Happy Easter and time for an update...
I've driven the car around the block (using secondary roads) enough to say the trans feels pretty good. Even better, the engine feels very strong. Loads of torque and "light on its feet", like the higher compression big-blocks should feel. Will even chirp the tires a bit from a stop (swear I wasn't trying). Kicks down hard when you ask it to, but otherwise smooth. Of course, my driving has been limited by two factors.
1) Not even remotely legal, lol... Just went through the insurance and registration hassle last Wednesday so that one is remedied.
2) When I bought the car, the brake lights, turn signals, were all inop. Only the headlights and dim tail lights were functional. About 1/2 the dash lights worked.
So I probed for voltage at the trunk wiring disconnects and found they did have voltage. Thus began the process of removing the lights, finding corrosion in the sockets and repairing them. Or in the case of the outer single-filament bulbs, simply fining them beyond hope and replacing them with part-store sockets. I folded the metal tabs over within the die cast housing and made them stronger/weather tight using some good ol' JB weld. I used as much of the old wiring as I could, soldering the wire to the new bulb base then shrink tubing the connection.
Also redid the silver within the housings. Usually I'd use a bright silver spray, but this time tried using metal-foil tape... Thought that might last longer and be even more reflective. Before:
After:
So this left me with a functional brake lights, but no turn signals. No voltage at the wires either. These cars (at least the ones with tilt, but probably all of them before the new column design in '67) used a signal switch at the base, near where the column goes through the firewall. Since I didn't see any evidence of wire-hackery, and because the rebuild process is
described on the IML website, I simply took mine apart and cleaned hard grease, polished the brass contacts, and re-lubed with dielectric grease. I debated using this because silicone is an insulator, but then I also thought the contact pressure/movement would be enough to negate this property. All I can tell you is that after putting it back together I had turn signals again. But wait, no dancing bananas yet...
When I'd signal left, the left front signals and left dash indicator flashed... in time with the RIGHT rear signal. There is no way to confuse the wiring at the rear of the car because the wiring simply isn't long enough. So I back probed the turn signal switch and swapped the wiring pin-outs. Thankfully I tried it before remounting it on the column, because taking it in/out is a royal PITA.
As I recall, it was the green and brown wires I needed to swap (the center block of two). Of course, this makes you wonder if this was a 50-year old factory defect (how could that go unnoticed?) or did somebody do this as a gag to drive a mechanic nuts? One X factor is the obvious former presence of a trailer hitch. Perhaps this was a work-around to correct bad trailer wiring?
Having fixed the lights allowed me to move on to some cosmetic issues... Before re-installing, I swapped this crummy, dented piece of aluminum trim with a better one from my trip to Arizona...
Also note the dent in the rear bumper, (lower right corner) which damaged the stainless trim that surrounds the tail light. I decided to try my hand pounding out dents and polishing stainless. After the first round of hammering and smoothing with a Dremel tool:
round two: (keep in mind most of this gets hidden by housing itself.)
The final polish brought it back up to a mirror-like shine.
