[Amc-list] hurry up and wait

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

Man, all I need is two steel wheels to drive this thing!

But since I can't drive it I at least got a lot of other crap done to make 
it actually road worthy.

One turn signal was out, but I knew that meant that all the lamp sockets 
were rotten. Someone had put the taillight lenses on upside down so that 
the drip hole became a fill hole. The screws froze, the crimp-in nuts bad, 
so I had to crack one lens to get it off. Massive cleanup, fab new lens 
captive nuts, superglue the lens together, refurb sockets, pack with 
grease, chucked the #1034's and installed #2357's (about 4X brighter).

The fronts were worse, gaskets shot as always, they became rain scoops and 
the lamps were welded to the socket. I got them out and was actually able 
to free up the little springs inside and renew them. Made new lens 
"gaskets" with a bead of silicone, let it skin over, silicone grease on the 
lens back so it wouldn't stick. Orange #1157's replaced the dim #1034's.

Surprise, the 1963 little square flasher still works.

Added emergency flashers; mounted a switch (actually, two) in the dash, 
added a "heavy duty" flasher and tapped the black wire on the headlamp 
switch with a three-headed faston jump (no harness cutting).

The other switch drives a relay which drives the pair of 8" monster Hella 
driving lights I bought in a flea market in East Berlin last year. Those 
went up on the front bumper (they're a bit bigger than the 7" headlights!). 
Nice euro-rally look!

Welded up a simple little mount to put one of my vintage tachs up on the 
trim below the windshield (the American has a great piece of trim with 1/2" 
space under it and a big stamped hole below for feeding wires). It's a 60's 
SW 3" 90-degree tacky little tach, with a "redline" painted on the inside 
of the glass with nail polish at 6500 rpm! This is one of the Barney 
Navarro auction tachs, it's for a 6-cyl and seems unlikely to be anything 
but for the Navarro Rambler, and 6500 is about right for that motor. I 
think 6500 rpm on the 195.6OHV might mean "premature disassembly".

Fixed the heater; got a NAPA inline valve and replumbed the water. Original 
valve went in the trash, it's far too gone to rebuild. Realized that my 
radiator is NOT leaking, it was the overflow hose (no canister yet) 
tricking me.

I had been putting off drilling the brake drums, as it's 120 holes each 
drum, so I taped up the pattern, pricked the 120 holes on the first drum, 
then realized there's no way to stand the drum under the drill chuck! Too 
tall! Damn! I thought I'd mocked that up... oh well on the car then go. 
I'll do the drilling at work on our floor-mounted drill press. Bled the 
brakes.

Radio and new antenna installed and working.

Thought the vacuum booster pump and wiper motor were bad, but I found out 
that it helps to plumb the thing such that it SUCKS and not BLOWS into the 
wiper motor! Duh! Took the wiper motor out anyways, disassembled it, it was 
very nice inside, I relubed it and it's working perfectly. Got a spare 
motor and a spare pump. No squirters, I'll have to look what was installed 
on Americans, I assume the same foot-pressed bulb a the big cars. That's 
the only luxury item I feel compelled to add to this car. Twin Stick, 
Powerpak, radio, hardtop, what more could I want?

New battery cables, new plugs. Left the old ratty, stiff plug wires on for 
now, though I bought a new set; I have a Pertronix Ignitor coming, and I 
bought a NOS distributor for $5 on eBay some months back, that plus new 
wires and an epoxy Pertronix coil will all go in at the same time. I can 
hear the old wires leaking spark snap snap snap!

Twin Stick console shift knob unavailable, so I made one; drilled the right 
holes to install the kickdown switch. The plain knob is available.

Wheels better come soon!

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