Been on here for a good while thought it was about time I made one of these. A while back my dad bought my grandads HQ as a way to get him to stop driving by himself. My grandad passed away at the start of 2009 and I started eyeing off the hq as something I could spend the money he left me on.

Grandad had the HQ from the show floor, wasn't his choice of colour as it was a display model. He always took good care of it and had it regularly serviced, engine and trans have never been out of the car or had any major work done. On the downside its done near 400,000kms and he used to drive it down on the beach for fishing and prawning so it has some rust issues, mind you he did use fish oil so it could've been worse.

I'm not doing a back to original restore, just a daily driver. The idea is first off to get her running again so she can be driven, once she's going to work on the body and interior cosmetics. I plan on keeping her fairly original, don't want to replace anything that can't be saved. Ultimatly I plan on changing the body colour, scrapping the two colour look - thats a long way off though. Also when the interior is done currently plan on changing the brown sections to black and leaving the cream sections cream. Might put a new stereo in the glove box and get the springs lowered a bit.

Started working on general cleaning and such near the start of the year, front seats had covers on all but the headrests and car was always taken good care of so generally it's still in pretty good condition. Although as he was getting on in years he managed to buff the bonnet with something that had a stone in it so he buffed scratches all over the bonnet.

Couple of slight modifications have been made, it used to have an exterior windshield visor which has been removed. It's had the front setbelts changed out for ones with different centre mounting points (stalks). It's got springs around the rear shocks as it used to tow a caravan, all minor stuff that'll be easily fixed.

Grabbed the numbers off it for anyone who might be interested, any info would be appreciated.. be interesting to see the history of her.

Any tips or advice is more than welcome : )

8N69RDJ411766Q
HQ80469

MODEL HQ80469
BODY NO. 411766M
TRIM 1352 - 38E
PAINT 568 - 15349
TOP 568 - 13134
TRAN M40
RRAX? GV3

(3)93071.8kms on the odometre

Photos will be up soon, just copying them over from the phone, lemme know if anyone wants to see anything specific.

Steve.

Edited by user Tuesday, 28 September 2010 10:59:18 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Took the seat covers off and found that other than being faded to different shades the seats are in remarkably good condition, sadly the padding inside is pretty far gone. Gave them a clean involving some pretty intense scrubbing and they came up great.





Gonna need to source some new sunvisors or get some made up



Rust in all the usual places, pretty full on under the flooring, pulled it up the other day to have a look and it made me sad :<

So here's the wheels in primer, waiting to finish them because our compressor is taking in moisture which can't be good for painting





This dent is from a kangaroo, got a replacement nose-cone if this is too much effort to fix. Wouldn't put the new one on until it was time to paint her though.



Grill has a few holes in it, replacement nose-cones grill is much the same. The old man reckons theres a good one somewhere up top. So I gotta pull out a ladder and have a look.




Pulled out the venetians, they were a bit rusted.. who know's if they'll go back in?



Blotchy marks on the windows, only visible in some light, sort of greasy lookin things. Tried cleaning with water, soap, window cleaner, metho n newspaper and bi-carb soda to no avail. Any suggestions? or are the windows 2-ply and the marks are in-between?



Steve.

Edited by user Wednesday, 29 September 2010 11:12:05 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I think if the venetians go back in they might go black, but who knows, that's a long way off. My favourite colour is orange and I've seen some really nice looking old holdens in vibrant orange so that's the direction I'm headed at the moment.

Like this orange:



Now I'm not trying to turn her into a gts or a monaro, but I do have some of the chrome sill trims floating around that can look so good:



Steve.

Took the tailshaft out of the transmission yesterday and got everything ready for the engine to come out, had to stop because of work so put it off till today. Had the old man and a couple of mates around so plenty of hands on deck.



Came out without too many dramas, looking forward to giving it a good clean tomorrow.





Heres me lookin like a goose



So thats where I'm up to today, gotta book the engine and trans in to get the work done, while they're out going to clean and paint the engine bay, possibly tidy of some of the wires up.



Cleaned up the boot to store some stuff in during the project, got all the nuts and bolts bagged and tagged, so far things are going pretty smoothly.

Steve.

Edited by user Monday, 4 October 2010 10:31:13 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Looks good Steve. Mine has the same rust hole in the drivers side behind the guard too, but not on the passenger side.

Looks like you've got a couple other interesting cars in that shed too!

So here's some pictures of what I've been up to lately.
This is the rust under the heater unit, is there an easy way to take off the internal ventilation system or is it going to need most of the dash to come out?


Here's some of the visible rust on the plenum, was all under the rubber strip that seals the bonnet, someone had covered the two drain holes here with tape, not sure why that would be done..







Stripped some of the paint from the plenum and gave it a bit of a sand around the rusted areas, looks like the rust in this section here goes all the way through.



Any suggestions on how to approach mending this?

Steve.


______________

Matilda the HQ
http://www.fastlane.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=25304

Edited by user Monday, 8 November 2010 10:17:39 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I don't think there is any way to do it steve. You've seen how much I had to get into mine to fix them. To unpick the plenum you'll have to pull the windscreen and dissasemble the entire dash to get the internal spot welds. How bad are the corners or is it the internal plenum you're worried about?

Floor looks ok except for that front passenger. Going to just put a new pan in? If you are worried about that area I suggest getting your head up under the dash with a flash light, undo the air vent to the plenum (the one that provides air to the footwells) and have a good poke around. Do the same looking through into the plenum from the top with the cover off. Keep up the good work.

Ok so spent a few hours up in the shed today, got the glovebox out, used a phillips bit in a small socket wrench, did the job fine. I also took off the dash mat, a few of the fixed bolts in the mat have broken off sadly but I'll sort that out when the time comes. Took out all the ventilation system except for the drivers side vent from the plenum because the screws started to strip. Got all that on the back verandah at the moment gonna give it a clean tomorrow.



Had a look at the bottom of the plenum on the passenger side, surprise surprise more rust. Confirms my suspision that the inner plenum is rusted, if its rusted all the way through at this point I cringe to think how bad it is inside.





Can't see up to bottom of the plenum on the drivers side yet, still too much in the way.

Got a better look around the heater core, proof that the floor rust is from a leak here rather than in the plenum.





Found a bit more rust on the top of the plenum, right at the very corner.



Just stripping away, eventually I'll find all the rust... ha!
Gotta take out the windscreen for repairs to the plenum and to check for more rust.
Should I attempt this myself or pay someone to come do it for me? How hard are the trims to take off?

Steve.

______________

Matilda the HQ
http://www.fastlane.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=25304