trunk lock

Thanks Ed, maybe you could just email it?

Thanks Ed, got it!

Jim

Why it takes so long to restore a car. I thought I was finally ready to start the finish body work, and first up was fitting and final adjustment to the trunk lid (I replaced some rotten wood along the bottom several years ago). To do that I needed to fit the trunk latch and a weatherstrip to get the lid to its final fit. To do that I needed to repair and fit the trunk lock, hence the sudden problem of discovering there had been a trunk lock cover once upon a time. Thanks to Ed Minnie’s picture I had an idea of the trunk lock cover. Then asked the new owner of the green Club Sedan to look at his car and he told me it appeared to be the same design as the sidemount hubcap locks. I dug out my sidemount hubcaps and then could reverse engineer the design. New lock cover machined from aluminum, only took a week! i will finish polishing and replace the tiny screw with stainless.

progress is being made – very very slowly!

Jim

Peter, thank you very much for the offer, but this is done. There is more to the problem than just this. The pin that the cover is hinged on was broken off and I had to slightly alter the design to redrill a new hole in a different position to avoid breaking a .0595 dia drill bit going down the shank of a hard steel pin locked in a soft zinc housing.

As tedious as it was, I decided it would be less time to build a new cover than trying to find a needle in a haystack. The odds are that if I did find the correct piece, it would be pitted and need to be replated on zinc. It seems that any obscure Pierce part on ebay commands a price of at least $175 if it is so badly pitted as to be good only for patterns. Another $150 for plating if it is actually intact enough to get it replated badly on zinc.

The clear coat is a good idea, but aluminum is very corrosion resistant and in Nevada I don’t really don’t have much problem with corrosion. The attached picture is an ordinary steel bolt off my Packard. 30+ years ago this was a badly pitted chrome plated piece. I turned it down below the pits and polished it. This was part of a piece I found after the rest of the chrome had been done and it would have cost a bunch to take the two tiny pieces to a chrome shop by themselves, so I never got around to it. The surface you see is the bare steel after sitting 30 years without ever being repolished.

Jim