Hoodlining finished... other bits done too!

Scottie arrived at Team Booger Mobile HQ bright and early... perhaps a little too bright and early, as Damian had woken up at around 6:30am, thought to himself "gee, I must get up and put the kettle on - Scottie will be here soon", and promptly fell back asleep!! Damian woke again at around 7:10am to the sound of Scottie yelling out "Helloooooooooo!!" Whoops!!

After the obligatory coffee, Damian and Scottie headed up to the shed. Scottie was keen to get some of the finer under-bonnet stuff sorted out... First cab off the rank was a bracket to hold the automatic transmission fluid lines.


And this is what it looks like fitted!!



After that, it was onto custom making a bracket to hold the radiator overflow bottle...

Meanwhile, Damian started painting up the two new rims.

Scottie continued fine-tuning his bracket...

Making it fit snugly around the overflow bottle!!

Damian suggested the location that the bottle would fit...

What do you know? It fits perfectly!!

Scottie wanted to install the horn, but it wouldn't work. Damian pulled apart the horn relay to find it was basically brand new inside - it had clearly been reconditioned... However, one of the wires was broken, so Damian resoldered it, and hey presto - one horn relay ready to go!!

Scottie installed the horn, and after the updated relay was installed, woohoo!! Horn time!!

Scottie installed the overflow bottle, and it fitted a treat!! His custom made bracket working perfectly as usual!!

Damian told Scottie that he wanted to get the hoodlining installed by the end of the day. After much discussion about how and where the pinch-weld needed to be attached, the boys took a trip to the shops to collect a whole bunch of new pinch-weld, plus some other items. They also stopped by Autobarn to see if their newly ordered boss kit had arrived - turns out it had!! They exchanged the old one, and headed back to TBM HQ.

Turns out the new boss kit wasn't right either.... *sigh* After taking another trip to Autobarn to swap the new boss kit for the old one, and armed with nothing more than new information about it, the boys returned to TBM HQ and got down to installing the hoodlining.

First stop, attaching all the pinch-weld (all 10 metres of it). Scottie was still unconvinced at this stage that it was being installed in the right place (Damian said that it couldn't go any other way, however Holden's don't install this way, but vertically).

Pinch-weld, pinch-weld and more pinch-weld!!

Now, for those who are looking for information on installing an XM Falcon Hoodlining, you need to put the pinch-weld on all the way around, then attach the little strips that Damian painted (you should use your own ones) underneath the hoodlining.

You then stretch the hoodlining down, and using a flat implement (the boys used a flat piece of thick aluminium with nicely rounded off edges), push the hoodlining up between the pinch-weld and the silver metal thing!! The little sharp bits on the back of the silver metal thing will then grab the hoodlining and prevent it from pulling back out.

The boys found it best to start in the middle near the pillar, then work forwards or backwards until the hoodlining is tucked up.

Keep gently stretching and tucking the hoodlining, looking at the direction of the wrinkles/creases and adjusting your pushing/tucking angle accordingly.

The drivers side was completed first...

Then following the same process, the passenger side was completed.

And here it is, basically completed, looking from the front.

The front and rear windows need to be installed to complete the tensioning of the hoodlining, and a bit of adjustment may be required to remove a few of the more obvious wrinkles, but all in all, it turned out fabulously well!!

Here it is looking from the rear! Once the windscreen and rear windows are in, hopefully the remaining few creases will be ironed out!! If not, meh, it's not a show car!!

Amongst all this, Damian found time to complete the painting of the rims...

All in all, it was a pretty eventful day. It started out fairly cruisily with the bracket making and horn-relaying, but after the debacle with the boss kit and the healthy debates over where the pinch-weld should be installed, it got quite stressful around mid afternoon...

Once the hoodlining installation was going smoothly, things calmed down again, and Team Booger Mobile did what they do best - heckled each other from the sidelines while achieving great things with Booger Mobile!

That's the great thing about teams - you need people with different personalities, skills and abilities to really achieve greatness... having a team with these qualities also comes with the added benefit of sarcasm, good-natured ribbing and the occasional quarrel...

Still, that's how Team Booger Mobile roll, and they are doing it for the kids - never forget that!!

Oh, one last thing... don't forget about the Team Booger Mobile and Annette Taylor (Kokoda Track) Trivia Night this coming Friday night - 26 March 2010 at the Sandgate Town Hall, starting at 6:00pm. Trivia, plus live band Chasing Blakey what more could you ask for???