Paul’s added more panels to his M-38. The gray panels look real nice inside. Somehow, he managed to arrange an earthquake in Alaska just to test the design!

I purchased more shower curtain rods so I could speed up my progress on installing the Willys interior panels. I’m excited seeing the improvement the fabric panels make over the bare stainless and it seems Mother Nature is excited also. Yesterday (Sept. 25th) we had a 6.2 earthquake rumble thru town and this evening we had another smaller earthquake measuring only 5.0. The 6.2 quake managed to knock some stuff off the shelves in the garage and some items stored in the crawlspace were broken but we had no damage to the house or the Willys so I’m a happy guy. Here’s a picture of two more interior panels being held in place by 10 curtain rods (upholstery tensioning devices) and you can see the gray fabric panel slightly above the center of this photo. Tomorrow I’ll install two more overhead panels and prep the two vertical corner pieces if the earth quits moving long enough for me to reposition the tension rods.

As you might have noticed, I clamped the rear window upholstery panel into position this morning. The interior panel is protected by a 2 inch thick white foam overlay and cardboard taped to the stainless protects the surface from scratches from the vise grip clamps.

Two inch thick foam overlay protects the upholstery panel and spreads the clamping force. Two smaller finished pieces are installed and clamped by the famous adjustable tension rods. I’ve used 34 tubes (12.9 ounces each) of black silicone to attach 15 interior panels and I still have 18 panels left to install.

I never expected shower curtain rods and foam insulation were necessary tools for installing upholstery in the Willys. As you can see on the right Vise Grips, thin plywood and pink foam are also needed. Yes, we embrace diversity here in the northland.