Warning to 79 - 85 owners

[RivNut]

When I bought my '85 in November it needed a new vinyl top. I thought that rather than replace it, I'd just remove it and paint the entire car a solid color. I knew that the quarter window trim was different on the landau top and the solid metal top so I got a couple of quarter window pieces and thought I was ready to go. This morning I started tearing the old vinyl top off the car. I removed the quarter windows and wanted to see what the new moldings looked like. They looked two inches too long on the base. After getting all the padding off the top, I realized that on the landau tops, there's a panel attaced to the body that makes the quarter window two inches smaller on the landau top than on the solid top. That also means that the rain drip moldings will not be two inches too short and the interior quarter panels are two inches too long.

One other word of caution. Buick didn't finish leading the body seams under the landau tops. If you get any moisture under the top, you'll find that there will be a great amount of rust on the sail panels. My car 'was' rust free until this morning. One good thing, Buick did put the bigger glass in the landau cars. Part of it just never gets seen. I'm going to try to attach three pictures: 001 shows the rust and the additional panel, 002 shows the difference between a landau molding and a solid top molding, and 003 shows the glass - I didn't clean it before taking the picture so you could see how much glass is hidden and collects all the dirt.

Don't say you haven't been warned if you're thinking the same thing.

Ed