I feel that it is appropriate to put out a warning to Imperial owners with vinyl roofs.
My 1969 LeBaron has a vinyl roof (I know duh!). There was some obvious rusting under the roof directly behind the windshield. Everything else as far as I could tell was fine, no rust anywhere to the best of my knowledge. I decided last fall to address this rust issue and pulled the vinyl roof off. After removing the vinyl roof I discovered significant rust under the rear window fiberglass insert all the way across the rear deck. I also discovered rust at the top of the A pillars at a seam. Neither of these two were obvious with the vinyl roof on. Last weekend I started to work on repairing the roof. This involved using paint stripper to remove the old adhesive and much of the paint on the roof. On my green car there is a green layer of paint on top of a rust colored layer of primer. Does anyone know if this is original? The single application of paint stripper removed all of the remaining adhesive and usually most of the green paint, but not the primer. The body filler in the seams at the top of the C pillars looked in pretty good condition. Also, the body filler continued into the seam of the fiberglass insert for about 6" on either side covering two attachment screws on each side. It appears that the body filler was added prior to any paint. On the edges of the filler where it is feathered out there is a very thin layer of body filler directly on bare steel with some surface rust present. This was removed easily. Each seam of body filler had a crack running the entire length of the seam. I put a filleting knife into the crack and very easily was able to remove most of the body filler. Again, there was surface rust under the body filler which meant that there was very little adhesion. The body filler between the seam itself and the outer I am posting this as a warning, because I believed that my roof was in good condition, other than the rust directly behind the windshield. It turns out that there was rust in three other locations, none of which were obvious with the roof on and that the rust that was obvious will probably be the easiest to fix.
Fred Joslin
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