Townie upper-trim strip.

Pictures ...

4WD vac valve in pillar behind sliding door (J Corfield #19)
Behind centre of dashboard (J Corfield #69)
Behind dashboard, passenger side (J Corfield #66)
Behind dashboard, passenger side, close up (J Corfield #71)
Behind glove box (J Corfield #70)
Behind instrument cluster (J Corfield #68)
Blower for rear climate control (J Corfield #24)
Blower for rear climate control (J Corfield #25)
Brake parts behind dashboard (J Corfield #73)
Brake parts behind dashboard, close up (J Corfield #67)
Dashboard/door and wiper control (J Corfield #75)
Dashboard/driver's footwell (J Corfield #74)
Dashboard/fuses & flasher unit (J Corfield #76)
Dashboard/fuses & flasher unit, close up (J Corfield #65)
Dashboard/passenger side (J Corfield #77)
Emission Control Unit by sl/door (J Corfield #37)
Front pass. seat removed (J Corfield #17)
Glow Plug Relay (J Corfield #39)
Hot/cold box control system (J Corfield #12)
Hot/cold box side cover removed (J Corfield #13)
Interior from rear, stripped (J Corfield #18)
Jap TV tuner installation (J Corfield #29)
Jap TV tuner removed (J Corfield #36)
LH rear speaker, tool compartment (J Corfield #31)
Light fittings, LH rear wing (J Corfield #14)
Light fittings, RH rear wing ? (J Corfield #15)
Panels, removable, behind driver (J Corfield #16)
Passenger footwell (J Corfield #64)
Rear a/c controls access (J Corfield #34)
Rear a/c controls removed (J Corfield #35)
Rear floor, stripped (J Corfield #30)
Rear wheel arch, LH (J Corfield #20)
Rear wheel arch, RH (J Corfield #23)
RH rear speaker, wash bottle (J Corfield #32)
RH side where rear a/c controls go (J Corfield #22
Roof blind parts (J Corfield #45)
Roof blind, removed (J Corfield #49)
Roof blind, removed (J Corfield #50)
Roof interior (J Corfield #43)
Roof interior (J Corfield #44)
Roof interior (J Corfield #47)
Roof interior (J Corfield #48)
Roof interior, rear, general (J Corfield #46)
Rust close-up LH rear wheel arch (J Corfield #33)
Seat pedestal, middle row (J Corfield #41)
Seat pedestal, middle row (J Corfield #42)
Seat, middle row, underside (J Corfield #40)
Sliding door interior (J Corfield #27)
Sliding door interior, close-up (J Corfield #26)
Turbo via hatch behind driver (J Corfield #28)
Upper air duct behind dashboard (J Corfield #72)
Washer bottle, RH rear wing (J Corfield #21)
Wet sills (J Corfield #11)

I've finished the strip of the upper interior trim and my story follows below. (Especially look at the 40 or so interesting photos John took - ed.) I'll be stripping the dash area next.

Removing the upper interior trim was very straightforward but a major word of warning regarding the roof lining panels. They are thin, brittle and fragile when it comes to bending, but with care they are easy to remove and will stand being handled well. Ensure you remove all the edge fittings first until either lining is held only by whatever is in the middle area. Then, with the lining supported so that it will drop squarely and reasonable flat, undo the last fitting - and be gentle! Further word of warning for the front lining – there is a multi-plug to disconnect which you can’t get at until the lining is partly lowered.

The plastic edging strips around the roof light apertures just pull away but you may find a few small bright-metal clips come with them. These clips help to hold the roof lining panels in place when assembled at the factory but you can dispense with them (when you’ve worked them out of the edging strip groove!). You will find that there is a sort of waxy paper stuck around the back edge of the linings, which will almost certainly have lost its stick and will fall away. It looks as if it was intended to protect the fragile linings during assembly – all I did was left it, where it was still in place, and stuck fabric self adhesive tape anywhere where I could see cracks. It is worth looking all over the linings for cracks (fairly obvious if they are present) to add a bit of strength where they are with tape.

The roof blinds and their runners come out easily apart from one runner over the driver’s head which is a bit ‘Chinese puzzly’. Take your time and note how it comes out and practice putting it back a couple of times before you forget – there are several ways to rebuild this runner depending on how much you strip; so if it doesn’t go back in easily, try undoing more of the fittings. All the runners are not fully interchangeable so play safe and mark them or keep them in sets (with the blinds!) as you strip them out. The roof blinds themselves are the typical sort of industry construction that defy repair once they fail. I found that the weak spot is the ‘cardboard’ backing to the grey flock surface and the failure of this allows the surface to crease. I did use light applications of wood glue to some advantage in order to stiffen the cardboard but getting the creases out beat me. I made sure I cleaned all the runners (including the metal ones along the roof central area) with Back-to-Black as it makes the surface very slippery. I also cleaned the small black plastic ‘runners’ that sit at the corners of the blinds with the same stuff and now all my blinds slide very easily.

All the trim was cleaned with Auto Glym interior shampoo – foaming type for the fabric and flock finish, and wet spray for the plastic. There were a lot of very black ‘witness marks’ on the trim around the edges and these took a lot of elbow grease to lighten – few coming out altogether. However, I didn’t find any panels that wouldn’t take a lot of scrubbing, including the roof blinds (!), but I was careful not to get wet anything other than the surface I was cleaning.

The front and rear roof glass panels come out by undoing the (obvious) nuts and bolts. The rear glass panels however do need a bit of jiggling by lifting the inner edge straight up first and then pulling sideways, away from the vehicle – it’s fairly obvious if you study the arrangement first. The centre glass panels are designed to lift off at any time and if you look around you should see an information sticker inside the Townie showing how. The technique is to release the catches, but don’t lift them up (!), and then you can squeeze the swivel pins in (together) to disconnect them (more obvious than it sounds); then you can lift the glass panels until they are vertical and lift the hinge pins out of the base plates – the hinges have flats to allow this. One word of advice – think about how on earth you’d replace a panel if you drop it and it breaks – so take great care and plenty of precautions!

There is no adhesive or sealer where the panels fit onto the roof but the rubber surround strips are stuck to the glass. I did find on two of my glass panels that the rubber surround strip had lifted away from the glass along the bottom edge – with dirt and moss having found its way in. Disappointingly, I found that having cleaned out the muck the rubber did not sit back well onto the glass, so I purchased some suitable (black) sealer from the car accessory shop and carefully filled the gap. If you do the same, don’t worry about sealer getting onto the glass, just let it dry for a day or two and then it comes off easily with a sharp blade and you can make a neat edge.

I used a lot of cans of foam shampoo and they aren’t cheap but the result is worth the expense and the hours of work. It’s not so much the cleanness of the interior, it’s the fresh smell my Townie now has. I admit that the smell of waxoyl is still a bit strong and the shampoo aroma can make your nostrils flare but it’ll die down very quickly and it’s exceedingly more acceptable that the 10 years worth of oriental backsides and perspiration I had before!!

John Corfield , 11 April 2002