Elwood - 1968 Fury II 4 door sedan

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Ran great.

Things to do in the near term:

Fix rear view mirror - loosey goosey - fixed
Replace water pump - it’s growling
Reseat drivers side valve cover - small leak
Rear end is whining some - investigate
Install new instrument voltage regulator, dimmer, clock and am/fm radio
Throttle linkage adjustment - not right

Car drives really nice!

 

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Update - little by little:

Fix rear view mirror - loosey goosey - fixed
Replace water pump - it’s growling - replaced
Reseat drivers side valve cover - small leak - reseated. Dribble may be silicon grease. Will monitor
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Rear end is whining some - investigate
Install new instrument voltage regulator, dimmer, clock and am/fm radio
Throttle linkage adjustment - not right

I have taken the car to town a few times and it’s pinging a little. Add:

Adjust timing and cold start high idle/choke

Looking for an upholstery shop and have a couple of leads…

Some guy scraped the front of Mel, 95 Roadmaster last night at the SDSU game. Grrr. He’s filing with his insurance.

 

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Heater box out. Kit on the way. Instrument cluster out for clock and needle painting.
Dimmer switch in, flasher switch cleaned and operating.

Mice remnants tossed.

 

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I destroyed the glove box trying to extract it. Apparently these aren’t widely available, but I found one on eBay.

 

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Needles in instrument cluster painted…

 

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Cluster ready for plastic cover after it’s polished.

One of the brackets in the heater box is rusted so bad that I am going to have to weld in a piece of steel. More to come on that as I clean things up…

 

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Repaired the piece of the heater box that was rusted. Used some 18 ga steel that I picked up at the local Ace hardware store.

On to cleaning up the case and pieces.

It appears that I can’t get all of the moving parts out of the case.

Has anyone tried to completely strip the case?

 

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While I wait for the collective brain trust of this forum to comment on this post:

Dropped instrument cluster - speedometer issue

I had noticed that the last piece of the heater box that I removed had a weak spot in it, where the C clip goes, so I welded it up and ground a crude groove in the same place that was previously there.

Heater box seal kit is on its way.
I had to massage the blower motor with lubricants a bit to get it to spin, but I am not going to spend 250+ $ for another one.

 

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Getting there…

The heater core looks fantastic.

 

[HWYCRZR]

Repaired the piece of the heater box that was rusted. Used some 18 ga steel that I picked up at the local Ace hardware store.

On to cleaning up the case and pieces.

It appears that I can’t get all of the moving parts out of the case.

Has anyone tried to completely strip the case?


View attachment 695586View attachment 695587View attachment 695588View attachment 695589

What moving pieces wouldn’t come out? I am pretty sure I took every piece out on my 68 Polara. There were a couple of brackets that I sprayed with fast etch and then clear coated. While you have your core out I would flush and pressure test to 19psi just to make sure. It would suck to take it back out in a couple years due to a leak.

 

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What moving pieces wouldn’t come out? I am pretty sure I took every piece out on my 68 Polara. There were a couple of brackets that I sprayed with fast etch and then clear coated. While you have your core out I would flush and pressure test to 19psi just to make sure. It would suck to take it back out in a couple years due to a leak.

I’m going to pressure test it before installing.

The piece that I had trouble with was this one (the one on the bottom). It was held in with a c clip that was under a metal bracket for the control cable.

 

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Made up an adapter to connect the radiator pressure tester to the heater core and ran a test for an hour.
I had a slow leak in the adapter, lubricated that seal with silicon grease, which dramatically reduced the leak.
I took pictures of the gauge every 15 minutes and am confident that the core is good. Not one bubble from it.
I believe that the pressure drops are due to the pressure tester adapter leaking.
I saw this same situation when I checked it by connecting both sides of the Tee to each other.

Setup:

Initial reading:

After an hour:

 

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Getting there. I think that I can finish the assembly tomorrow.

Hose!!!

 

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I completed the assembly of Elwood’s heater box. I busted off a small piece of the housing that I am JB Welding back in.

Lots of 3M #90 spray adhesive on my fingers and I had to cut the centers out of the door seals that has an indentation in the middle of it (both sides).

I’m looking forward to installing it and getting the dash back together.

I also located the solid state voltage regulator that I bought a few years ago and will install that once the repaired instrument cluster (I dropped it and dislodged the clock spring for the speedometer) returns.

 

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Got a few things done today.

Verified operation of the AM/FM radio and ordered a front speaker. I used an old speaker from Shamu and the power antenna that will go into Elwood.



Installed dimmer rheostat in the dash (from @Devinism ).

Repaired the driver’s side defrost spreader. The inboard side of the spreader was broken, so I made a piece of 18 gauge steel, pop riveted it in and painted it.

 

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And I finally contorted myself enough to get the defroster spreader installed. For completeness, I also have included a picture of the dash illumination rheostat that I removed.

@Devinism , is this part that I removed worth rebuilding?

 

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In taking the heater control levers out, I broke one of the studs (1 of the 3 and one of them is metal). I thought about what to do and the answer wasn’t going to be spend ~200 dollars for one.

I decided to drill a 7/64” hole through the middle of the broken piece and then install a 3-48 threaded pan head screw with 4-40 flat washers (they were a little bigger and did the job, the #3 washer is too small) with a nut on the end.
The #4 washer is just big enough to retain the end of the cable.

Now that is ready for installation.

Solved!

 

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Here it is attached. I have a bit of adjustment to make for the temperature blend cable, but it works.

 

[Devinism]

@Devinism , is this part that I removed worth rebuilding?

Very nice work!

And yes, worth rebuilding. Or as a core!