I'll post up some pics soon, but work on the headliner has progressed. I do have the board cleaned, and yes, I did use a garden hose on it. It seems that the glue is at least partially water soluble, so a little scrubbing and some Simple Green, and the board is much better off looking. Since I am in the rather humid Gulf Coast area, I brought the board into a back room inside the house, where I have a dehumidifier running at all times. The board dried out for several days, and then moved back out to the shop for recovering. I have to admit that while I have done many headliners, I am actually quite terrible at it. There are multiple "Humility Patches" on this one, but it is finally recovered. One difference between the E-series and the Crossfire headliners is the plastic pillar covers. In the Crossfire (and indeed most cars) the A-, B- and C-Pillars are simply plastic covers that snap into place, and are usually colored or painted to match the interior. The E-series is the same, except that they are covered in the same pseudo-suede material that the headliner is made from. In addition, the B-pillar lower panels (think: below where the front seatbelts attach behind the front doors) is covered in a black coarse weave fabric. On this car, the suede was intact all around, but filthy. The black fabric was ripped. I didn't think about the black fabric when I ordered the headliner material, so I went to Walmart, went to the fabric section, and found the closest match I could find, which was a very dark grey, but the weave was similar. Good enough!

Here's the thing I learned, though: Headliner material is made to move and stretch around contours. Regular fabric does not. Also, headliner material is multi-layered. Why is this important? When you apply headliner material, you spray glue on the board and on the material. You let it set up to become tacky, and then you carefully apply the material, which sticks virtually instantly. In this case, I sprayed the glue on both sides, and waited for it to become tacky, and went to apply. Problems! The glue soaked through the fabric, leaving greasy looking splotches all over the 'good' side of the fabric. Uh oh! Good thing I bought plenty of extra! I cut new pieces of material, and proceeded to apply it with glue only on the hard plastic panels, after it was dry enough to only be tacky. Remember what I said about headliner material being stretchy? Well, regular fabric isn't. This presented problems on installation, and took me about 30 minutes per panel to massage the fabric around the curves in the panel. With enough effort, it finally fit right, and looks pretty decent, certainly better than the ripped fabric it replaced.

I picked up the reupholstered seat from Penton's Auto Trim in Pensacola. $775 later, the seat has all new leather on the wear areas, and while it was apart, I had Penton's install the replacement seat air bladders that are built into the seat. I had ordered all of the bladders from MB, and brought them with me. In all, this seat cost nearly $1k to completely refurbish. It's a lot, but I plan to be sitting in it for many many hours, so it may as well work properly and be comfortable!

The supercharger bypass valve needs to be replaced, and to do that, the whole intake system, supercharger and intercooler have to come out of the car.. Once out, it will take a while to separate the parts to replace the valve and all of it's gaskets. However, there was a family of rats living under the hood, and their mess was everywhere! I needed to get as much out as I could, because when I lift the supercharger assembly out of the car, I do not want filth and acorn bits falling down the intake ports of the heads. To that end, the engine bay needed a major cleaning. Last night I pulled the car up, and pressure washed the engine bay. I spent over an hour blasting every area I could reach with the car on the ground. This included getting grease and grime off the engine, but also cleaning all the surfaces of the body in the engine bay, under hood, and up front behind the bumper. It looks significantly better under the hood!

Speaking of being on the ground, the car is on the ground, and I am happy to report that the Airmatic system seems to be working, and the car sits nice and level, even after parking for a few days. Progress!



Tonight's agenda includes finishing the recovering of the pillars, and then getting the headliner back into the car. Once that is complete, the rest of the interior will reassemble rather quickly. Thursday evening will see the start of removing the supercharger assembly. Having gotten good at this on the Crossfire, I think I will have it on the ground in less than two hours. I will take a couple of hours to thoroughly clean the components, and swap the valve. I will also change the supercharger oil while it is easily accessible. It will then take a couple of hours to put it all back into the car. Possible I will get it all done Thursday, but that may be a stretch. Current game plan is to take the car on its maiden voyage down the road this weekend. If it passes that, then tires and a windshield are in its future for next week!