[njsteve]

Here are the finished products. The seat on the right has the original upper material (this was originally the passenger seat back cover. I was able to pull the upper cover and foam off of the passenger side frame and switch it to the driver's side frame since the cover was nearly perfect. Both seat bottoms and the left seat back are the PUI pieces. They still need some heat gun time to smooth out the pull marks and wrinkles but they look pretty decent. Here's a close up of the material differences in the 1972 Tetra grain inserts used on the 1972 deluxe seats. You can see that the PUI cover on the left has slightly larger perforations than the pin-sized holes on the original material on the right.

[njsteve]

It's finally sunny out so I have the seats cooking in the mid-day sun on the driveway. Had some spare time (family still away) so I bolted up the nose brackets. I am definitely learning something about Pontiacs. -They must have had some Rube-Goldberg type engineer thinking this stuff up: if one bracket would work on on a Chevy, Pontiac had to use three or four. If you have ever seen how Pontiac designed the a/c compressor brackets you'll know what I mean. There are support brackets bracing other support brackets that hold other brackets in place...Well anyway the front bumper/grill brackets also brace the radiator support, each with its own adjustment, hence the masking tape to protect the paint for the time being. Oh, and the horns now work, too!

[blue71ta]

Steve, lookin' great as usual - keep the pics comin'.

[njsteve]

I purchased a plastic welder from www.urethanesupply.com and had some really good results fixing the original plastic front valance (See link: http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...d.php?t=498815 )

Here is the process I went through which was remarkably easy. These valances are made out of polyethylene and once I figured that out, it was just boiled down to following the directions in the kit and using the right plastic welding rods. This contraption is basically a soldering iron with a special tip that you feed the polyethylene rods into. The first step of course is cleaning the area as best as possible and the using aluminum tape to hold the cracks together. Once that is done you use the hot tool to melt a groove in the crack halfway into the plastic. You then apply the flat face of the iron onto the crack and while melting the base material, you feed the rod material into the melted area. You do about an inch at a time and them massage it in very well. Once you get the entire length done you take a strip of stainless steel mesh and apply it onto the repair and melt that into the repair for added strength (preferably on the back side of the panel). When that is done and cooled off (apply cold water to speed things up) you can turn the valance over and remove the aluminum tape, groove the other side's crack and do the same only without the mesh. Once it is cooled you can sand it down. The face bar portion was a little trickier since it was very hard to get into the rear part of the crack. I heated up the area quite a bit and placed the mesh and a bunch of extra polyethylene rod into the area for added strength.

The process and the tool was amazingly easy and I just saved an irreplaceable part for about $90 in material and 3 hours of work.

Here's the main crack before repair:

[njsteve]

After taping and grooving:

[njsteve]

Here's the welder in action feeding the polyethyene rod into the heated area with the stainless steel mesh already melted into the repair. They actually have rods of all colors as this tool is used primarily to repair kayaks which can't be painted so they weld them with the same color plastic.

[njsteve]

And here's the opposite side after repairing it: