I've made the leap from wagon lurker to wagon owner

I just picked up the Roadmaster from the shop. The garage that rebuilt my A/C in 2011 was very close to my office and convenient. I work out of town now but I took it back to them anyway in the hopes that I'd get some warranty or at the very least sympathy. When I explained that I worked out of town now and would just go elsewhere unless they thought there might still be a manufacturers warranty, the shop owners son volunteered his car as a loaner. I was really impressed so I let them look at it. I took the day off work to nurse a sick pet at home so I really only drove his car a short distance and back. His mid-2000's Grand Prix was no "prix" and I was happy to give it back.

I did find a blown fuse last week but swapping it out did me no good. I expected a dead compressor so I planned for the worst. Fortunately all they found was that the refrigerant had leaked out. The compressor won't pull in if there's no pressure on the refrigerant so that makes sense. It still doesn't explain the blown fuse, but one step at a time. When they filled it again, the system held so it must be a mighty small leak. They put dye into it so that we'll hopefully find where the leak is next time. The bill wasn't cheap, but it was better than a new compressor.

 

Well I've had a few adventures with my vista roof replacement over the last couple of weeks.

I collected some good information here and gave it a go.
http://www.stationwagonforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26170&highlight=vista+roof

Removing the window wasn't as awful as I expected. It was a pretty hot day so the urethane was pretty soft. I managed to slide a putty knife between the window and the roofline once I removed the nuts holding the window onto the roof. As I did that, I slid pieces of cardboard in place and then levered upwards a bit. I would then move a few inches to one side and use another putty knife to lever up again and slide in another piece of cardboard. Once I had cardboard in place under most of the window, I just lifted it off. It took me an hour or two with a can of Duplicolor Wax & Grease remover to get all of the urethane off and all of the surfaces clean again.

With everything clean, I applied a bead of urethane around the bottom edge of the glass with a caulking gun. The Mrs gave me a hand to lower the glass in place and I covered it with some towels and piled some equipment on it to push it down.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the window level when I lowered it down and one of my beads folded under, failing to seal correctly. It took me so long to clean it off when I removed it that I didn't want to do it again. I went to the glass shop here in town that I've taken a liking to and found them to be closed for vacation.

I went to another accessories shop that does a lot of sunroof work. They couldn't take the car for at least a week and didn't want to touch it but agreed to tackle it if I left them my service manual.

I went to one of the local GM dealers that used to be a Pontiac/Buick dealership. They no longer have a body shop and wouldn't even consider it.

I went to the body shop that the GM dealer uses to have work done and they were too creeped out by the work that the last body shop I went to did. Plus they were absolutely swamped and couldn't look at it anytime soon.

I finally went to another glass shop and they agreed to look at it if I could bring it back in a couple of days, leave it there all day, along with my service manual.

I dropped it off on a Wednesday morning only to find that their sunroof guy hadn't showed up that day. The owner said he could do the work, but was hesitant to remove the window as they'd never done one before. I said removing it was easy and left it with him. He called me at the end of the day to ask if they could keep it until Thursday. I saw no harm in that and agreed. He called me again on Thursday to ask if they could let it cure overnight and do another water test on Friday. I finally got it back on Friday night and was charged for two hours labour and the cost of some urethane.

A week later a hefty storm left me with a mess of water on my carpets, and collected on the roofline under the window inside the car so I took it back to the glass guy this past Wednesday. After a repeat of the 3 day scenario above I got the wagon back again last night (Friday). He said that not only had they really hit it with a power washer, they had applied a bead of caulking around the edge of the window mount.

Once again I'm holding off on putting the interior back together until I'm certain that it's not leaking. It's starting to rain again now so I'm typing this with crossed fingers.

Some of you might recall a few posts ago when I was reinstalling my roof rack that I found it difficult to use Well Nuts due to the openings in the screw holes on the underside of the roof rack.
I cut up some pieces of plastic to put under there to allow the roof rack to squeeze the upper flange of the Well Nuts once it was tightened down. I wasn't really happy with it, and one of them pulled free anyway and started to leak. I took the whole rack off and tried again.

This time, while trying to modify a piece of plastic to fit inside the hole, I discovered that the holes are about the same size as a faucet washer. I went back to my stash of plumbing parts in the shop and found that a 00 sized washer fits in the hole pretty much perfectly. Strangely, one hole is a different size than the others but a little time with a Dremel tool sorted that out. I filled each hole with some gasket material and then put the washers in before reinstalling it onto the roof. So far so good!

 

It is a beauty! Love the color-combo!

 

Well, last nights rainstorm left me with a damp car again this morning. I don't believe that the glass shop has been removing the roof rack prior to resealing the glass as the service manual says. I can't say that I would expect them to, especially with me having reinstalled it with Well Nuts. Since they put black caulking around the outside edges, I think it's safe to assume that they weren't able to caulk the rear edge since the roof rack would be in the way. I'm thinking I may remove the rack (again!) and run a bead of caulking around the back edge before doing another water test. It'll be a bit easier than giving them my wagon for another 3 days.

 

Well I popped in to the glass shop to have a look at the sealant that they were using so that I could try to seal the back edge. The owner was insistent that I bring the car back to him again as he really wanted to make this right. I dropped the car off again on Friday and I put my car ramps in the back so that they could raise the back end up for water testing. During each of the last attempts, the seal has held fine while the car is level but it seems to leak when the water gets the chance to collect around the seal. It was a long weekend so I didn't get the car back until Wednesday this time. I haven't tested it myself yet but they tell me that they tested the seals with water as well as with 160PSI of air from the inside while soaping the outside and didn't get any leaks. It looks like the problem has been with a leak between the vista roof glass and the plastic encapsulation around the bottom that gets adhered to the body. This time they went all around the inside of the window with sealant. It's not pretty, but it can't really be seen unless you stick your head right up inside the window. Fingers crossed! They suggested that I find myself another vista roof in case this turns out to still be a problem.

A lot of my interior has been removed for the duration of this process so the wagon isn't much fun to drive and I've been planning and plotting about putting the interior back, quieting down some of the interior noise and cleaning up/recolouring the interior panels. While I've been thinking all of this it occurred to me that my wagon would look much nicer with a tan interior rather than the blue that it has. When I first started shopping I was looking at a lot of white wagons and I loved the tan interior. I haven't yet seen a blue woody with a tan interior. I'm not sure why but I think it would look great. I started testing Duplicolor's Vinyl and Carpet Dye (since I can't seem to find SEM in my area) and it worked pretty well. My current plan, since I was looking to recolour the interior blue, is to change direction and recolor the interior tan instead. The Mrs is horrified at the amount of work involved but after having pulled the interior in and out so many times I don't think it will bother me much. Heck I already have several replacement interior parts that I bought from a guy last summer that were tan so I'm part way there.

 

Your interior isn't going to go the same way as Dewey's is it? Tan sounds like a good idea.

 

Says the lady who's been waiting for a body shop for 2 years!

 

I came very close to acquiring a '95 Roadmaster this morning. It had a bad starter but was said to have a strong engine and transmission. In any case it had an extremely well preserved tan interior. A friend of mine and I were going to split on the wagon. He wanted the power and drive train and I wanted the interior and other assorted goodies. Alas, a Firebird owner beat us to the punch and it's gone. The seller has agreed to pass my information along to the buyer in the hopes that he wants only the engine and will sell me the rest. My buddy has decided to put an LS1 in his '61 Invicta instead of the LT1 so acquiring a powerless car would work in my best interest.

 

Oooooo..... '61 Invicta! Pics, please!
Like this one?

 

Oh, man. A chevy engine into a 61 Buick? Why? That car is crying for a real Buick engine. A nice, well built Buick 455 would certainly look just right in there! Add Edelbrock bolt in fuel injection, and you have all the convenience of a fuel injected engine, but also the torque you need to make a big old Buick run like a big old Buick. It will also SOUND like a big old Buick, and that is something a Chevy engine, no matter how good, can ever duplicate.

 

He'll likely keep the Buick engine to put back in later, he's just looking for something that will let him keep driving it with fewer stops at the pumps.

Here are some pics of my buddy's car for Krash.

 

Well, my Vista window leakage hasn't really gone away. After having the glass place try 3 times, and each attempt taking 3 days I figured that it's time for me to have another crack at it. The glass shop was able to get a decent seal between the window encapsulation and the body but during the various removals the window itself started to leak. I figured that if I removed the window, put a fresh seal between the glass and the encapsulation then I would have a good start towards getting the window sealed again.

I discovered when I was removing the window that on their last attempt, the glass shop had used caulking instead of urethane which practically epoxied the window to the body. I bought a cold knife set and pulled it through what I thought was the caulking. I worked diligently to get the window off but wound up damaging the plastic encapsulation pretty badly rendering the window all but useless. I also gave a little too much body english to it at one point and put several dents in my roof so I'm a little frustrated today.

Needless to say now that the window has been removed it's threatening to rain today so I had to very quickly get all of the wagon's interior parts stashed in the back, sell some stuff online from the garage, and get the rest of the garage tidied and organized in order to pull the wagon inside a couple of months early. Now begins the hunt for a replacement window before I can drive again.

 

Well my poor wagon has been lounging in the garage for weeks now. After pulling the Vista roof and subsequently denting the roof I've been hunting around trying to find a suitable replacement.

At long last I found a local guy breaking a '96 wagon. He agreed to remove the Vista window and sell it to me before scrapping the carcass.

I mentioned to the seller that I had some trouble getting the window off without breaking the seal between the glass and the plastic encapsulation. I drove to the nearby town to pick up the window and discovered that he had cut a chunk of the roof out to avoid having to remove the window!





I wound up hanging out around the wagon for the next couple of hours just swapping stories with the seller. He was working at building a custom out of a '57 Jaguar and was going to use the frame, engine, transmission, and even some of the interior out of the Roadmaster. Over the course of the afternoon we dug into a few of the oddities of the wagon and he wound up giving me pretty much any of the parts that I took an interest in. I wound up with my window, a roof rack, an extraneous chunk of roof, and a trunk full of spare goodies for $60!






Now...does anyone have any ideas on how I go about getting the gobs of black silicone sealant off of my roof? The urethane was easily removed but the black caulking that the glass shop used last time has been almost impossible to remove.

 

I scored a donor wagon this morning to do my tan interior conversion! I found a fella in a nearby town unloading a 1994 Roadmaster and snapped it up for $600 after seeing photos of the interior. I'm going to swing by tomorrow night to pay for it and possibly bring it home. It's a runner but apparently runs bloody rough. He was told it needed a starter when he bought it but after swapping the starter, battery, plugs, and wires it still runs like a dog. It's pretty likely that an OptiSpark will set him right. Makes little matter to me as I'm not after the power or drive train. I just want that sweet tan leather.

The town that I live in doesn't allow overnight parking on the street during winter months to make life easier for the snowplows. We can park overnight in the summer but that ends on Oct 31st. Since I have only a double driveway and will need the garage for the parts transfer from wagon to wagon, I'll have to put a couple of cars on the street until I get the swap finished and now have a pretty solid deadline of Oct 31st for completion. I'll likely do the swap and leave out the headliner until I can get that blasted Vista Roof replaced/resealed.

Here's the snaps that the seller sent me of the interior. I've no idea what the rest of it looks like yet. There's a possibility that the entire car is in better shape than mine I suppose so I might just repair this one and sell the one that I have. We'll see what happens when I get a better look at it.

 

Congratulations . very nice score indeed .