On the road

What a great wagon! I love the whole set up.

 

I'm impressed! Very nice job!

That would have been a fairly complicated job, turning your Commuter into a Colony Park - not to mention transferring all that other equipment. Any problems along the way?


Marshall

 

Problems

It turned out to be a lot of work for sure. Changing the window regulators from manual to power was time consuming and painfull (literally). Sticking your arms thru small holes with very sharp edges in the door panels was not fun. I don't understand why manufacturers can make a portion of the interior door skin removable for better access. The complete interior had to be removed in order to change the color from tan to Colony Park red and install the rear seat and folding mechanism. I used an elastomeric paint made by SEM to re-do the interior color and it turned out great. I have used this product before and absolutely love it. It has limited color availability "off the shelf" so I wrote to SEM and sent them a swatch of vinyl asking them to send me a custom paint formula to match and they did a great job. It is not exact due to the fact that we must have non-solvent based, low VOC products in this area but it looks good. The most ignorant problem occurred after I finished dialing in the power windows, installing the harness for them and then painting out the dash. Just prior to buttoning everything up I decided to double check the dash light bulbs and found that when I pulled the light switch I had no dash lights but both turn signal indicators would come on and flash and the high beam indicator would work in reverse. Then when I turned the ignition to the "on" position all the dash lights would come on. Turned out to be a bad ground. Blew a lot of time and brain cells on that one. If it wasn't for the friends I mentioned earlier, particularly Lee Harrison who is a master with most stuff, I would be huddled in a corner right now. Otherwise, the project went well but required a lot of time and planning to ensure everything went together in the right sequence and minimal duplication of work. Despite what you think "looks good" we must always consider that age degrades items and the minute you touch 45 year old stuff you can be in for unplanned surprises of all kinds.

 

That wagon looks great! Hope you get many miles of smiles with it!

Please stick around on the forum, we have many members working on wagons I'm sure can benefit from your experience.

 

Great work Fantastic result from Downunder