Rewiring plans Since I got the gauges back, I've pulled a few wires and switches out. The original wiring looks like a rats nest, even though it's about as simple a wiring harness that you'll ever find on a vehicle. As well, some of the wires were frayed a little, or bare with electritions tape wrapped around them. I've also got plans for a radio, electric fan, electric wipers and possibly even fuel injecting the flathead. So I've been thinking, before I install the gauges I want to redo the wiring and install a proper fuse panel. I've looked at American Auto Wire Centech Enos EZ Wiring Painless Wiring and Ron Francis Wiring.


American Auto Wire carries the Highway 22 Modular Panel System and Highway 15 Modular Panel System for 399 us$ and 299 us$ respectively. They also carry a few "update" kits for specific models and years of Chev vehicles, which don't apply to me. The Highway series looks promising and looks like they come with all wiring and components for a full wiring job.


Centech carries the K20-B and K40-B custom wiring harnesses, 325.00 and 335.00 us$ respectively. These use the PDP-1B fuse panel, a very nice looking and compact panel wich you can buy seperately for 124.95$.


I took one look at the EZ wiring web site and passed on these guys. First, if you are going to do e-commerce or have a store-front on the street you need a professional looking venue to do business or you're not going to instill confidence in me. I hate to judge a book by its cover but initial impressions still mean a lot. Second, the pictures of their products (The EZ 21, EZ 12, EZ Mini 20, and EZ Mini 12) were small and low quality. This was actually a beef I had with most vendors. I don't like to close my eyes and visualize what things will look like in my truck, I want to see high quality descent size images of the products from various angles because no matter what the product is, I need to know exactly what it will look like in my vehicle, and I need to get a good idea of it's construction quality. The images I did see of these products instilled even less confidence in me. I didn't like the construction and I didn't like how the fuse panels were wired.


Painless Wiring offers a lot of products, and has a descent web catalog online. I looked at the 12 and 18 circuit universal wiring harnesses (which I couldn't get more detail on because of broken links!) You see Painless Wiring adds all over car mags, and I've heard of lots of people using them, but personally I did not like the look of the fuse panel. I think the products will work well though, but the panels looked crappy in my opinion, and I couldn't find a descent image to see if they were constructed will.


After viewing all these sites, and searching through forums for comments on them, I was a little unimpressed and slightly discouraged. Aside from the American Auto Wire products I thought the rest were not worth the cash (average 300 to 400 $) outlay. As I was doing a google search for comments on Painless Wiring, I found someones comments regarding Painless vs Ron Francis Wiring. At this point I hadn't heard of Ron Francis, so I went to the web site. The site is a little ugly, but the products looked good, the descriptions were fairly informative and there was some pretty good reference material as well. I have to admit, I wasn't sure of some of the differences between products so I did get a little confused. I fired of a quick email at about 6pm Friday night with some questions. To my surprise I had a reply within the hour. A few emails back and forth and he had a product recommended for me. Although the images of products weren't the best, they were probably better than any of the other competitors, so I could get a general idea of appearance and construction. I think these will look good installed in my vehicle. I have to re-iterate though, I just don't understand how vendors think they can showcase their products with tiny and low quality images, it's absolutely staggering! Regardless I've ordered the XP-67 wiring harness (399 us$) from Ron Francis and am eagerly awaiting it's arrival. A little pricey I think, but still inline with pretty much all the other vendor offerings. They also offer some less expensive options, and you can by panels without wiring if you want to do that yourself. I got the panel and harness because it makes my life easier this way.

It would be very interesting to order products from all vendors (if I hand an endless supply of cash) and do a nice comparison, but that's just not in the cards. Once I've got the goods in hand, I'm hoping to do a nice write up on installation.  ¶ 2:53 PM 0 comments

  Gauges arrived! I picked up the newly retrofitted gauges at the post office today. They look fantastic! All I need to do to finish it off is to rechrome the ring. I received all parts including Gauge cluster, oil sender, temperature sender, and fuel sender. The old ammeter was swapped out for a voltmeter. Final cost was about 560 us$. A little pricy I suppose, but the canadian exchange rate is pretty good right now which is fortunate and it's a lot cheaper than some other outfits wanted to charge. This thing should be trouble free for a long time.

	All parts: Gauge cluster, oil sender, temperature sender, and fuel sender. The temperature gauge is designed to work with only one temperature sender. Originally there were two senders in series. One would read the actual temperature and the other was basically a switch that would cause the temp gauge spike hot once a certain temperature was reached. This is because it is possible to have two different temperatures on either side of the engine if water flow is restricted somehow. I'm going to see if I can use two of these new senders, and build some kind of circuit that sends which ever reads hottest to the gauge.
	Front view of old gauges cluster.
	Front view of new gauge cluster. You can see it looks almost identical to the original. Any difference in appearance is covered by the cluster cover.
	Back view of old gauge cluster.
	Back view of new gauge cluster.

  ¶ 10:31 PM 0 comments

  Researching body shops This week I visited a few body shops.  I know nothing about body work, other than what I've seen from a few educational videos.   A few years ago my girlfriends cousin told me about Paintucation which produce several informative dvds. They're a little dated looking (I recall seeing a mullet here and there) and the production value leaves a little to be desired but the information is excellent. I purchased 3 dvds: Body Shop Basics, Paint Your Own Car, and Metal Prep & Rust Repair. Even if I'm not read to tackle this kind of work, at least I've got some idea of what goes on in a body shop.

So far I've visited two places: Boyd Autobody Customs & Classics, and Macaw Autobody. My preference is to go with what I'd call an independant outfit such as someone who does does good work in their home shop, as apposed to a chain like Boyds. I figure chances are better that some guy who does it out of his house is going to enjoy the work and therefore put more effort into the job than some shop who just wants to pump out cars.

I spent about 20 minutes with a fellow at Boyds. He painted a fairly bleak picture of the work that needed to be done. Now I know that this is going to be no small job, but he basically said he couldn't even begin to give me a time estimate or ball-park figure unless it was sandblasted so he could see everything. He pointed to the running boards and rear fenders which have spots rusted through and said that they were indicators that the truck could be rotten all the way through. I did ask if they'd done any vehicles like this and he said no, which would explain why he had no idea that the rusted peices are very common throughout this style of vehicle, and don't necessarily indicate that it would be rotten throughout. In my opinion, he basically didn't really know what to look for. I never really had the intent of having Boyds do any work, but I like to hear what others have to say, which is why I paid them a visit, a visit that confirmed my first opinion. The real kicker for me was that he mentioned they can't do any metal fabrication which I thought was rather strange. They call themselves "Customs & Classics", I would have thought they could do some fabrication! They really aren't any different than any other boyds or basic ICBC repair shop, except they sell hot rod t-shirts.

My next visit to Macaw's was much more up lifting. This guy lives in a rural area out of town. He does his work in a shop out back and rents a paint booth when he needs it. He took some quick looks where it counts and said the trucks solid, there's lots of metal to work with, and don't be suprised if it costs you $20k. I plan on doing whatever I can to mitigate high costs. I'll do any prep I can and
take care of assembly, dissasembly and supplying any required parts. As well I'll be doing it in stages, so it's not like I'll be driving the truck in, and driving it away when it's done which is what would cost 20k. He said when I am ready he'll give me the name of a good sand blaster and we'll go from there. He also showed me his 1960 ford project truck so at least I know he's worked with these vehicles before. I'm definitely keeping his business card, although to be thorough, I still want to check out a few others.  ¶ 6:56 PM 0 comments

  Gauges should be arriving soon! About a month and a half ago I sent out my gauges for a retrofit. Finally got a call saying the retrofit was done, and pending a successful credit card payment they'd be shipping them out the next day. Last summer I converted my truck to 12 volt system, which is why I'm retrofitting the gauges.  12 volts is a refreshing change from the old 6 volt system, and even though I like to keep as much stock as possible, I recommend this to anyone. No more hard starts. Used to be that if the engine was too hot or too cold a start was difficult. No more. I also switched out the point system in favor of a pertronix electronic component, which fits right into the stock distributor.

I phoned up 3 or 4 different places trying to find an outfit that could retrofit my gauges. Essentially I wanted the look to be retained, but have the instrumentation replaced with new 12 volt electronics. I could have put a resistor in front of each gauge to step down from 12 volt to 6 volt, but I think thats a crappy solution.

After chatting up a few places, I decided to go with Redline Gauge Works.  After telling them what I wanted to do, they figured it would be about 600 $us.  This seemed fairly reasonable, considering various others quoted in the thousands.  Some of the other outfits I looked into were APT Instruments and Classic Instruments.  APT refused to give a quote at all.  They told me to send them the gauges and they'd get back to me with an estimate.  If I didn't like it they'd ship me the gauges back.  Of course I'd have to pay shipping both ways if I thought their quote was too high.  You'd think that because all they do is fix and retrofit gauges, they'd be able to give even a rough estimate over the phone.  Classic Instruments responded much better, and it's obvious from their product line that they are a quality establishment.  The only draw back was that they were a little high in the quote.  A little more internet surfing and I found Redline, which where more than happy to give a rough estimate and answer any questions I had.  They actually came in about 30$ under their estimate of 600$.  I'm sure I'll be happy with the results when they get delivered.  ¶ 7:29 PM 0 comments

  Welcome to my blog While most my age were settling for rusted out Toyota Tercels or Honda Civics from the early 80's, I would not have anything to do with these 'new' vehicles. Don't get me wrong, those are great cars and will probably run forever, but I was simply too stubborn to compromise on the vehicle that I wanted. Fortunately the area I grew up in featured a fair number of 50's pickups in peoples back yards or in farmers fields. I found a 1951 mercury half ton which although I knew nothing about restoration, I figured it was a solid truck. It was all original with no work done to it.  I got lucky, the flathead ran well and athough fairly solid, the body required TLC in some areas. Even luckier, this was a deluxe cab and everything was there. The truck I purchased happened to be an estate sale. The owner intended to restore it but never had the chance. That was about 10 years ago, (July 4th 1996 to be exact), and I was 19. For the next 6 or so years, with tires so bald you could see metal, I proudly drove my truck to and from work, with the occasional 6-8hr trip in between. 10 years after my initial purchase it has proven to still be reliable and I have done almost nothing to the truck other than a few minor things. I am now thinking about restoration. A truck is always a usefull vehicle to have, and I still fail to see any reason to purchase a new one. It is my intent to keep this truck as a daily driver, in very close to stock form. This blog is intended to be the diary of my restoration project. I still know nothing about restos, I live in a house with a single car garage, and I have little to no mechanical experience. The cards aren't exactly in my favour. My only saving grace is that I can usually figure things out as I blunder and stumble my way through any given project.  ¶ 6:56 PM 0 comments