The instrument panel is out of the car. The fuel gauge wasn't working. I now suspect it was a dead low fuel relay.
The cluster was nasty and needed a good cleaning anyway.
While it's out, I'll clean up the dash pad as best I can. It's been attacked with Simple Green and a scrub brush but it's still not clean.

Since the dash was out I picked up a new upper speedometer cable and new dash speakers.

Do you think there have been any advances in speaker design over the last 40 years?




This afternoon, I broke out the bumper stretcher and attacked the front bumper. The upper bar was bent down when I got the car. That pushed the center section of the grille down and made the headlight doors drag. When it came time for headlights I had to get out of the car and help them open.
After loosening the grille screws I ran straps around the bumper about a foot off center on each side. Then I hooked them on the engine hoist and gave it a mighty tug. While the bumper was higher than it should be, I beat the old bends relatively straight. When I removed the tension the bumper was right back where it should be. It's not perfect and the grille is still a bit low but everything lines up better. The headlight doors now work properly and don't drag.

Here's a quickie pic of the front bumper. You can look at the pic in my previous post for a before and after.




The last thing I did tonight was remove the rest of the vinyl roof. The old dead adhesive had a death grip on the roof but the DA running 80 grit made short work of it.
After stripping the roof there was plenty of bare metal. That just won't do in our humid climate so I broke out the Rustoleum and a 4" paint roller.

Yes, I painted the roof with a roller. What's it going to do? Make the roof look bad? There was only a a few inches of vinyl on each side of the roof and a ton of surface rust running down the middle.

A bonus was finding a new way to kill skeeters. All you have to do is roll some paint on your car at dusk and the skeeters all flock to it. Sadly, for them anyway, they get stuck in the paint. I'll be able to pick them out at my leisure tomorrow.
Chances are I'll put a second coat on the roof when I get home from work.

That's not a ton of work but it was enough for one day. The Imperial is slowly moving towards being a nice car again.