5/15/10

Few more items to share. First up is the filler neck. This is a somewhat difficult item to restore properly. While Ford did service these, there is a minor difference in the service part and the original, which has to do with the "wrinkle" on the tube. The originals have a much more obvious metal wrinkle that does not appear on the service replacements. To get this part right requires restoring an original piece. It's not that easy though as finding one without dings/dents is kind of tough. Once a nice piece is found, they can be hot tin dipped. After receiving back, they will look almost like chrome. To get the correct finish requires being creative, but as can be seen in the pics, it can be done. Here's a couple comparisons of how they come back from the plating shop and the results of my finishing process:





Installed in the car with an original hose and original clamps:



Nice to see the gas cap installed on the car, it is obviously an NOS FoMoCo piece.



Last item to share today is the restoration of the speedometer cluster. This was done with all Ford parts. An original lens was polished, it came out great! The 2 chrome plastic bezels were re-chromed and an NOS instrument cluster bezel was used to finish it out. Original instruments were mint condition, just needed a light touch-up of the needles. Unfortunately, I found the black on the NOS cluster bezel to be too shiny, so I had to tape up and re-paint to get the right look. It was a lot of taping! The back of the cluster is dated December, 1964.

5/3/10

Well, has been several months since the last update. Have gotten a lot of things accomplished, which mainly have to do with getting other folks to restore/rebuild parts. The upper and lower control arms fall into this category. I've put a tremendous amount of effort into restoring an original set of these. In an earlier blog entry, I noted some of the differences in the lower control arms, compared to 2 versions of Ford replacements. What I found was that I would have to restore an original set to get the most authentic results. Thankfully, I had nice original arms that could be restored.

For the uppers, some work had to be done as there were chisel marks/gouges around the ball joint rivet holes. Evidently, this was how someone removed the ball joints a long time ago. The marks had to be welded and ground to get them back looking new. NOS upper ball joints were used with proper C4OA boots. The arms have had the ball joints put on with the correct style rivets. Should have them back soon.

On the lowers, it was a little more challenging as there really are no replacement ball joints that are correct. Furthermore, there are no accurate reproductions or even service replacements of the rubber boots. Thankfully, I was able to salvage 2 pretty nice original boots. I had the original rivets drilled out and ended up re-plating the boot retainers and detailed the arms without the ball joints attached. There are quite a few parts to a lower control arm! The arms were blasted and tumbled, they came out perfect. I'll have NOS end bushings pressed in to complete the parts restoration. Then all that will be left is doing the black dip on the uppers and lowers. The lower control arms should be back soon also. Here's some pics:









Another item I've been working on is restoring original parking brake cables and the retaining plates. I'll share some pics of the cables later, but here are the outer brackets. They were natural on this car and a little pitted. With a sanding disc and some time in the tumbler, was able to get them looking like new again. These are NOT painted. What you see in the pics is bare steel that I have treated with a rust preventative. Original fasteners were re-plated also. The plastic retainer straps were also replicated and installed. This was mainly a San Jose assembly plant detail.