John S's Journal

Continued on with the interior refresh.while the seats, floor coverings, and radio console were out, I took the opportunity to coat the 4 areas of the floor where the seat tracks mount. Very light surface rust so after buzzing that off, I coated it with some Zero Rust and while that was drying, I gathered up the stuff I needed to wire up my little Bluetooth amplifier. The old AM radio was partially gutted so that I could wire the power through the radio on/off dial. Soldered in a fuse and the power lead from the amp to the back of the dial as well as a light and tied it to a green wire that was unused behind the console. Velcro’d the amp in behind the console where it can be reached and routed the wires down along the tunnel. Tested it with a couple of 6x9 speakers and it pairs easily with my phone and sounds pretty good. Don’t know how much I’ll be listening to music because I enjoy the sound of the Bell exhaust but the hands free phone capability will be nice to have.

While the console was out, I added another indicator light for the OD and also added another switch for a future driving light project. Changed the indicator bulbs to LED and also changed the flashers to CECEF32RL LED flashers.

Got the rubber shift lever boot installed and taped down to align the holes. I gave up on my attempt to incorporate a small light in the top of the gear lever so that was replaced with the late model OD switch even though I’m using the wiper stalk to actuate the OD solenoid. The tunnel carpet was next and even though there were 4 holes in the carpet for the chrome shift boot retainer, the holes weren’t all the way through the thick insulating pad so it was a bit of a struggle to get the 4 bolts located properly. I’ve been using the 3M 90 spray adhesive on the carpet install and it’s been working well but I didn’t want to spray the whole tunnel so I’ve been judicious about applying it. I don’t foresee having to remove it but only spraying it where it needs to be to look good seems like a good thing just in case. I ran the speaker wires down and back along the floor where it meets the tunnel and left plenty of wire because I’m not sure about speaker type and placement yet. All that remains to be done at this point is to locate the seat belt and seat track mounting holes and burn some nice neat holes through the carpet and mount the seats. Hopefully I’ll get that finished up this weekend. While the seats are out and I can stretch out, I’ll see if I can swap out some dash bulbs to LED while I have better access. Also need to attach the heater cable that I didn’t do after the heater box rebuild.

Last but not least, I drained the gearbox oil the other day and left a drain pan underneath so hopefully it’s done dripping and I can seal up the annoying leak. I spent too much time cleaning the gearbox and surrounding area to have that get coated again. Probably do the same with the solenoid cover too while I’m at it.