Getting ready to roll!

The owner of the 1967 Cougar came over today with all the suspension pieces that he has sand blasted and painted with POR15 and Chassis Black. The most exciting (OK, scariest - LOL!!) part was compressing the springs to mount them into their respective spring perches.

Also managed to get started on wiring up the gauges on the 40 Ford Rod. The owner purchased these cool "Analog-faced, full electronic" gauges, to be mounted in the original dash' gauge location:

These are gonna look great in the Rod. Five of them will go in a bezel that fits the main hole in the original gauge location. The tach will get mounted into the custom console I'll be building.

Don't forget to check out my website at 

www.E-tekRestorations.com !

What's in a name?

It's a universal kit called "It's a Snap" and came with the Rod I'm currently working on. Seems pretty good to me, though in doing some research on these kits it would seem "Painless" is the Cadillac of aftermarket harnesses and this one is a mid-line brand. Having said that, I'm not sure what else you'd need: it has a full fuse box, wires for each vehicle section (dash, interior, engine and front end and rear end). All the wires are labelled every foot with where they go. It even has a couple different clips that mate up to either a GM, Ford or Mopar steering column. This rod has a GM column, so I just had to use the male connector that came with and line up the same color wires to mate up with the functions coming from the column (lights, blinkers, horn, etc). It also has a horn relay and blinker (flasher) diodes.

The time consuming part is going to be cutting and connection the wire ends to all the things they control on the front end - from the engine management system harness, head lights, taillights, alternator and gauges - which will take the most work for sure. I was thinking I'll cut a foot or two of the correctly labelled wires, wire the gauges on the bench and then match the pigtails together in the car.

In this case I have to match up the engine management harness with the aftermarket one:

Today I also got the passenger side window powered up and even though still in the "Mock Up" stage I like to clean up what I can as I go, including polishing the window chrome before putting it all together:

With this project though, the aftermarket harness install is just one piece of the puzzle. As I said above, it al has to be married to the 5.0L EFI harness, a somewhat complicated Vintage Air set-up, as well as power windows, power locks and electric wipers! Here's what some of that looks like today:

Don't forget to check out my website at www.E-tekRestorations.com !

Working on the 40 Ford Rod aftermarket wiring harness and power window mechanisms this week.....

When manufacturers name something "Painless", or as in this case "It's a Snap", ya gotta wonder what the ulterior is!  Actually kidding because -  although wiring a car from scratch is quite the process, these kits sure do get you off to a good start. The fuse box has a couple tabs to drill and screw the unit to the firewall, then has looms of wire for each section of the vehicle: engine and front end (form blinkers to alternator), the dash, interior items and rear end (fuel pump to brake lights). Each wire is labelled every foot, making it easy to trace it's source from the fuse box to its terminal end.

Above: The fuse box is mounted under the dash and each loom is routed to it's specified location.

In order to get the front end wires located, a hole needs to be drilled in the firewall and all the wires need to passed through in order to connect them all to the factory engine and front-end harnesses.

The power window mechanisms that came with the car came without instructions. Thank God once again for the Internet. After struggling with them yesterday for a bit, I spent last night researching forums and YouTube video's and found a couple sources containing partial instructions and - along with a lot of trail and error - managed to cut the rails correctly, bolt them up in the right way and successfully test the drivers side:



Tomorrow it's more of the same: I'll get the passenger side window done and then begin the arduous task of splicing in the "It's a Snap" harness into the engine management harness.

Don't forget to check out my website at www.E-tekRestorations.com !

Power Window Mechanisms

Setting up the power window mechanisms in the 40 Ford:

Cut this plate to mount the body on:

....and the upper section is secured with a single bolt. Of course the entire bit has to be tested with the window in the runners and attached to the armature. Stay tuned!

To cut the support plate I used a new handheld electric metal shear from Princess Auto - like butta baby!!

Power Fist Metal Shear

Don't forget to check out my website at www.E-tekRestorations.com !

Wiring to wipers

Got a start on the wiring system today, which included some web-research to see how others have gone about running these systems and how they have interfaced them with the Ford EFI system.

On the seat are the systems for the lights, Vintage Air AC system and the shaved handle door opening kit:

The "modern" Ford Alternator has six (6!) wires feeding it! The generator on my flathead engine has 3. Is that progress? ;)

Unlike doing a restoration - where every part is original and was engineered to fit and work together, a rod takes the mock up of everything, sometimes several times, well before it gets painted. You can't be jacking around a newly painted vehicle trying to get pieces to fit for the first time!

Here the original vacuum controlled wipers are being mated to the aftermarket electric wiper motor:

There's also a of working ahead involved - such as getting the vent window and integral side window surrounds rebuilt in order to fit the power windows.

The Cougar rear end was re-installed yesterday - here's how it looks painted with Por15's Chassis Black, with a primer-orange pumpkin:

Don't forget to check out my website at www.E-tekRestorations.com !

Roll up the windows and turn on the AC!

Finally got back to working on the 40 Ford Rod!

Power window regulators need to be set up before being wired in:

Then I tried several ways of mounting the Vintage Air tubes - it's like wrangling slinkies!

The very first part I started working on finally got done when I lucked out and bought the right length belts the first try!

The trickiest part was getting the right pivot and sweep for the tensioner wheel

This weekend all the suspension parts for the 1967 Cougar will be ready so we'll get it all installed so we can get it to the paint shop. A few months over there and it'll be fun-time!

Don't forget to check out my website at 

www.E-tekRestorations.com !

Thanksgiving - I'm THANKFUL!

At Thanksgiving we're encouraged to think about things we are Thankful for. Me? I'm Thankful for Mrs. E-tek and my family of course, but then are the things that make me, well, me: including my shop, my cars, several good jobs (when lots of people hate the one they have), being able to work on cars at this level - and of course, my Hot Tub....I'm  a simple man.

Today being holiday Monday - and having got quite a bit done on the '40 Ford Rod -  I did some maintenance of my own, including giving the "Ol Man" (our 46 Mercury Truck) a full ignition parts renewal and tune up.

First I cut the new wires to match the old ones, plus 2" to make up for 60 years of shrinkage!

The new blue coil is still 6V, but should add a lot more "spark" to the flathead.











Check out the start-up video - easy start, runs nice!!



After that it was time to put the Old Man back to work....Mrs E-tek and I raked leaves while Colton  dragged them around back and threw them into the truck - Good work Son!!

The owner of the '67 Cougar came by to get the last couple suspension pieces so he can paint them all and then put it all together. He'll bring the parts pre-assembled and we'll bolt 'em up next week. The Cougar will then be a roller again and has a date with the paint shop (Bridgecity Collision) November 1st.

Here it is today:

Don't forget to check out my website at www.E-tekRestorations.com !

The bit's and pieces take time

I often start these by saying  "Lots done in the shop today...", but sometimes, I work all day and it seems very little gets done! Such is the case with custom work - sometimes you spend more time scratching your head than getting something finished and sometimes getting it finished means redoing something 3 times!!

Such was the case today. At least I managed to get past the brake pedal and e-brake set up and mock up the trunk hatch mechanism.

Last up for the e-brake was re-sizing of the mid-cable.

After cutting the original end off, I cut the wire to size, then made a new end from the shank of a 3/8" bolt and drilled a 3/16" hole through it to insert the wire cable.

 A good weld bead on top secured the cable to the end piece - permanently.

To secure the brake pedal to the shaft and secure it against it rotating on the shaft, I decided that just having a flat spot for the set screw was not going to be sufficient to handle the torque of the pedal on the shaft. After asking for some input on my favourite site, GarageJournal,com, I decided to drill the shaft part way so that the set screw would seat INTO the shaft.  This is definitely better - and probably enough - but I think Istill  may go one step further and put a bolt right through both the pedal and shaft...

At the back end, I finished up the battery cable placement by drilling though the trunk floor, inserting a "full-cover" grommet and running the wire through.

I'll be leaving the ends until the battery gets placed....

Next up back here was the trunk latch. The owner found a latch with cable and had made a bracket for it, so all I had to do was to "just"  place it correctly!

Here's my first stab at it. I first set it up so I could see where it "should" be set....

Then I cosed the lid and peaked through the side to see if it was anywhere close to meeting up with the trunk lids sheet metal.

Then I looked at it from the inside:

Once I figure approximately where it should be, I slipped it into it's spot and used some spacers to hold it in place

To give me some wiggle room, I slotted the mounting holes on the bracket:

My die grinder got a workout on this project...

Finally, I mounted the lower catch piece...and bolted in the latch. 

I drilled new holes directly below the bolts that mount the latch to the bracket, 

so I could get at them to adjust and service the latch.

 

Here is the trunk lid closed - without the tie-down strap it came in with!

Coming around the side, the gas filler cover needed mounting - but more importantly, needed to be contoured and tweaked.

Just before shutting it down for the night, I wanted to get some POR15 on a couple things. When I tried to open the can it was like trying to open a cement tomb!

 After prying off the top, I found it was like cement of top. So I cut a hole through the side and poured ut what was still liquid:

Some went on the rusting inner mount of the gas door....

....and some went on the undersides of the battery box, inside the open frame side and where the lip of the new metal will go on the 240Z:

Don't forget to check out my website at www.E-tekRestorations.com !