I bought this car back in the fall of 2000. It fulfilled my obsession of owning a nearly mint 86 GLHS (started looking around 96-97). Back then, most of the East Coast cars were trashed and/or rusted and the only nice ones I found were half way across the country. Then one day in the local paper I found an ad for one that was only 20 minutes away and the ad said: rust free Texas car, 48K miles, all original with stage II logic module. Bingo!
I went and drove the car and it was the best handling 4 door L body that I had ever driven (owned 3 GLH prior and had driven at least a half a dozen more). The car was as advertised, we struck a deal and I brought 86 GLHS #141 home with me.
Fast forward nearly 17 years later and I haven't done anything with the car except wash/wax, oil changes and tune ups, and taking it to the occasional car show (drove it to SDAC-13 in MD back in 2003, took it to several local SDAC-NE club events, local car shows, etc). The car has been turn-key and is nearly exactly as it was when I bought it and I have only put about 5K miles on it over the last 17 years.
A few years ago I had the Koni shocks and struts restored by Koni and I also cleaned up the suspension. Now, I think it's finally time to freshen up the rest of the car.
Today I started to pull out the interior to freshen it up. It had the usual yellowing of the plastic parts, so the plan is to clean everything up and give the yellowed parts a quick mist of plastic paint. Also, the car has always had a pretty nasty mothball and dead rodent smell (helped me negotiate the price down when I bought it way back when...LOL), so I wanted to eliminate whatever that is. Well, I started at the back of the interior with the C-panels and the source of the smell became obvious. Pictures of the fun below!
Here's shots after I pulled the seats out:
Not too bad. Carpet is pretty clean, the plastic pieces show the typical yellowing, and the restored headliner from when I did it back in 2005 seems to be still holding up nicely. The tops of door panel pieces are yellowed but still nice and pliable/uncracked so they should clean up nicely. This old hellion has just under 54K on the clock.
Here's some shots of the interior stripped:
Nice and clean! I think the only thing I'll do on the floor is clean up some of the scratches in the spare tire well. Everything else looks pretty much perfect. I was hoping to find a build sheet, but no luck!
Here's all the of the interior parts ready for cleaning/freshening up:
I'm planning on getting most of them cleaned up tomorrow and then spending the rest of the day pulling the dash. Yup - pulling the entire dash. The source of the smell is a rodent nest up in the dash. When I pulled the rear c-panels, the nasty rodent smell was revealed. It seems the path was up from the dash, up the A-pillar panels, along the edges of the headliner, and then the main defecation zone was on top of the C-pillar panels. Nasty!!! When I pulled the center console, mothballs and acorns fell out! Ever since I owned the car I would always see an acorn or two drop onto the sliding center console lid whenever I drove it...LOL. I can see jute padding material and acorns up in the ac/heater box area under the dash pad (looks like they pulled it from the rear tailgate padding - you can see it in the second to last pic). So I'll be pulling all of that out and cleaning it up tomorrow. Pics to follow!
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