Cross country trip

No, I did not take a trip across the country and neither did the car. However, a part of the car did -- the headlight switch stalk. I had sent it all the way to the East Coast to Unobtainium Supply so Verell could fix the cracked pivot. Apparently, the cracking looked worse than it actually was. Verell told me that there is actually a metal plate under that plastic and that it was still structurally sound. Rather than spending the almost $200 to get a new pivot cast, I opted to just use it as is.

Of course, just like the dash, putting together is harder than the taking apart. I reassembled the switch, which required at least four hands to hold all the springs and such. The switch contacts are U shaped pieces of brass, which float on small springs. Putting a stalk back on meant having to hold two piece of brass on the springs, pushing in a ball bearing on another spring and then putting the whole thing on the switch hub without losing any parts. I ended up using some string to hold the brass pieces on while I wrestled with the ball bearing. The switch assembly has three stalks -- headlight, turn signal and wiper. Assembly took me well over an hour.



Finally back together, I bolted the switch assembly back onto the steering column and put the gauge cluster back in. My initial problem with the headlight low beams went away and now everything works.

Starting on the carbs

I don't have my new carb gaskets yet, but I figured I'd start by removing all the carbs (again). I wanted to see how well this ultrasonic cleaner worked so I tried it out on one carb. You can see how nasty they are.



I started out with a mixture of hot water and dish soap. SL said this is what he usually uses so I figured I start there. When I lowered the carb into the water, I was expecting some crazy foamy, steamy cleaning action but what I got was...nothing. I mean, not nothing but much less than what I was expecting. The really loose surface dirt blew away pretty quickly but it didn't really touch the caked on grime. I pulled out the carb after 20 minutes and while it's a little cleaner, it's far from being completely clean. I guess I'll try it again with some other stronger solvent.

Dash vents

Before putting the dash back in, there is some old foam that needs replacing. There are five vents in the dash -- three in the middle and one on each side. Each of these vents is sealed to the ducts under the dash with foam. After 30 years, the foam has almost completely disintegrated.



The original foam measures about 3/4" wide by 1/4" thick. I picked up some adhesive backed insulating foam at the hardware store and it worked perfectly in this application.



It was true when I said this was the easiest dash I have ever removed. However, installation was another story. There is a small lip at the base of the windshield that the dash sits under. The trick was pushing the dash in while getting the leading edge under this lip. Pushing inward on the dash was no easy task as it was a pretty tight fit. At one point, I had to push the dash forward with my feet, then stop and reach forward to seat another small section under the lip, then push again. I would say it took ten times longer to get the dash in than out. Anyhow, the dash is installed again.

Do it right

A few days ago when I pulled out the stereo, I found an ugly repair job on some ground wires behind the dash. At first, I was just going to wrap it in electrical tape and call it good. I thought about this and decided against it because I didn't want to do a half-assed job to fix someone else's half-ass job.



I read about how easy it was to remove a 308 dash so I decided to try it. Sure enough, it was easy. After removing the instrument cluster, the dash is held in with 4 bolts and one screw. I've removed a few dashboards from various cars and I'd have to say that this was the easiest dash removal that I have ever done.



Access to the wires was wide open after the dash was removed. I spliced in three wires to replace ones that were nearly severed and wrapped everything with heat shrink tubing. I also soldered on new ring connectors. I think the damaged was caused by the wires chaffing against the side of the stereo so I re-routed the wire bundle under a wire keeper next to the main wire bundle. It's a lot neater now and there won't be a chance of the wires getting chaffed again.

Sir, you need to read the fine print

I've decided to rebuild my carburetors. The spitting and popping just isn't getting any better, and I figure I should just go ahead and tear those carbs apart. SL brought over his small ultrasonic cleaner and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Four sets of carb gaskets arrived, but looks like I need to try and return them. This car has four Weber DCNF 40 carbs, so I ordered gasket sets for a Weber DCNF 40. However, there are apparently two different types of DCNF 40s -- one with a four screw top and one with a five screw top. The gasket set is for a four screw top and guess what's on the car? Yep, a five screw top carb. There is a slight difference in the top gasket. I went back to the website I ordered it from and sure enough, it says "Weber DCNF 40 with a 4 screw top." That should have been enough to make me check, but somehow I missed that part. I guess carb rebuild will need to wait a little longer until I get the right gaskets.

Interior trim pieces

Here's what I'm faced with on interior upholstery. All of the covered trim pieces are made of aluminum (or aluminium for the Brits) and covered in vinyl over 1/2" open cell foam. My my count, I need to recover 8 pieces (rear shelf(2), rear side (2), rear upper (1), rear door jam (2) and relay/fuse cover (1). I've moved most of the operation inside where it's warm. The vinyl is creased from storage and I think I may try running an iron over it to flatten it out. Now I just need to convince TK that we're not going to die from the smell of contact cement in the house. To be continued...

You've got to slow down

As the days get short and the temperature drops, it's been tougher to carve out time to get in the shop. I'm waiting for my headlight switch stalk to return and thought I'd pay some attention to some things in the interior. Most of the electrical stuff works now, but a few remaining things bug me. One of them was the "slow down" lights.

This car has two catalytic converters -- one for cylinder banks 1-4 and the other 5-8. Each cat has a thermocouple to monitor temperature. If the cat temp gets too high, the thermocouple sends a trigger to an ECU and the corresponding "slow down" light comes on. When you start the car, these lights are supposed to come on for a few seconds, then go out. For some reason, my lights did not work at all. I looked at the wiring diagram and located the ECUs but did not see anything out of the ordinary. I pulled the light holders out of the dash and immediately saw the problem. Turn out that someone in the past pulled out the bulbs for the indicators! I put in some bulbs and magically, the lights come on at startup. Why would anyone disable an important system like this? If one of the cylinder banks has a problem and starts to overheat, I'd sure like to know!



Another thing I did was remove the stereo. I think that it works, but I wanted to pull it out to clean up some wiring. When I looked in the dash, I found this lovely gem.



Behind the stereo hole, there is a bundle of black grounding wires. Somehow, one of the wires had become severed and a few others were damaged. Some brainiac had soldered a patch wire in there and wrapped the mass in duct tape. Ugly. I guess I can sort of understand it -- they are only ground wires and it's incredibly tough to get in there to fix it right. Someone was just lazy and didn't want to do the work. Just short of removing the entire dash, there's not a simple way to get to the harness to do a proper fix. I read a few posts on F-chat about dash removal and it doesn't look too tough. I may do it just to be able to fix this correctly. Now's a good time anyway as I have the steering wheel off and column switches removed.

Aside from wiring, I also started working on interior upholstery. I spent a lot of time scraping and cleaning off the old foam. A few of the pieces now have new foam glued on and I may have to move the operation indoors where it's a little warmer. I'm using Welwood contact cement which is taking too long to dry in my cold shop.

The last thing I did was pull the right front brake caliper to pull out the stupid plastic bag that got wrapped around the axle. However, it's not so simple as there is a hard brake line covering one of the mounting bolts.



I removed the brake line and the fluid started to come out. Even though I stuffed part of a rag into the hole, I could not keep it from leaking. I got the caliper off, pulled out the rest of the plastic and put the caliper back on as quickly as I could but was still left with a huge mess on the floor. By then it was cold and dark and my finger was gushing blood from getting smashed by an ill-aimed mallet blow so I decided to call it a night.

Todo list is getting long again

It seems like I keep finding things to add to the todo list. At some point during it's storage life, the wheels were covered in plastic garbage bags. The reason I know this is that the right front wheel had bits of plastic bag all twisted around the hub spindle. I was able to remove most of the plastic, but there are more pieces stuck between the brake pad and the rotor. To remove the rotor, it should be a simple matter of loosening the bolts. Not so. The upper mounting bolt is partially obscured by a hard brake line. To get to the bolt, I need to remove the line. Removing the line means re-bleeding the brake system (which as you'll recall I just did a few weeks ago).

*sigh*

Add that to the list...

I also decided last weekend that the engine just runs too poorly and the carbs do really need some attention. I ordered rebuild kits (I need 4 of them) and they should be here before the weekend. A few days ago, I stopped by a fabric store and got a small roll of 1/4" open cell foam for the interior. I also have most of the pieces to wire the relays for speeding up the windows. If all goes well, I should get my repaired headlight stalk back in a couple of weeks.

And time passes...

Time does pass, but you can't really tell because the clock in the car is broken. Well, not completely broken -- it works but the little knob to adjust it is missing. I decided to pull it apart to see if it was something I could fix. The clock is located in a 2-gang instrument cluster off the driver's left knee. I pulled off the cluster, removed the clock mounting bracket and it slid right out. Getting it apart without destroying was tricky. There is a chrome trim ring hold it together and the ring needed to be carefully pried apart. I managed to save it and open the clock. As luck would have it, it appears that the only thing missing is the knob shaft. The adjuster gear is still in place, held by a small spring. I just need to find a shaft the correct size to go back into the hole.



A few weeks ago when SL was helping me, he was bolting the oil cooler back on and noticed the mounting studs were a little beat up. I ordered some new ones and put them on. Good thing too because one of the mounts completely separated and the other one was almost as bad.



Someone in the past had replaced the ignition point system with an electronic ignition. It's an Allison XR700 system (now Crane Ignition) and there are two control units -- one for each distributor. The only problem was, the control units were zip tied together and attached to the left side intake ductwork. Needless to say, it looked a little cheesy and I wanted to redo the mounting. I made a little mounting platform from sheet metal and mounted the boxes to it. The mount itself is attached to the same mounting point as the left side duct.



I also closed up the access panels under the front of the car and sorted through the loose interior parts. Most of the trim panels had been recovered, but pretty badly. I'm not really sure why because the original vinyl still looked pretty good. I decided to pull the new vinyl off, clean the original and mount them back into the interior. The only problem is that the foam on some of the trim was trashed so I need to try and locate some replacement before I can finish the interior.

Headlight switch removed and passenger side work

To get to the broken headlight switch, I had to remove the steering wheel hub, which was held on by a special nut. Since I didn't want to spend $100 and wait a week for the special tool, I made one out of a 1 1/4" socket. After about 15 minutes with the angle grinder, I had a tool that would work with this nut.



You know how there are those things you keep around the house, "just in case you might need it?" Well, I had one of those. After removing the nut, I found the steering wheel hub to be stuck on the shaft. I remembered that I had a steering wheel puller at one point. I even remembered seeing it recently. I haven't needed to pull a steering wheel in over 20 years and yet, here I was needing a puller. It was hiding in a cabinet with some other hardware and after drilling a few new holes, I was able to pull the hub off and remove the switch assembly.



The switch pivot is definitely cracked, but it's actually more structurally sound than I thought it would be. Still, since I have the thing apart, I'm going to get it fixed correctly.



On to the next task for the day, which is the passenger side door. I put the latch back on and reassembled the door lock. The car was missing a window switch, and I had to order one. I hooked it up and hit the switch to find that the passenger power window was slower than the driver window. Onward with disassembly.



Here is the motor assembly which moves the window. The window is controlled by a long cable fished in a crazy way through the door. The ends of the cable are wrapped around a drum, which is powered through a worm gear drive and a motor. Most of these mechanisms are siezed up by 25+ year old grease which makes the drive really slow. Neither side for me was really bad. The grease was not completely solid, although it was pretty heavy. I cleaned up everything and added a healthy dose of lithium grease.



You can sort of see the way the cables run inside the door in this photo. After reassembly, the window moved, but was still very slow. Next I will put some relays in the motor circuit which show speed things up a bit.