycan. Since I was using on the headliner as well as the sound dampening materials for the seatbox, footwells and floors, I bought the gallon and a lot of brushes from Harbor Freight.

Some lessons I learned about painting on the adhesive: if you wait the full 20 minutes to adhere the two parts together, you had better get the positioning right the first try. A small foam roller works best to spread the adhesive on the bare aluminum roof and on the foam. It does not work so well speading the adhesive on the hull liner--neither does a brush for that matter. In hindsight, I would have used spraycan adhesive on the hull liner for a more even, easily applied coating. Another lesson I learned is that both the foam and the hull liner material stretches when you glue them in place so wait until they are glued down before cutting out the vent holes. I also cut holes in the foam around the sunsheet bolts (before gluing) to avoid having big lumps in the finished product--if you do this, cut the bolt holes after gluing. Wirecutters work better at cutting the hull liner than scissors or a razor knife.

Heeding MercedesRover's advice, I ran the dome light wire first! I also ran a power a separate set of power and ground wires through the rib between the front and middle roof panels "just because." I don't know if I will ever use them, but I did not want to regret not taking the opportunity to run them when I had the chance. This extra set of wires are tucked under the dome light mount and in the drip rail.

Here is the finished product. As MercedesRover said, all-in-all, an easy project. Mine stretched out over about 5 months because the frame swap project as a whole was taking soooo long, I did not feel the need to work faster. If you have the desire, drive, focus to get this done quickly, I think you could easily do it all in one day (assuming the roof is off your truck and you have all the materials ready).

I am also nearly done wth modifying the dome light to run a total of 12 white LEDs. There will be a separate post on LED lighting.