My rear-view mirror gave up the ghost yesterday and fell to the passenger side floor, leaving only a coffee ring of rusty residue on the windshield to mark its passing. I am taking this opportunity to clean off the rust before gluing it back on. So far I’m about halfway done, as evidenced in the picture below.
Quick comparison shot of my Sun RC-85 8500 RPM tach before and after the restoration. As pretty as it looks I still haven’t fixed it–for some reason it’s been on the bottom of my list. I eventually want to get some other aftermarket gauges but these days I’ve been driving the car a lot more than working on it (other than replacing a broken regulator and some chewed up battery components).
After bending, twisting, whittling down, hammering and in one case breaking the pegs on the quarter panel letters, they are finally in place. I had to use a combination of barrel clips and flat nuts to mount the pegs, using the flat nuts where the pegs were long enough and the clips where they were not. The car looks a million times better with the letters where they belong, and although the driver’s side holes were not exactly straight, I am still extremely pleased with the outcome. The best thing about having these suckers in place, other than their obvious aesthetic value, is that people will now have to stop asking me what year my Fairlane is.
The dash cap is also in and looking fantastic, but I am going to hold off taking pictures until I get the new steering wheel in. I almost had that in today but it looks like I will need a steering wheel puller to get it off, although I may give brute force another try tomorrow.
The guys at Just Dashes also did a light detail of my instrument panel and surprised me with an amazing job of rust removal on my old Sun tachometer. Hopefully I took some pictures of how trashed it was before, I’ll try to get some comparison pictures up later.
Pictured above is the original switch that I yanked out from under the dash along with the mind-numbingly complicated wiring diagram that came with the new switch. The switch works like a champ and the top went up and down without a hitch. Unlike the original, the new switch is a toggle that snaps back to center when pressure isn’t applied, so there isn’t any danger of accidentally leaving it on and burning out the motor or draining the battery (as the top pump will work whether or not the engine is turned on). I bought the universal replacement for $15 from Hydro-E-Lectric and if you’re interested it can be found here.
The dash is done and I’ll have it in by Friday. No update on the door panels, but after doing some research around a few message boards I discovered that the average turnaround time on SMS door panel restorations is 1 year. Son of a bitch!
The front bench has been completely rebuilt and reupholstered. The foam padding, some springs, both the rosette and sierra vinyl and the piping were replaced. The center pattern insert was dyed and fits in perfectly with the new material.
The material was purchased from SMS Auto Fabrics and the work was done at Mike’s Auto Tops & Upholstery in Mission Viejo, CA.
Today I am going to pick up the last of the quarter panel letters from the metal shop where they were being re-chromed (along with some of the inner door panel trim), so this weekend I may be able to finally get the Galaxie 500 lettering installed.
Dropped the car off today to get the rosette pattern material replaced on the front bench seat. For the most part the interior vinyl is in great shape, but as you can see there are two gaping exceptions:
Last weekend the convertible top switch went out on me so I had to yank the original out and order a universal replacement, so we’ll see how that goes when it gets here this week. Other than that I am just waiting on the door panels to be finished and sent back and the new dash to be fabricated and the interior will be good to go.
The new front disc conversion kit is in as well and working beautifully. The Galaxie stops like a modern car now, smoothly and firmly with no trace of the former jerkiness or slight pull to the left. My only complaint is that the new booster and MC disrupt the otherwise stock appearance of the engine bay, but the night and day difference in braking more than makes up for it. The brake pedal does sit a little higher than it did before, but after a few stoplights it wasn’t an issue. I bought the kit at ABS Power Brake Inc. in Orange. You can find their site here.
