Richard's Corvair

The Restoration of my 1960 Corvair

Radio Bezel and Upholstery

Left front finished

Right front finished

Right side finished

New glove box

Polished glove box door

Polished dashboard

Glove box door to be used for bezel

Materials for radio bezel

Cutting old bezel trim for border

Making radio bezel trim

Polishing bezel border

Pieces cut for radio bezel

Pieces to cut for bezel

Finished radio DIN bezel

Completed dash with bezel

Radio in dash without bezel

Radio installed in bezel

Door panel material with embroidered logo

Seat back embroidered

Front seat back with logo

Door panels cut

Month 25

I have now completed two years on this part time project. I had thought I’d finish it in about two years, but have not been able to spend as much time on it as I’d like. On the plus side of that is that it is turning out better than could probably be imagined.

The body work is finished, painted, clear-coated and buffed to a nice shine.

One of the slow parts has been the fabrication of clips for the trim, fabrication of the glove box, and repairing the latch mechanisms that had been assembled backwards at some time.

Now the glove box door and dash cluster I polished earlier are installed after fabricating a new glove box.

The original radio is wider than the new ones, so after cutting out the dash for it to fit, I decided to make a new bezel, using my original glove box door, and a donor original radio bezel.

After cleaning and polishing the door, I cut, sanded and polished the original bezel to make the rim, then cut pieces from the glove box door to fill in the ends. Finally put it together with epoxy and attached it with double sided tape. Here you can see how the radio would have been without the aluminum bezel and how it ended up as installed with the bezel.

The upholstery is moving along at the same time. After cutting the panels for the doors, I sent the strips of cloth that will go on the seat backs and door panels to Santa Cruz where they were embroidered by a company called CarScreen.

Here is a sample of the finished seat back. When we took the seats apart we found rust on the bases, so I will sand blast and paint them before continuing.

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