How deep does the madness go?

Post date: May 17, 2015 7:42:55 AM

About a month of fast work, but it can be rather hard to tell. Everything is just minor nit-noids.

On the power steering front, I needed a new pump housing because I cut the 1/2" NPT threads using a Harbor Freight tap, which then didn't even pretend to seal. I grabbed two from the junkyard as cores which left me with four complete pumps. Compared them all and took the best parts. I also made a bushing press tool out of an unusable shaft. Bonus. I removed the washer from the pressure valve, opened up the feed passages in the pump, and lapped all the critical pump surfaces. This makes it equivalent to a basic performance rebuild. The high dollar ones actually use larger pump components as well. Theoretically I could find some pump guts in the boneyard, but I've had enough fun for there. Initially I wanted to avoid an AN fitting on the reservoir, so I had Kim Barr turn the outlet fitting so I could slip on the 5/8" hose. The problem there is it let the hose kink due to the sharp turn to get towards the pump. Not to worry, a replacement outlet fitting was only $40. Oi. Using a tap from Elliot's worked much better. So the pump has a -10AN inlet, to a 90deg AN to 5/8" barb, to Gates Power Steering suction hose, to a 60deg barb to -10an to the reservoir.

Power steering. DONE. IT BETTER BE.

Brakes. I had a persistent leak on the main front to rear line. It's a stainless steel repop that I cut to install a 10 lb residual valve for the drum cylinders - the Dodge M/C doesn't have residuals. Thankfully that's not really necessary for disc calipers. Folks will use 2lb residuals if the M/C is below the calipers, like in a rat rod, to prevent the calipers draining back into the M/C.

Anyway, I figured the main problem was the flares, because I could only get a single flare using cheap tools in the stainless. So I bought a new poly armor line, bent it up - I really hate bending hard line - and got the fancy MasterCool flare tool.

Still leaked.

At least it was only from the valve and not the flares.

So I figure hey, that valve rattled around in boxes for a couple of years, so bought a new one.

That one leaked.

Turns out the inlet to those things is 1/8" NPT aluminum with a brass fitting. With no tape, dope or anything. The fitting just bound up. The outlet is a flare, so it sealed just fine. Got a new fitting, used some pipe dope, and all appears to be good. Mind, this is with just pushing the pedal as hard as I can. Need to re-verify when the hydroboost is running.

All this required pressure bleeding the brakes no less than FOUR times.

The Dodge M/C is quite a bit longer than stock, so with the inclination of the boost, that looked like it would hit the hood. I just added some washers (hardened, natch) between the top bolts and the brackets. Looks good. But now the forward brake line brushes against the P/S reservoir. Never win, you know?

Brakes. DONE. THEY BETTER BE.

Driveshaft. Shaun hauled over his aluminum shaft from a police Crown Vic. Same length as my old driveshaft, but about 1 or 2" too long for this car. I think the pinion yoke must be just slightly taller than typical. Or it may be the 2" drop in right height? I don't know. New driveshaft on order, should get it next week.

Electrical. Added an additional feed for the fan, so it'll have two 8ga wires, each with a lower rated fuse. We'll see how that works - my hopes are not very high. Good thing is going back to the previous setup means just yanking a fuse! I mounded the Explorer underhood light over above the charcoal canister. Pretty out of the way there and cleanly mounted.

Dash. Whoa. First up was finding the "right" chrome for all the trim. I did three paint pens plus Bare Metal foil. I picked one that looks pretty close to stock. Then while looking at the vents, you could see the metal frames rusting and they didn't move smoothly.

Hey, why not tear down 40 year old plastic vents, clean, paint, lube and reassemble?!

Yeah.

(completed on the left, old on the right)

In any case, the dash looks good. Got it painted with the Year One paint. I think the color is pretty different, but dad couldn't tell. Getting the wood trim mounted was a fiasco. My set from Year One didn't include adhesive, so I just used some contact cement. Well, you have to kind of goop the stuff on, especially on the narrow sections around the heater panel, which made a huge mess. Nothing that a couple of hours rubbing off glue blobs won't fix. If you look real close - especially from the bottom - it doesn't look great. But, meh. I didn't apply the gauge trim because I'm likely to replace that piece.

Getting the new gauges to slip in an out while mounted to the trim took some modifications to the dash. It's not visible when the trim is installed.

Dash electrical. This was again a surprising amount of work. I elected to use a convertible top switch to drive the windshield wash (instead of the nutz-o sliding switch idea from before). Pressing down energizes the wash circuit, and pressing up provides the momentary switch for the speedometer (odometer change, programming, etc). The only quirk is the speedo wanted a switch to ground, so I added in an NPN transistor with emitter to ground, base to the switch and collector to the speedo. Works!

I've been thinking about the aftermarket defrost units. They use a momentary button and LED on a little control panel. Works great for Shaun's Chevelle - there's a rectangular black panel that it slips right into. Not so much on the olds panel. So I got an A/C control unit that has the defrost bits on it -

Quick divergence. I ended up using the entire unit, even though I had done a full restoration on my other one. I had actually disassembled the vacuum switches on one - don't do that, the clips break easy and then it's trash. The defog one actually came with all the hoses and the vacuum switches were MUCH tighter than the other set. Would still be good to know what it takes to recondition those things. Anyway, the face panel was perfect, the light had a decent pigtail.... Good stuff.

Anyway, the stock defog uses a hefty on/off switch, whereas new stuff is a momentary. It took about two hours but I found a modification that worked. The switches have a plastic slider that needed to be smoothed down (there's bumps to register on/off locations), added another slider from another switch to take up slack, put in a spring to push it back, and tied in (literally) a miniature momentary switch on the bottom. Insulated the stock contacts and wired them to the momentary switch. Poof! Ready! Wired that to ACCY power, then added a pigtail with switch output and the indicator light.

Only problem is all of that is 12V. The aftermarket unit I'm looking at integrates 5v logic level chips onto the relay box, so it sends 5v out to the control pad for the switch and the LED. I'll have to add a voltage divider for the switch then a transistor for the light. The 1445 bulbs pull about 350ma, so a general purpose PNP transistor will work.

Shaun fixed up all the plastic ductwork, I got the wiring diagrams "completed" and we installed the dash! Everything actually fit on the first try! Energized the car and noticed that half the junk didn't work.

Turns out it helps if you plug in the primary firewall harness.

I need to write exhaustive test cases, but looks like everything is good. There was an oddity with the map light - the way I wired it, turning it on actually grounded the courtesy circuit.... Adding a diode fixed that. Also I reused the old connector which wasn't registering correctly. Fixed!

Noticed that the brand-new fuel pressure gauge is leaking and either isn't reading right or the regulator is all jacked up. That's annoying. Got three pressure gauges on the way as I'm tired of that nonsense.

10 gallons in the tank, no exhaust... Good times ahead!

Catalog of problems:

1) Dash trim STILL didn't adhere well in some areas.

2) USB/Serial cable wasn't working, so couldn't set up the MSD