Right now, I have a customer (I work for Napa) who is looking for the spring that goes in the trunk bezel of his 69 GS California. Anyone know of a suitable replacement/alternative? He's kinda picky, but I'm really trying for him. The California is in okay shape, I'd just like to help him out! Help me out, people! Nathan
OMG!! I tried for MONTHS to get this spring. Forget ANY auto parts store in this country. They won't have it. They will just go uzzled: I had a very generous club member named Rick GIVE me one from an old repro emblem that was cracked. I can't thank him enough. I checked with CARS, Tear One, Poston....NOBODY had a spring. Year One didn't even have the emblem! Poston had the emblem and backing plate (garbage) but no spring! I was like :af: Good luck dude. Your best bet might be right here on this site. Otherwise, their is a guy on ebay who frequently sells the repro emblem assy with the spring for like $70. It may be the only way if you can't find the spring by itself.
Also, I might be completely off the mark. By "trunk bezel", I thought you meant, "trunk emblem". I can't think of anything else you could mean?? o No:
Grrrr, springs! Ken, thanks so much for your input. This is the spring loaded emblem that covers the trunk lock that I'm/he's looking for. Any other suggestions? Nathan
Any idea or picture of what it looks like, and could you make one? Just thinking...there's an old hardware store here, has about a million different springs, surely you could find something close and make it work. :Smarty: Or is this a really funky kind of part?
If someone provided me with diameter and length, I might have some new springs at work that would interchange. I did this with the 68/69 console shifter handle springs too.
Hey David, Thanks for the info, if I see him, I'll let him know and try and get some specs...maybe even a photo or something (I bought a digital camera from www.woot.com and will use it at ANY excuse.) You guys are awesome. Nathan
this is not just a typical "coil of steel" kinda spring. From memory, the base piece of spring comes across the bottom of the coils making a perfect diameter through the coils' center. This coils 'Sit" outside a post in the base plate which has a slot in its diameter for the cross-wire to sit in. The other end of the spring then comes off the coil, hangs a 180 deg turn and hooks around. This attaches to the swing-GS emblem. lets call this the DogTail The Diameter of the wire itself (to fit into the slot in the base), the diameter of the coil winds (to fit in the emblem), and the # of winds in the coil (to provide the proper height) as well as the length and curve of the dogtail all have to be perfect. .....in fact, I scrounged parts boxes for years at the GSCA Nats looking for the right spring. I even bought other year and model Swing-emblems just for the spring and nothing worked. His best bet would be to watch Ebay diligently for a crummy emblem with spring (no more than $30) or buy a new repro one for $75-90 and either use it or just use the rather expensive spring. Here's a quick and dirty drawing of what it kind of looks like
I've seen springs like that...they're not simple...but couldn't you take a spring of the right diameter, cut it down to the desired number of coils, then bend the ends to make the dogtail and other end? o No: Heck, this is gonna cause me to lose sleep...what are the dimensions needed? I'll go dig around and try my hand at spring-making this weekend...I'll enlist my bro-in-law, the maintenance and materials guru...
