Glove Box Detailing

The difference between a good restored car and a great restored car is that attention to the, even the smallest details. And we're with Bob Wilson from RJ Restorations in Farmington, Minnesota, and he's going to just show us just one of the little aspects he dives into when he restores a Mustang. And in this part, you know, just the details involved in restoring even something as simple as a glove box. So Bart, what I was talking to you earlier, one of the things that we have here is the original glove box liner is made of a cardboard fiber paper. And over the years of age and everything like that, they get wet, they break down, they warp, they get distorted.

Yep. A lot of guys won't even pay attention to the glove box liner. The door's closed, who cares? Exactly. But there's a lot of little details in these just in this little area right here that people trip over.

And I'm going to show you what I do in the level of keeping up the highest level of restoration. So there's two things here. The first thing is this is the outer liner that trims out the face of the dash. Okay. And it sits right inside here.

Well, one of the things you can see is that there are staples in here that are rusty. Well, they're rusty because they had no paint on them. They were bare. They were bare metal to start with. Correct.

And so when they, they put the plastic and the liner together they just put raw steel staples in there. And over 30 or 40 years they've rusted. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take these staples out. I'm going to die this trim piece. Then I'm going to put the staples back into the liner raw like they did originally.

Okay. So when you open the glove box door and it comes down you're going to see the bare steel staples like the get from the factory. Oh, awesome. Okay. So the other thing we're going to do that I don't know anybody else that does this, but in the original car, when it was assembled they put the warranty ID plate clip in the back of the box.

Okay. So what this meant was when you took your car to the dealer in 1971, and you're under warranty which was 12,000, 12 months or 12,000 miles whatever came first, there was a par plastic card here. You pull that out and they would use that to file your warranty claim at the dealer. Okay. So obviously you can see that this isn't there.

So what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and use this piece as a template. We're going to put that in there. We're going to drill two holes and we're going to pop that metal foot back in place. So you've saved this part of the original glove box, so you can precisely match the location of that clip again. Correct.

And put the backer on. So when this is done and the car is judged and they go and we go back and I have the plastic bags the owner's manual and all the stuff that comes from the paperwork from 1971 that will be in the glove box liner, along with the warranty ID card and the warranty ID card will be clipped in the back of this here, just like it came from Ford motor company when you took the car brand new from the delivery. Wow. That's a great little detail. And like I said, that's the kind of thing that separates the good cars from the great car.

And it's absolutely true. And it comes back to you in value of the car. So a lot of people say, oh, that doesn't mean anything. Well, it does. And, the quality of the restoration of the level of restoration is paying attention to that as you're taking the car apart, what you see and why.

So those staples are rusting because they were bare. They didn't care. It was a $3,800 car brand new 1971. So not so much that value now they've climbed well over a hundred thousand now. So that's why they get a hundred.

If you step up and you do the quality of the restoration it will come back to you. Awesome. All right, we'll let you do that then, Bob. Okay, great. Okay.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and use the back of the original glove box. I'm going to mark, I'm going to use it as a template and just drill the two holes in the back. And then I'm going to pop rivet, the the clip for the warranty card in the back of the glove box. So I'm just going to hold this in place. It's cardboard, so it's going to go right through no problem.

And I'm going to drill again. Done with that. Step up to the next bigger hole. Hold it in place. I'm going to grab my rivet gun and my two rivets were over here.

Put my backer plate in place. Sometimes what I do is I use one rivet backwards to line everything up. I have to turn around to see what I'm doing. Turned that other one around, put it in the hole. Now we got the warranty card holder in place.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the original outline, the hard plastic liner and I'm going to hold it in place. And I'm just going to take my drill, and I'm gonna drill a hole through the cardboard. In the same place where the originals once were. I'll take a staple and I'll push it through. Okay.

So now what I've done is I pushed the staple through the liner and I'm going to lift it up and I'm just going to bend it over, and that's going to secure it in place. And I just bend the tabs over and I just use a regular staple you get at an ACE hardware. It's about a seven sixteenths long staple. And I just break them off of the loops. And that's all I use.

So I'll go back and drill through the plastic piece and into the liner. Just simply push your staple through. I find that using the 45 needle nose works best. They can push on it and hold on it. And I'll do that all the way around.

And then you guys get the idea. So then once I get it in there now it looks just like it was originally only brand new. So you have the detail of having the warranty clip there. You got the bare staples and then those screws will go inside there. So when they dropped the glove box door down you're going to see it restored just like it was from Ford motor company in 1971.

And those are a lot of the little details that people skip over. So pay attention to when you're taking your car apart for whatever it is. Take a lot of pictures and try and replicate that the best you can. The better off you try and do that, the higher the quality of the car, it's going to come back to you.