I Finally Found It

Yesterday being Tax Day, I was working late to support the biggest day of the year for my company. Before I went into work, I decided to make a quick junkyard run to see if there was anything new. The first yard I went to, I had almost given up when I saw the front fender peeking at me from the end of the last row of Chrysler cars. It ended up being a 1978 Dodge Aspen Custom 4-door sedan, green exterior with a green interior (how 70s).

The first thing that caught my eye was the chrome trim wrapped around the front marker light, which meant that this car had the same side trim. But would any of the pieces be usable. As I got closer, i saw a perfect passenger door piece. I quickly snagged it off the door. The vinyl trim is green, but now that I have the piece I will be redying all of the pieces to match (since mine is faded). The only question, redye it red or dye it a different color? The trim is supposed to match the interior, but I'm also about to start changing over the interior, so I may dye it a different color. Heck, if I don't like it I can just redye it back to red.

After getting over my initial excitement of the trim, I looked the car over for some other usable parts. The interior had a dash cap that was in pristine condition, with no cracks. I carefully removed it to take with me. I also removed the speedometer and took that with me. I needed the circuit board (the one in the wagon is cracked) for the back of the cluster. There were some other parts, but I did'nt really need them so I left with my three finds.

Pictures to come later.

The Missing Piece

No, not a post about Shel Silverstein. My last trip to the junkyard, I thought I had hit pay dirt on the piece of missing trim that's gone from the passenger's side of the Aspen.




I spotted a white sedan with the trim from about 10 cars away. I rushed over, and saw that the passenger door did have the trim on it. I was very happy, until I got right to the car and found that the jackass had riveted all the vinyl trim onto the stainless trim (probably to keep it from falling off). Every single piece had at least 3 rivets in it, nothing was usable.

Oh well, back to the waiting game.