SA cargo cover

[t_g_farrell]

I'm sure not many here have seen a cargo cover for the SA. They seem to be
more common down under but even there they look different than the one I had.

You see when I first bought my car out of college, it had a cargoe cover that
draped over an installed rail above the area where the floor starts for the back
cargo area. It snapped in using snaps on the floor, rail, and the rear. It also had
elastic hooks that fastened it to the hatch so it opened when the hatch opened.
It was very 80s and I always liked it.

In 2007 I moved to NC and realized I lost it in the move. For 9 years I have been
on the look out for one of these covers. I couldn't even post a picture of what I
was looking for, I've never seen any and I didn't have any. Then I got a visitor
message from someone on the site asking if I was interested in a cover.

Imagine my surprise. User mazdamikes sent me this vistor message:

mazdamikes
Awhile back weren't you looking for a soft cargo cover for a 1st gen? I believe I have one just need a picture if you have one

We got on email and traded phone contacts and he sent me this picture of the
cover:



I saw that picture and I recognized exactly what it was. It looked in amazing
shape and Mike is asking if I want it, you bet! It took a few weeks because of the
holidays (tday) but we struck a deal and he shipped it to me. This is what the
rotary community is all about. Out of the blue Mike had somehow heard I was
looking for this. We may have met at an OGTA meet or DGRR, neither of us could
remember any details. What matters is Mike knew I was looking for this and
offered it to me before going public with it. Thank you Mike!

Now that I had the cover in my hands, it spawned not only a project to
rejuvenate the cover and remount it in my car but also made me repaint the
rear plastic trim. Well you can't have a cover this nice looking and
then have bleached white/gray black trim under it, now can you. Ah the life of
an SA owner. The rolling restoration never ends.

So looking at the cover I could see it needed some work to look like new. The
snaps in areas where kind of corroded and had lost their shine, the hooks on the
elastic fasteners were also pretty rusty as well. The cover had hard plastic
reinforement inserted on the wings and across the rear whcih had crumbled into
a pile of plastic shards in the cover, I could feel them in there. The back of the
cover was the canvas backing of the vinyl that made up the cover and it was
various shades of brown and green, likely sun and moisture damage from being
stored for years. So I had my work cut out for me.

These are some of the pics I have showing the cover before I attacked it.

The hooks and cords to attach to the hatch glass.



The underside of the cover.



The next post I will go through the details of restoring the cover.