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.
Having my armrests re-chromed proved to be a little tricky as they are plastic and not metal. As the electroplating/chroming process is more difficult on plastic, it is more expensive and harder to find someone willing to take on the work. I finally found a place that would do the job at a reasonable price and pictures of the results are below:
Before:
After:
I still need to give the vinyl pads a good cleaning and polish up the ashtrays, but I won’t be putting these back onto the car until I get the door panels back anyway.
I decided to swap out my battery tray, clamp down, and cables today, as they were getting pretty ragged looking. In what is sure to be the least exciting post I have made so far, here are a few before and afters:
I have no idea why the clamp was previously on upside down. I will make it a point to only work on the car sober in the future.
Next weekend I will give the engine bay a bit of detailing if I get the time, as it is still a little dusty in there. Other than that, I found a stock looking voltage regulator to replace my busted one, so my alternator light is no longer burning its angry red eye at me while I drive.
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).
Here are some older pictures of the vinyl dash pad:
And here it is after sending it out to Just Dashes:
Feels great to finally have the dash looking good again. Tomorrow I will try to locate a steering wheel puller and get the steering wheel swapped. After that I will replace the rear quarter trim cardboard inserts and then try to detail the engine bay if I have time.
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!
I’m wrapping up the last of the big items I want to have fixed with the Galaxie, beginning with the dash. Just Dashes in Van Nuys now has the majority of my dash in their possession where they will do their magic on it. If you’re interested in the process they use you can read about it here. In about 2-3 weeks it should be ready for re-installation. In the meantime I am looking at a trio of mean spikes where my dash cap used to be. Not that it would matter much anyhow in the event of a collision, as the lack of a shoulder belt and airbag would probably end me regardless of the presence of spikes. I’ll upload pictures of my bare dash later. Here are a pair of pictures demonstrating how bad my dash was before they stripped it out:
The paint shop contacted me today–I should have the Galaxie back in another 2 days. Here’s one more photo of her way back when the restoration began:
The old 289 core is crated and ready for pick up and the Galaxie’s engine bay is a gaping maw littered with dirt and flakes of debris. Prep work is being done on the remanufactured 302 and it should be dropped in and ready to go by the end of the week. It’s going to be painted a darker blue.
I also got a hold of a mint NOS moulding kit for the quarter panel, door and fender sections that is going to help the car look fantastic when it’s finished. I’ll post pictures later on–it even came wrapped up in the original cardboard FoMoCo tube with instructions and clips. I’ve been looking for the mouldings forever and I was incredibly lucky to find a kit that has been sitting unopened for over 40 years.
The re-manufactured 302 long block arrived at the mechanic this week and the parts I’ve been scouring the internet for are beginning to trickle into my mailbox. The shop manual was given to me by my dad, the rusted chrome letters arrived from a junker back east™ that is being parted out by its owner.
