A 1964 Ford Thunderbird
Newly painted valve covers installed . . . check.
Steering column boot installed . . . check. (Minus one bolt, which just plain vanished.)
Turn signal wiring complete . . . uh . . . maybe.
I followed what was a pretty vague wiring diagram (supplied by the folks that sent the new switch) and am pretty sure that they are plugged into the right places. Not quite ready to hook the battery up and test (and, hey, it’s cocktail hour again.)
Got over the hump with this project with the shift column and steering shaft in. Everything seems to be working normally and all that’s left is reassembly of everything that came off to get to the column. (That’s a lot, but it’s always nice when you’re tightening screws, not loosening them.)
I finished up the last elements of the steering column this afternoon. Attached the neutral safety switch. (The holes were stripped for the stock screws; spent an hour finding and modifying a bigger screw to fit without interfering with the shift column.) Also put on the new shift boot. In retrospect, the rubber boot needed to go on first, long before anything else, but no manual or forum tip mentioned this. Once everything else is in place on the column, a new boot will not stretch far enough to fit over all the appendages. I had to cut it to put it on, which really defeats the purpose of buying a new one.
However, those difficulties were forgotten when the column went back into the car. A twist and a wiggle and it all fell into place. I was able to insert and tighten the nearly inaccessible screws at the bottom of the column with little difficulty. The steering shaft even fell right into its socket. What appeared to be difficult turned out easy!
But, what appears to be easy is often difficult. Thinking I was on the downside, of this project, I slid into the driver’s seat and did a test shift; but the shifter was stuck. I immediately thought that there was something wrong with the detente and shifter I put in, so I began, once again, to disassemble the upper steering column. (Breaking a C-clip in the process, of course. Sheesh, I thought they were unbreakable!) Getting it partly disassembled, I could see that there was something else wrong. It was getting dark, but I think part of the swing-away mechanism is jammed up under the dash.Too dark to work on it now, and hell, it’s cocktail hour anyhow.
Photos, and more, tomorrow.
Yesterday saw the beginning of the reassembly process as the steering column started to come together and the repaired coupling went back into the car. Putting it all back together is sometimes a memory puzzle, especially if there are a lot of pieces. It stands to reason the part you can’t put back together is always the bit the manual skips over. (Luckily, there’s usually some help in the forums from those who have been there before.)
So far, the trickiest part has been the replacement turn signal switch. The ’64 switch is unique, so the one I got is only a “close match.” It came with a wiring diagram and instructions on grinding down the steel bearing retainer plate to fit–not a task for the inexperienced. I was able to test fit the switch itself, so I know that will work. The next step is figuring out the rat’s nest of wires under the dash, which I’m sure will entail a lot of head scratching.
I polished up the chrome pieces that came out of the car. They are better, but far from perfect; time has taken it’s toll in minor pitting and rust. Stripping and plating them seems a bit extreme right now, so back in the car they go.
Perhaps the best part of restoration work is cleaning up an old, rusty part, giving it a fresh coat of paint and reassembling it. It doesn’t always look as good as new, but it’s (almost) always better than it was.
Long gone are the days of sheet metal interiors, but the T-Bird was built at the end of that era. I suspect she spent some time with the windows down, stored out in the elements–much of the interior is rusty, especially the unpainted portions.
Inside the steering column, the shift tube was a rusty mess with an accumulation of grease at the bottom. I put it on the wire wheel to shine it up and gave it a coat of primer to keep it clean. It’s mostly invisible inside the steering column, but in the off chance that the next guy to disassemble the unit is me, it’ll be nice to know it’s protected in there.
From the crap-previous-owners-do file, I’ve uploaded a shot of the old shift detente next to the new one. (The detente plate has the teeth the keep the shifter in gear–much like the
gates you move a shift lever through on a modern car.) The old unit looked ok until I compared them. Up close, I noticed that the groove for “park” (on the left side of each piece in this photo) has been deeply ground away, probably in a failed effort to keep the car in gear without buying new parts. Odd, really, because the repair pieces cost less than $30 in today’s money.
Tomorrow, reassembly of the shift tube into the steering column commences. I’m hoping to be back on the road this Sunday.
So, yeah, pulling out the steering column is more work than I figured. Even without the fancy slide-away steering wheel, this is not an easy job, but disassembly is complete.
Most of the difficulty came under the hood, trying to reach and turn four bolts, which took most of the afternoon. Had I been willing to remove parts that were in the way, the job would have gone faster, but I simply didn’t relish taking off the hood (the hinge was in the way) or the brake system. (Criminy, I just put that in!). Eventually, I ended up pulling a brace (easy) and a valve cover (needed to come off anyhow) to get to the last bolt.
Like the carburetor rebuild, I’m glad I dived into this. Some of the things I found:
All in all, a major safety upgrade, I’d say. There are a lot of pieces off the car, many of them rusty and some in need of paint. I’ll be putting it back together slowly, refurbishing parts as I go.
A complete photo journal of the disassembly process is posted on Photobucket.
I spent a good portion of the day disassembling the steering column from the steering wheel right on down to the steering box. It’s a task I will frankly say I underestimated. I’ll
post more about the complete job tomorrow, but for now, here’s what’s left of the coupling that is supposed to connect the steering wheel to the road.
This still has the original rivets, so it is likely the unit that came with the car, some 46 years ago. Still pretty glad this didn’t fail when the car was at speed.
It happened sooner than I expected: Stranded. Stuck. Immobile.
Drove the car to the post office, turned it off, came back 2 minutes later, turned the key and . . . nothing.
Really nothing. Not a click. No lights. No power to anything at all.
Eventually, I called a tow truck. 90 minutes later, the Bird and I were back home. Good money is on a defective starter, maybe the solenoid.
To top it off, while trying to wrestle the bird onto the tow truck, the steering coupler snapped. This bird has a clipped wing for a while.
Saturday . . . time to spend some quality time with the ‘Bird. Now that it’s running reliably, more or less, I can focus on “real” restoration projects: taking things apart, cleaning them up and reassembling them (and hoping it all works).
The car came with a couple of aftermarket valve covers that I don’t care for–they’re big, a little clunky and hard to keep clean. I also got two pairs of stock-like covers, one set chrome (and rust), the others pretty much all rust now (though I think they used to be blue). The completely rusty set were said to be original, so I set to work on them.
I buffed off as much rust as I could with a wire wheel, then set to work with coarse and medium grit emery cloth. A little bit of this work goes a long way with me–after about an hour, I set the project aside to be enjoyed another day. As you can see from the photo, I made a fair amount of progress with one.
It rained last night and I knew the trunk seal was a little iffy, so I popped the trunk to see how much water came in.
Turns out, it was a lot. Once a dug down through the spare parts to the trunk pan, there was a fair puddle there. Drying it up, it was hard not to notice that most of the trunk pan had long since rotted away; someone in the past did a crude patch job, but there were plenty of peep holes to the ground below. Disappointing, but not a critical item.
I got out some “elephant snot” rubber seal adhesive, pulled the old seal off, cleaned the whole shebang and glued it all back together properly. The rubber seal was deteriorating a bit, and the channel it sits in was starting to rust in spots as well, but overall the seal went in snugly, and the trunk lid didn’t get glued down permanently when I closed it. (Boy, that glue just gets everywhere.)
Last thing, I swapped out the taillight lenses for a couple of much nicer spares. Inside the housing, I found a bulb socket that was heavily corroded. A little emery cloth and a new bulb and all the taillight elements are now working (and pretty). The old lenses came off in pieces; the new ones are shiny and bright.
The brake relay arrived in the mail on Tuesday (fast shipping from the folks at Bird Nest), but I was out of commission with a stomach ailment–in no shape to work on the car.
After work today though, I was under the hood. Two screws, plugged it in to the old harness and . . . well, did it work? I had no helper, so I jammed a 2×4 against the brake pedal and peeked around the back. Sure enough, the brake lights were lit up. Sweet!
A new fuse for the turn signals and I was ready to go. Drove the beast on some errands–post office and the auto parts store, two favorite haunts–and it was absolutely awesome to get out of the neighborhood and get the ‘bird up to speed.
Sure, I’ve still got a 50 item to-do list, but the major items are now complete–I now have a ride instead of a project.
Some smaller items finished over the weekend: lock cylinder installed in the decklid (so I can open the trunk with a key, not a screwdriver); cleaned the interior (well, got a start at it); glued down a door seal (trying to stop a water leak into the interior) and took a stab at polishing the mag wheels (serious work will be needed to get through all the oxidation).
In the “going backwards” category, the rear-view mirror simply fell off a few hours after it was installed. Third try is the charm (again), I’m hoping.