She's finally purple again! FC7 70 Shaker Cuda340

[njsteve]

I've spent the last few days doing the upholstery on the rear seats. (Can't do anything else greasy since that white upholstery is unforgiving to dirty hands). I stripped both top and bottom frames to the bare metal, hosed them down and then sprayed them with phosphoric acid to kill the surface rust. After that I let it all dry a few days, rinsed them off and once they dried, painted them with black Rustoleum.

(Actuallly I figured it was time to bring them in after the wife said "What the heck do you think the neighbors are thinking? That we threw out a couple of old box springs in the front yard to rust away? What are we: Jersey Rednecks???? Get those damn things...yada, yada, yada...out to the curb with the rest of the garbage...yada, yada".

So by then the installation kit had arrived so it was time to tackle the project.

The foam on the bottom and the cotton padding on the top cushion were all mouse-ified and needed to be tossed. I took a lot of photos of the disassembly and kept them handy. But the most handy tool was the video that Legendary did on their youtube channel that showed the step by step process for installing all the burlap, muslin, foam and cotton layers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUo_...yAutoInteriors

They sell a installation kit that has more than enough stuff to do the rear seats. In fact about three times as much cotton as I needed - an entire bale from what it looks like.

Anyway, 300 hog rings later, and half a dozen puncture holes in my fingers, here is how it turned out.

(Although the photo makes it look like the back cushion is brighter than the other white pieces, that is just the way the light is hitting it. They all match in real life)

[usraptor]

Nice job, fortunately one of the pluses of my Cuda was that the previous owner had just installed new seat covers so that was one thing I didn't have to tackle, thank heavens.

[njsteve]

I got something done today!

I was under the dash, cursing and bending and getting stuck trying to install the repaired speedometer cable. The original had the little white tab broken off, where it engages the back of the speedometer. So I was all ready to install the new one and had the old one half fed over the clutch/brake pedal bracketry when I noticed that the ferrule that attaches to the transmission on the new cable was several sizes too small. The factory used a 1" nut to attach the cable end to the tail shaft. The replacement had a 3/4" round ferrule. So I ended up pulling the white plastic ends off of both the original and the new cable, and swapping them. I used the heat gun to soften the old cable to allow the new white end to slide on and it seems to have worked. Well it is installed anyway, it will have to wait til tomorrow to see if the speedometer works without bouncing like before from being halfway attached but not clipped in. Oh, and did I mention that there is a firewall grommet with a 3/8" hole that the cable has to go through? Mind you, one end of the cable has the aforementioned 1" nut that certainly isn't going through the 3/8" hole and the other end is an only slight slimmer 3/4" white plastic connector. The grommet must be installed during the assembly of the cable at the factory but I ended up soaking the grommet in boiling water and then using a couple tiny screw drivers to help persuade it over the white plastic end. It worked. Yeah, I know, I should have slipped the grommet on when the white ends were off...

While I was trapped under the dash and couldn't get out, I decided to make my time productive and check out why the road lamps were't working. My hunch was right - the very expensive original toggle switch was not doing anything other than making the click noise from physically moving on and off. No power was getting through. So I pulled the switch out and tested it with a ground and a test light. No test light illumination in either position. I then bent the four little tabs over and opened the back up. I found the problem. The dielectric grease had turned to fossilized amber inside and no electrons were getting through it. So I gently ran the contacts against my wire wheel, threw a couple drops of oil in there and tested it again. Eureka! I then hooked it back up and the driving lamps now work! Yay!

The next project was gathering all the parts for the steering column lockout system that was unique to 1970 Mopar four-speeds, and extra unique to small block cars. When working as designed, it requires the car to be parked with the shifter in reverse, and then locks it there when the ignition key is removed. All these parts were usually tossed in the trash can the moment someone tried to install headers on a car. Luckily the car had 95% of the parts intact (Thanks Dave). The only pieces missing were a couple of plastic bushings for the cross bar and a unique double-headed shifter linkage swivel that the lockout engagement rod attaches to on the reverse lever. I actually found them both on ebay - the Hurst rebuilder guy sells the swivel and the bushing from a Mopar supplier. Here's a photo of the swivel and the linkage:

[njsteve]

More electrical progress. Mopars seem to be notorious for tail light issues with bad grounds. If you dont grind the heck out of the mounting area that the potmetal tail light housings mate up with, you risk intermittent light issues and backfeeding through the harness. Symptoms are cascading lights (alternating bulbs activating in a sequence) when you hit the brakes or the reverse lamps glowing dimly when the parking lights go on.

This car had no working license plate light, left rear marker light, and the dimly lit back-up lights glowing when the parking lights were on. If you use an alligator clip and wire to ground, they work fine as a test.

So the choice is pulling everything apart and gouging through new paint or the logical solution of just making some small jumper ground wires. So I got some spare 16 gauge wire and eyelet ends. I ran one from the side marker housing to the tail lamp housings and then to a prexisting screw behind the trunk latch bracing. None of it is visible to the prying eye. As for the license plate light, I had to pull the small potmetal housing out, and grind the area where the socket snaps into the housing. The galvanized coating and old finish just wouldn't let the grounding work. Once I did that, we had all the lights working as they should.

The crazy thing is that the factory uses a separate, designated ground wire for the headlight harness and front, grill mounted turn signals that screws to the radiator support but never bothered to do the same for the tail light harness.

Next fix, is doing the same jumper wire deal for the dash housing because the instrument panel lamps seem to pop the 3-amp "LPS" fuse intermittently. Cudas and Challengers used the gauge pod mounting screws and the little metal tabs under specific screw locations to be the grounds. If one of those tabs is gone, like on the switch pod that houses the headlamp switch, you get the grounding issue problem.

[njsteve]

Back from the frozen garage. It's snowing at the moment.

It took a while, but I got the fuel sender out of the tank without having to remove the tank.

First I siphoned most of the gas out.

The sender on an E-body is on the drivers side of the tank but everything is in the way. I disconnected the left muffler from the hanger under the trunk (after wrapping the exhaust tip in a towel so it wouldn't scratch the valance paint). Once the muffler was hanging about an inch lower, I was able to get to the heat shield that is above it. Once that heat shield was out, it gave me a couple inches of room to work alongside the tank. Using a brass drift to avoid sparks, I was able to tap the collar off the sender and then do the obligatory "bent nail puzzle" removal sequence trying to get the sender out of the tank with the exhaust still alongside it. Of course the brass float goes in the opposite direction of the pickup sock, making it an expert level puzzle scenario. Eventually I was able to finagle the thing out from there without removing the muffler or the tank. And as you may recall from previous episodes, the tank can't come out without removing the rear vlance which in no way shape or form or coming off that car without scratching all sorts of other painted parts.

Once I got it out, I tested the original 1970 sender and as predicted, it is inert. So the removal was necessary.

Installing the new sender was just as much fun to maneuver back into the tank with the adjacent muffler in place. I got the sender lead back on, along with the ground strap and low and behold, it actually worked! I put all the gas back in and she now reads 3/4 full. That's all for today from snowy Joysey.

[njsteve]

I finished polishing up windshield stainless moldings today after sanding them over the past few weeks -using the sisal, then spiral wheel, then flappy wheel with the various compounds. Then I used blue painters tape to outline the entire painted border around the glass and marked the location of each clip with a sharpie. Then came the fingernail biting suspense of getting the moldings engaged without cracking the glass. I used a small rubber mallet and gently but firmly whapped the marked locations. It worked without issue.

I then tried to install the wiper blades but it seems I must have installed the wiper articulating arms backwards because it tried to go toward the cowl when starting. Luckily I didn't install the arms before I tested them. That's the next project.

Anyone have a diagram or photo of which way the rectangular metal arm goes, when viewed into the cowl opening? Is it facing down or facing up when parked?

[anlauto]

Cycle the wipers without the arms in place and watch what the pivots do. It's possible you installed the arms when the wiper motor was not in the parked position.

[njsteve]

No arms attached. It cycles and parks and moves up and back properly. But when activated, it moves 1/8 turn out of park, and then down instead of up. So do I have the rectangular bar upside down? By chance, do you have a photo looking into the cowl at the back of the wipers when in the park position?

[njsteve]

I was right. I had the rectangular arm that attaches to the motor, on upside down.

I guess I could have kept the arm in its present position and turned the car upside down but it was easier this way: I switched the arm so it was pointing north instead of south when in the parked position and the wipers work correctly now.

I love simple solutions to stupid mistakes. :-)

[anlauto]

That's cool....I just noticed the black seat in the white interior...that's not cool 

[njsteve]

Reupholstering the two front seats is my last "clean" project. This way they don't get all dirtied up with me crawling in and out of the car fixing wiring and front end aligning.

[njsteve]

I've spent the past week slowly assembling the front seats. It takes a lot of patience and hand strength to do all the pulling, hog ring plier-ing of around 800 hog rings (including 100 or so "duds" that had to be cut and removed), repositioning and strategically inserting of extra cotton material to get them to look correct over the original foam cushions. (the reproduction foam is not close enough to the original shape to spend the $300 on). A little more massaging with the heat gun should get the last of the wrinkles smoothed out. I have to do that on a separate day to make sure my hands are surgically clean. That is a "right out of the morning shower" sparkling clean, kind of job. If you have one speck of dirt on your hand, it will get on the white vinyl.

So here they are. Before and after...

I am currently working on the seat tracks, one of which self-destructed when I racked it too far forward. It threw the ball bearings out into low earth orbit. Luckily I had one left and was able to measure it at .310 (which is BTW, the same size as a 32 calibre shotgun pellet!). I was able to go to my local Home Depot and match it up to the .310 (5/16) ball bearings they sell individualy at .94 cents. Otherwise, I would have had to buy a can of 1000 of them from Amazon for $16. But then what the heck would I have done with all the leftovers? Hmmmm. Reminds me of that scene with Flounder from Animal House; "May I have 10,000 marbles please?"

[njsteve]

BTW, does anyone have any use for the old seat covers? The black vinyl is very dry and crispy but I think the center sections (other than the drivers seat, upper) are still decent if someone was fixing up a survivor car's interior. Otherwise I will be throwing them out.

[6bblgt]

 

[njsteve]

One seat down, one to go. It takes a while to get the seat tracks cleaned, dissasembled, painted, and reassembled (and I dont want to mix up the parts so I did one side at at time).