The Car:
1985 Tbird 30th Anniv
30,000 miles
Always Garaged, disturbingly perfect
But I go to pull the car out of storage and the door plastic (below the arm rest, the part that has the door light) is quite literally soaking in oil, like somebody slathered maple syrup on them. The car has never seen Armor All or anything else. It just oozed out for some reason.
Why did this happen? Does anyone have an answer for this?
outgassing?
plastic is a by-product of crude oil
My Cougar did that too, only on the steering wheel. It sat for 15 years, and the steering wheel did that badly.
You don't have a leak do you?
an oil leak in his door??? its just the nature of the material
Yeah, I'm wondering if the vinyl is just deteriorating. Which is weird because my Cougar sees a lot more time in the sun because its under a carport, not in a storage facility.
This could be bad news. Any ideas on preserving it? Right now I'm gonna go with baby oil. I mean, it works pretty well on babies. :)
yup and babies = Ford Fox-body interior plastics so transitive property----> it will work 100% guaranteed end of story babies FTMFW
But how many babies are squished just to get that baby oil? Seems cruel and inhumane for just keeping car parts from aging. ;)
Nothing's too good for a 30th Tbird. Mother's milk, baby oil, etc... :D
The car will be heading to my garage for an oil change/etc. soon and I'll take shots of the problem. (and the rest of the car)
I'm glad to see you still have that car. It's a stunning example of a 30th.
I meant form something overhead leaking and dripping down the door panel;)
It sits under a car cover in a garage. Its absolutely gorgeous, except for this problem. :)
Someone from LincolnsOnline mentioned that the foam padding is the cause of this...it melts in the (Houston) heat and the goo eventually runs through the vinyl. That makes the most sense, judging by what I've seen.
I was going to mention the heat thing...that's about the only thing I can think of. I have never, in 20+ years of messing with these cars, seen an interior part "sweat oil" or melt. But I'm in Ohio...summers, they can get warm sometimes here, yet not like the South. We might see 10-15 days a year of 90+ degree weather. A typical summer day is 70-85 degrees. Simply put, we just can't generate the kind of summer heat needed to melt plastic like that. It has to be a climate/location thing.
its got to be the heat. my steering wheel oozes this sticky black tar substance. so i'm going to pull the steering wheel out of the turbo. but the other day in the heat with the car locked hit it with a laser thermometer and the interior wea 152*
door panels on my mark 7 did that. Now the new ones i got are starting to a little. I think it has to do with heat. My car is in the sun 24/7 so it only makes sense.
You have sunlight 24 hours a day?!
I do because I have a sun light on my car the whole night and then during the day the sun light goes off because the sun turns on :-p :-p :-p lol
Crack the windows open so it'll drop the temperature a good 10-20 degrees. Or vent the moonroof if you have one: it takes a monsoon to get the moonroof to leak when vented.
I am unsure about what I'll do on the Tbird since it basically lives in storage...if the roof leaks there I won't find out about it for months. But I'm venting my moonroofs all the time from now on. It seems to work nicely on my Cougar and the Mark VIII.
Thanks everyone.
vent the moon roof?? My window on drivers door doesn't work, and with my luck id forget the windows open.
If you have a moonroof, it can be tilted up to vent the car.
I figured thats what you ment. Water wont get it?? The car sits outside all the time in the open in my yard so i dont want getting in.
All of the plastic in my 73 nova is like that.. all of it. Sticky goo everywhere.
Water has a very hard time getting inside the car with the moonroof tilted. It has to be monsoon bad outside before I had water leak from the moonroof channels.
You can try the "contact us" link on this Smithsonian web site.
http://www.si.edu/mci/english/learn_more/taking_care/index.html