ronmanfredi

Bruce, your car shows to be #20 of the production run..

I bought 32oz and used almost 1/2 on the seats. I'm doing the door panels next and I'm sure I'll have around 12 OZ left over. It's water based, easy clean up, easy to store in their bottle. 20 minutes apart for each coat, dries to touch in about an hour in 65+F I always let it sit overnight before getting on. It has not rubbed off on any leather surface I have put it on (done 2 cars so far). You can use it on vinyl BUT you must scuff the vinyl with 400-600 grit paper completely so the dye can penetrate the vinyl material, otherwise it will peel off in areas that you rub a lot.

Bottom, added new image as well. The difference is more noticable in real life. The new color is brighter and all the pink tint is gone.

Our 06 model has a black interior with red seat inserts and red door panel inserts. The color has some pink in it and doesn't look good to me nor matches the red car body at all. So, I contacted Seat Doctor, who makes leather seat dyes and who I have used before, to make some dye that would match the red body of the car. Next I removed the seats, cleaned them thoroughly then masked and papered them off (the most time consuming part of doing the job). Harbor freight sells a $29 touch up paint gun with regulator that works great with this water based dye. I sprayed 2 coats of dye, 20 minutes apart at 40psi. As you can see, then job turned out really nice.

Not if you have good clamps and the pipe fit well. If not, don't mess with JB weld, there is a muffler pipe sealer made by permatex that Oreilly auto parts sells, which would be much easier to use. (no mixing needed)

If you have a Blaupunk cassette radio, there will be 2 inline fuses, both accessabile underneath the dash cup holder or blank panel. The radio would most likely have a small square amp sitting on top of it which then means that there are 2 inline fuses to check. The fusebox is where Gunslinger said it would be.

It's epoxy so you can try and scrape it off the roof panel with a putty knife first (use a light duty hammer and see if it will pop off. If not, try the same thing on the frame side of the roof) If either works, then you'll just have to grind off what's left on the roof. If not, then an oscillating tool might work or a hacksaw blade if it will fit in between the roof and frame.

Yes, don't be surprised to see headliner material and other junk in there. The headliner edges on the top side of the sliding piece may have come loose as well.

While the painted valve covers were cool, I still was looking for more and found it in a intake manifold cover made by California Pony Cars. Once installed, I figured out that the hood wouldn't close since the hood latch arm was hitting the cover. So I cut a notch out of the back side and lowered the hood again only to find out that the entire cover sat too tall for the hood to close. My computations and stubborness led me to believe that I could make it work, so I began cutting out the center section, notching the front mounting bolt holes, etc, etc. (I won't bore you with the story line of the modification since it went on for a few days LOL) Eventually, I got the cover lowered enough that I did acheive about 1/2" clearance between the front of the cover and the hood when all the way shut. Now the center of the cover was really cut down and didn't look good at all, and the notched section at the back side for the latch arm went completely through the back, eliminating all structural support. As I looked at it, it occured to me that I needed to make a top cover section to attach all the way around the top, which would make the cover solid and strong and cover up the cut out center section. I remembered that I had some 1/4" thick clear plexiglass, so I made a template and then made the top plate. Next I got some small brackets that I had laying around and used 5 of them to screw the top plate in place. ( I notched the plate for the hood latch arm before installing it) I decided to paint the cover to match the engine valve covers in red and semi gloss black. During the process, I went to a local sign shop and had a couple of decals made for the cover in Silver and installed them. Then I added some pin stripe in silver where the red and black met. Now at this stage, the cover was looking pretty good except you could see the cut out center section underneath the plexiglass top plate. So I painted a 1" border around the top plate which covered that up, plus the mounting brackets. NOW THIS IS GETTING PRETTY COOL! As I looked at the flat black intake manifold runners, it struck me that I could take some of the carbon fiber wrap that I had left over from the dash project and place 8 strips of it on the top surface of the intake manifold runners. And then I decided to add a couple of 1" tall strips along the bottom sides of the new intake cover. (It's important to know that the angles of the carbon fiber pattern are a perfect match over all of the strips and side panels). Now it was time to install the cover and MAN THIS LOOKS AWESOME to me and the wife!! Here are some photos of the journey plus if you ever want to have the decals made locally, I have the VECTOR file that I can send you!

John's production numbers are correct. The Firebird/Mustang Vins tell you of the OEM chassis build/options, but the Avanti add-ons are missing. The only perfect way to know is to have the Production Sheet which all original owners had (some passed them on to the next owners). The second way is the window sticker. I'm finding that there are Avanti Body #s on most Mustang based cars that tell us the production run # of that car. 2004-2005s used one AVxxxx 4 digit number location on the door tag. 2006-2007 used a 17 digit Avanti Body Vin and the last 2 digits are the production run of those models (mine is #11 which means that there should be a minumum of 11 cars made that year IF the first one was actually #1) John is working on trying to get together more documentation to help with this project and I still have dozens of owners to attempt to contact to get their car info as well.

Once the glass is out, the sliding portion of the head liner will lift right out. You'll find some corrosion, pieces of extra headliner material that has fallen down into it's tracks, etc. Before you do anything else, get some plastic, etc, and some tape and block off the interior so no trash falls into the inside of the car. I had to reglue all of the headliners overlapping edges around the sunroof frame once everything was out, which wasn't a big deal. I used a scotch brite pad to clean the metal tracks, etc. There was a lot of small trash on top of the headliner base, below the roof panel, so I took my air compressor and a vacuum cleaner to get all the trash out. I placed the a compressor hand held air nozzel on one side of the gap (passengers side) and the vacuum on the drivers side so as I blew the stuff around, it hit the vacuum cleaner as it exited the gap. My frame had come loose from the roof panel. If yours has too, then I know exactly how to fix that too. The attached photo shows you what to look for.

I bought the wheel from Summit Racing in the 15" for that reason. It's a special order with about a 4-6 week shipping time. You also have to order the matching corvette hub and horn button.

1/8" is what you want. I still have enough to do another car complete if you want them, $50 plus shipping. As far as what I would do different, I wouldn't waste the time trying to bend the panel. I'd just cut the end pieces and install after the main piece. You can use your old wood panel as a template and a cheap scroll saw to cut the new panel, BUT you need to add about 1/8"-1/4" to the width of the area where the side pieces are going to be cut since doing the cut will actually remove some material and then the end pieces won't completely cover the back aluminum panel at the outer edges.

I removed almost all of the moonroof on my 82 to repair the separated frame from the fiberglass roof. You have to open up the sunroof itself and you will see a removeable stop on each side down in the track. Mark the position and take out the screws and stops. Next, put a couple of layers of 2" wide masking tape at the front of the moonroof on the painted roof. Then run the moonroof to the closed position and as it gets within a few inches of being all the way close, then lift the front of it out of the channel so it passes over some of the masking tape. You can now get to the back of it and disconnect it from the drive motor connection. Once you have it out, then you can remove the headliner panel. Now it's time to clean the guide tracks, the sunroof assembly, replace any seals (available from Nostalgic Motors) and then reassemble. If the sunroof frame has separated from the roof skin, then that's another topic on how to repair that.

LOL, well you don't know how I work. I have data on 96 located so far....

Yes, it's been that way since the site crashed a few months back.

All the links that I have tried quit working several months back.

Don Lindner and I are working with John Hull to develop a production list of all cars from 2001-2007. If you haven't supplied Don with your Avant's information, then please provide it to me with the following info: Vin Year, Vin #, Body Style: Conv/Coupe/T-Top, Color and your name. If you have a Mustang chassis, then the last 4 numbers of your Avanti Vin would be helpful also. If you want to keep the info confidential, then please email me at: ron.manfredi@att.net. Thank you!

I have thought about this myself and found 2 cars whose owners had done this, images attached. I don't know where the racks came from, just saw the images that were shown when the cars were being sold.

From looking under the dash, the switch looks similar to mine and the color wires match.

Measure the steering wheel emblem diameter, Studebaker International may have that one.

Do you know the Rxxxx body Tag Number?

Link doesn't work.

Save this