Old Timer Garage

 

If you haven't read the tenth part of this restoration you can find it by clicking on this link: 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville - part 12

12. Restoration of the interior

 

The work on the engine and the transmission was pretty straight forward. It needed to be cleaned of course and then it was just a matter of replacing the seals and gaskets, repaint the parts that needed repainting, replace the rubber pipes and make sure it was still working fine once back on the chassis.

It only took a few days to do all that.

The work on the interior of the car was a very different story though. The old interior was completely burnt by the sun, rats had made their nest in the car during the several decades it spent outside in a field and the smell and state of degradation of the fabric and leather was beyond restoration so everything had to be redone.

It took me almost a year to get the original Cadillac cloth for the upholstery. The problem here being that there is only one company in the US that manufactures these original clothes and since they have the monopoly, they are in no rush to deliver and their prices are really high. But eventually I had enough and I found a website where I could get some very similar Cadillac cloth and I placed the order.

And as it often happens, within just a few hours of placing this order, I received confirmation from the original company that they were going to deliver my original cloth the day after… So I cancelled the second order, got my money back and waited for another few days.

  

 

The electrics of this car were also going to be a challenge. Despite being from 1960, this Cadillac was very much in advance on its time technologically speaking. Pretty much everything that could be electrically powered was. The windows of course, the vents, the seats, the trunk etc…

In the middle of the dashboard sat the Autotronic Eye. A device that switches the headlights from high beam to dipped beam when a car arrives the other way at night and then switches back in high beam once the car has passed. This device was of course not working on my car so it had to be overhauled.

 

All in all, it took almost 9 months to get the car finished. In the end, I went back to the US and until they finished the car, I was back there bugging them every week pointing at what I wanted them to fix. I forced them to make a list of the things they would fix during the week and made them commit to get those things fixed before I came back the week after.

I am pretty good at being a pain in the ass when I need something done so in just a few weeks of this treatment, everything was finished and the car was ready to be taken back across the border.

Before that I had of course taken it for a good drive on the Mexican desert roads which in addition to being very nice was a good feeling for me to be at least one step closer to finishing this project.

   

   

To be continued… here: 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville - part 14