Attention turns to the trunk.

August 13th 2009

A previous owner removed the orginal grey trunk liner material and installed a home-made kit that's the same colour as the interiour. I didn't like it... it fit poorly and there were a lot of rusty stains. There was also  three types of sound proofing material glued everywhere. This looked even worse and I suspected it of trapping moisture. Knowing that sixties trunk spaces in general aren't ventilated - and that sixties Continentals trunk  spaces and lids are known for rust issues in particular - I decided to pull everything and see what I find....

Here's what it looked like:

With the pieces of carpet removed it looked like this. The only rust was surface rust on the bottom piece of sheet. Hooray for me! I've seen photos of cars that were much worse off. I felt a bit quilty while removing the strips of tar that I suppose were factory original, but I wanted to know in what condition the steel was and all but one tar strip pulled off with no effort. By the way, the yellow stuff is dried up glue.

Then the putty knives and hand-held sander came out. I did not remove the seam filler. About a pound of Californian dust and sand came out.

After everything was clean and degreased, I used a rust converter on the bottom halve of the trunk space. It's called Brunox and has a very, very nasty smell. But it's a good product. After it has dried it doubles a primer for paint. I'm going to cover this area with paint from a spray can. I'm not sure if it's necessary to put Dynamat (or a similar product) everywhere. Let me know what you think.

At first I planned to make my own trunk liner using a material that's close to the original material. Having thought about it I'd rather install a factory correct kit. You can buy trunk kits at Lincoln Land, Baker's Auto and Jim Wallace/Leather Restorations. At present, the '64 kit is listed between $315  and $325.

Lincoln Land offers two types of kits for '64: style one is for early '64's. Their webpage advices to compare the two photos below to your originals but alas mine are long gone. But my data plate says that my '64 rolled of the assembly line at the Wixom plant on August 30th 1963 ('30H'). It is the 796th 1964 Continental built. I guess that makes it an 'early one'.

This what an original trunk space looks like:

Sunday August 16th,

Repainted the jack assembly.

September 27th 2009,

I received a big flat box from Jim Wallace/Leather Restoration containing my '64 trunk kit (he supplies Lincoln Land and John Cashman). Jay!

The kit looks very nicely put together and finished. The materials used look good, the stitching is good etc. He was also good to deal with via e-mail. Shipping to Holland wasn't bad ($70 I think). I'm going to fit it during the Christmas holidays. Now to find a sound deadener that doesn't cost as much as Dynamat.

The kit contains the following:

To be continued....!