I dropped the body on the frame last night.  Today, I spent the day building plugs to join the wiring together between the engine/frame and the body.  I also installed the light switch and turn signals (made out of m-38 dash lights), which means the lighting is completed except for getting the bezels for the front turn signals.

Though not shown in the above images, all the gauges are now connected, as are the alternator, distributor, and starter wiring.  The flex-plastic has been run around nearly all the wires (I have to pic up a little more at the junk yard).

My next step is to build the center consol that will have the ingition switch, acc switch, button starter, cigarette outlet (aka cell phone charger) a storage compartment, and 2 drink holders.  I still don’t have a final design for this, but am working through it.  I went back and forth about whether to install this, but I remember that not having a secure place to throw a wallet or other minor items was an issue.  Also, with the advent of cell phones, I’ll need to have a place that can hold it and where it can be charged.

As I mentioned in another post, I chose to use some left over M-38 lights as my turn signals indicators.  I primarily used these lights because I had them. Also, I didn’t the choice in turn signal indicators I used last time, cheap plastic circular lights from Schucks.

To install them, I ground down the ridges on the lights, drilled holes into the dash, and slid them into it.  I also had to ground the lights, so I took the light holders normall used to hold the lights in place and turned them into grounding washers.

Continue reading →

A local reader named Joshua responded to my question about front turn signals, writing that he had a pair of lights I might find interesting.  I ran over yesterday to take a look at them.  Apparently, someone had mounted them onto a GPW grille, clearly a place they didn’t belong. Since Joshua didn’t have any use for them, he kindly offered them to me for free (Thanks!).

I took the lights home and took them apart.  The beehive cones are glass, are in perfect shape, and cleaned up nicely.  Unfortunately, the bezels are just rough enough that I don’t think I can use them; however, the bezels did have an autolamp UN67 stamp on them.  Here’s an example of the glass on the grille, though I didn’t have the bezel in this example.  The look is exactly what I wanted

I plugged the Autolamp model number into google and found the Taillightking website, a detailed older light website run by A. J. Phillips. Using the website, I not only found an example of a UN67 bezel, but also discovered a SL49 bezel that’s more like what I’m looking for (it appears a little shorter than the other).  Unfortunately, both of these have been sold.  According to what I can glean from the taillightking website, they were used either as rear lights or interior lights for Chevelles (year unknown). I suspect they were used on other vehicles as well.

While I might not have the bezels I need yet, I do have the lights and light assembly (the old wiring assembly was a single filament, rather than the dual filament for parking and turn lights).  I took apart some extra towing lights I have and clipped out the wiring and bulb holder.  I had to enlarge the grille hole slightly to fit the bulb assembly, but that was easy to do.  The below image shows the roughed out assembly in the back of the grille.  I’ll need to add a hole to the metal tab that will hold the assembly in place.

Now, all I have to do is find two bezels and I’m set.

Over the weekend I completed the wiring along the engine.  I wanted to hide the wires as much as possible, keep them as organized as possible, and not connect them to the fenders.  Below are pictures of the lines run from the alternator, from the fan assembly (the wiring runs from the fan, over the radiator, and down along the grille to meet with the front light wiring) and then the wiring from the grille along the frame to the cowl.

This is the dual fan setup I purchased from North Coast Peformance, an eBay Power Seller.  I fiberglassed the two fans together and built a metal frame to surround them and attach them to the radiator framework.  This setup included a thermostat that slides snuggly inbetween the radiator fins.  These two 10″ fans cover almost the entire radiator, making it a tight fit.  However, between the aluminum radiator and the fans, I should have no overheating problems.

Continue reading →

Because the engine I had wasn’t entirely complete, I was unsure how I should run the vacuum lines.  Last time I ran my vacuum lines, I’m pretty sure I guessed — Or, maybe I asked dad.  This time, I consulted google and learned a little bit more about vacuum lines.

First, there seems to be plenty of confusion about whether vacuum lines should run from the intake manifold or from the ports below the carb.  As I understand it, the vacuum from the intake manifold is a little more consistent at or near idle.  However, most stock applications will operate fine from the ports below the carb. Here’s some information about vacuum that I used.  I found some additional explanations, but I seem to have misplaced the links.

The high rise manifold I am using only has one vacuum outlet, so I chose to use that for my powerbrake hose (which I will obviously need to lengthen).  I used the port behind the carb to hook to the th350 governor on the back of the transmission.  I blocked the large port on the front of the carb.  Finally, I hooked the small port on the carb to the distributor.  I figured these were low risk decisions, as all of these are easy to change if I need to make a change.

I didn’t invest a ton of time doing research on this, so if anyone has any other suggestions or info, please add a comment.

Continue reading →

One issue I’ve put off for a while is the close clearance between the front driveline and the transmission.  Because the TH-350 is so much wider than the standard tranny, the driveline runs very close to the transmission pan. Unfortunately, some of the pics didn’t turn out great, but here’s a few of them.

To improve the clearance, I used a torch to heat up the pan and dent it.  That went well, until I tried to put the pan back onto the tranny.  It turns that a casted piece was now bumping against the pan slightly, keeping the pan from going on correctly.

To fix that problem, I wrapped the transmission in plastic and cut a little hole so the cast piece was sticking out.  The plastic would keep any grinding pieces out of the tranny.  Then I grabbed my grinder and ground down the part.

This worked surprisingly well (meaning nothing went horribly wrong).  The piece ground easily.  The pan fit nicely.  My clearance improved. So,  I sanded and painted the pan and put it back together.  I’ll add an additional pic showing the clearance once I improve the light so it shows up better.

Continue reading →

Today I enjoyed a productive day hunting around the local junkyard.  I collected a powerbrake setup, wire plugs, vacuum tubes, manifold connections for the vacuum tubes, gas tank rubber piping, the plastic harness that envelopes the wiring, various knobs, and much more.

One of the things I never liked about my first jeep was the rather messy way I wired it, including the way I ran the wire around the grille.  This time, I have been able to spend more time thinking about how to organize the wiring.  You can see the results below. (yeah, that’s the kitchen table — it was getting chilly outside)

As part of the trip to the junkyard, I wanted to find a headlight switch, and some accompanying switches, that I liked.  Most of the ones I found were cheap plastic or rubber.  After a good deal of searching, I found some real metal knobs on two mid 70s dodge vehicles (truck and a van).

Puzzling through the headlight switch wiring was a bit confusing, because I didn’t have a wiring schematic to follow.  At first I tried hooking up the wires in a few different ways to a battery and a voltage tester, but some of the wires still weren’t working.  After a good deal of searching, I finally found a schematic that was close enough.   I discovered from the schematic that I need to bring in two power sources, one for the headlight power and one for the parking lights/dome light/turn signal power.  Using the schematic,  I was finally able to label the wires for installation.

While searching for a wiring schematic, I came across a design for updating the lighting system using some relays.  As I understand it, for a variety of reasons, the amount of power that finally gets to the lights, especially under idle conditions, is lower than 12 volts, causing the lights to dim.  Using relays and the wiring schematic show should improve the situation.  Here’s a discussion about it.

I decided yesterday to redo my headers to give the muffler a better approach angle. After searching online about how to properly do this, I came up empty.  So, I made it up as I went.

The first step required removing the headers’ collectors, because I would have to bend each pipe individually to get the right angles.  Since I had previously sawed off the headers’ triangular connection piece, I was also going to have to reattach it.

Here’s the passenger side header with the collector sawed off.  Note how the pipes angle right into the front roll cage mount.  You can also see the bar I inserted into each pipe to help bend the heated pipe downwards.

Now, with the pipe inserted, I proceeded to heat up the lower pipe with Dad’s oxy/acet setup.  I tried my best to heat up each pipe at the bend and then bending the pipe downward carefully.  Below you can see two of the three pipes bent.

Continue reading →