Big Holiday Update

Post date: Dec 29, 2013 1:14:16 AM

The past few weeks have been very productive!

Any good job is worth doing twice, right? I had painted the dash using the Year One interior Dark Blue vinyl paint. Of course that's a really bad idea because it's Vinyl Paint. Sanding it off was interesting - it gummed up really bad. I took a sample to English Color and this was the match they came up with.

I am in love with this color. It is amazing! This is the PPG DBC with an Omni epoxy primer. Very easy to spray and I got much better with the gun. They were not able to do anything with the original PPG paint codes from '72 which is frustrating. Only problem is now this makes the firewall look pretty dingy. Hm.

For records keeping the paint info is:

Code 5620, Desc Light Sapphire Blue Met

SKU DESC Incl Cum

DMD1690 CRS. ALUM 168.7 168.7

DMD614 BLUE 96.2 264.9

DMD1686 FINE. ALUM 41.5 306.4

DMD1683 BLACK 29.5 335.9

DMD1607 BLUE 25.2 361.1

DMD646 WEAK WHITE 20.2 381.3

DMD1675 BLUE 6.6 387.9

DMD1689 CLEAR 115.4 503.3

The biggest project was the A/C box, fan control and heater box.

The A/C box got a complete restoration

The box was covered in terrible black paint and/or a solid layer of scum. Had to sand all that off which left the fiberglass looking terrible. A few coats of Satin Helman's Urethane in a rattle can made it look like this so I'm very happy. The evaporator that came out was pretty gunky so I picked up a cleaned and tested one from 'jensenracing77'. I used butyl rubber tape normally used to install windshields to affix the evap to the box. Looks like that's what the factory used. There's a gasket in the gasket kit, but I bet that would crumble long before the thing is ever serviced. The O'Reilly guys had no idea what I was talking about and didn't have anything on the shelf. Autozone had one lone box hiding on the bottom of a shelf. The A/C box was pretty good but had two cracks. I put some fiberglass on the back to hopefully reinforce it.

The eagle eyed folks may notice that it looks a little strange.

Maybe a lot strange. Instead of the normal resistor pack to control fan speed I'm using a fan blower controller from - you guessed it - a Lincoln LS. Way too many ford parts on here. This lets me run low power control wires instead of the nest of thick wires. It only needs two inputs - a variable current to control speed and another line that throws a relay when engaged. Easy once I got my head out of my ass. So that's controlled by the arduino! There's even a feedback but I haven't coded that in yet. The ambient switch was normally in that place, so I had to move it to where the resistor pack sits. Only problem is they use different mounting plates - with the resistor hole being larger. Instead of making an ugly fiberglass patch I just yanked all the resistors out of one of the boards, cut a big hole, glued the ambient switch to it and called it a day.

That's my proto board and a 'scope while I'm testing it and looking for air leaks.

The dev/test was a little hairy. I also managed to fry four or five of those controllers.... Good thing Shaun has baggy pants that are good a 'liberating' parts from the junkyard! I also installed one - requires some modifications - hooked up the arduino and tried to verify. Didn't work. Arduino wasn't even sending a wave. I think there was a bad S/W load as a few seemingly meaningless code modifications got that to work again. Still no bueno. Grab another controller. Nothing. Start thinking I'm nuts. It worked on the bench!! Grab ANOTHER one, and THIS one works! I'm left with only one working controller. Yikes.

The blower wheel was a surprising mess. It's really hard to sandblast that thing. I thought plastic replacements were available, but not really. There's a universal that uses a set screw instead of the original which is keyed and just has a retention nut. I hosed one down with Eastwood's Rust Converter which turned it purple. I suppose that's 'better'. As long as it doesn't flake off and mess with the evaporator.

One side note is the gasket set that's commonly available is great - except every gasket is just a little bit too small. I was using silicone to hold them in place until - again - I pulled my head out of my ass and remembered I have a can of spray hi tack.

The heater box also got a restoration. I took the best parts from two and made one. Oddly one of them was missing a heater core bracket..... All of the actuators were good (!!!) and nothing was really broken. The one from the parts car was moldy so I didn't use much from there. That box is very uninteresting so no pictures.

The heater core is an aluminum from Spectra which is much lighter than the copper but made in China. Spectra stuff is normally from Canada, so that's disappointing. I'm not certain copper cores are even available any longer. I have three that are headed to the scapper. I bet that'll be worth $60 easy.

Here's something you won't see very often. A restored fresh air boot.

Again I took two and made one. Actually the one in the parts car was mostly trash. I picked one up for a song off of the forums. The large gasket to the fenderwell isn't made anymore..... O'Reilly had some good thick weatherstripping - unlike the home improvement stores - which worked nicely. I'm also hoping to find an air filter that will fit in the boot somewhat well. Fingers crossed. The blower has an amazing ability to pull lots and lots of dirt from the cowl inlet which just piles up on the evap.

I'm really annoyed that I destroyed the expansion valve. Normal mistake - instead of paying attention I just yanked on the thing and broke the capillary. I ordered AC Delco 155774. It has fewer applications than the other one so I hoped it was more of a direct fit. Nope. It's the same generic one with obnoxiously long tubes. Oh well.

Also turns out the vacuum hoses for the heater box aren't reproduced. I'm hoping paint pens will make some decent stripes. I don't care about originality - that was just a really good way to keep track of what goes where! The air blend door cable is also hard to come by. I had one but it was coming apart. I should have another but can't find it.

I also finally started really designing the electrical system. That will be slow going as I will be doing some of it beforehand and some of it while doing the wiring. Mostly locations of big disconnects are up in the air.

Plenty left to do. I need to decide on the firewall - leave it or repaint. I'll do some light sanding as hopefully that will clean it up. I really don't want to pull everything back off and effectively start over..... Still need to straighten and paint the core support, pull the engine and tranny, check/beautify the engine, do a dyno session, get it installed and start the wiring. Oh, and those fender patches. And the rest of the body panels.

Easy.

If I'm lucky then it'll be on the road this spring!