Hot Rods The Belly Button Bucket Build Thread

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It's nice to see pencil & paper used . So CAD is like texting instead of actually talking to someone

 

What I meant was, my way of "restoring" gauges is far from optimal, but it gets the job done.

 

Ok, somewhat non-productive weekend in car land as my brother is getting married and I put in an offer on a house this morning .... very stressful and lots of dollar signs flying around! I figured maybe I should unload some of my parts hoard, so what that means for this thread is I documented my way to pull apart and clean up Stewart Warner gauges. Here's what I'm starting with for this post:



The tach is a 5,000 RPM curved glass, not sure on the date, but I'm guessing 1955-56 or so. It's in decent shape, but the drive input was froze up, the bezel was pretty tarnished, the glass had/has a small scratch, and the case had a broken stud, as seen below:



The first thing I do is set down a towel on a clean work surface. Next, I grab some electrical tape and tape two passes around the case just behind where the bezel is rolled over (this keeps the case from getting gouged in the barbarian stages):



This is where things become barbaric. I take a small screwdriver (1/8" flat) and use it to get between the rolled edge of the bezel and the case.



Press firmly down on the gauge with your non-dominant hand, and use your dominant hand to hold the screwdriver like you're going to stab someone in a downward motion. Don't actually stab someone as this generally leads to some form of prison sentence. Press FIRMLY down on the screwdriver to engage the bezel, then twist the screwdriver around 15* - 30*. The objective is to unroll the bezel without tearing it, so you want to do this in small increments, overlapping your twist points by about 50% blade width.



I start at the notch, which is at the bottom of most gauges, and work my way to the mounting stud on each side. In other words, if we call the notch 6 o'clock, I start there and slowly work my way to slightly past the mounting stud at 3 o'clock, return to the notch at 6 o'clock, and work the opposite direction to slightly past the stud at 9 o'clock. Most of the time I have to move up in screwdriver size from a 1/8" tip to 1/4" and then 3/8" to keep the blade engagement positive against the lip of the bezel. You want the rolled bezel to go from rolled over to standing up, slightly more than 180* around the bezel.

Next, you want to grab the bezel in one hand and the case in the other hand. Twist and pull each hand in opposite directions while keeping a firm grasp on each part, like you see the childhood actors do in an Oreo commercial when they twist an Oreo cookie apart. You want to be firm but gentle if that makes sense. Once you get part of the bezel off the lip of the case, you can work your way around the perimeter gently prying/pulling with your fingers until the bezel is removed:



I left out a photo, but the bezel assembly is composed of the following:

• outer chrome bezel
• rubber lip gasket that lives in the outer chrome bezel
• glass
• inner steel or brass bezel

You'll want to clean all of these while you have them apart, and usually I start with the chrome bezel. In this case, I couldn't bring back the shine, so I swapped it out for one from another gauge that was damaged in shipping (glass broken and gauge face all beat to $#!T, but the bezel was still nice). You can also buy reproduction bezels for the 3 3/8" and 2 1/16" size gauges - I'll put in a link when I relocate it.

The rubber lip gasket was torn, so it was replaced using the donor gauge also.

The glass was washed with soap and warm water. Be careful as the edges of these are extremely sharp! I noted it had a small scratch - I don't have spare curved glass parts lying around, so I had to live with this, but the rest cleaned up very nicely.

The inner steel bezel was actually pitted and rusty because the rubber lip gasket was not doing it's job, so I replaced it using the donor gauge also. In the past I have painted these to make them uniform if necessary.



Once you're done there, you can move on to the case and innards. Put the case face down so you can remove the two screws on the back side. As far as I know, these only go back on one way - at least all the ones I've had apart - but take note what's top and bottom of the innards in relationship to the case.



Now that you have the innards out, take a moment to see how things work and look for anything that appears out of place.



For this gauge, the input drive was frozen up. I decided to try giving it some lube to free it up. Not shown, but next, I chucked up a small stub of speedometer cable quare drive in a hand drill and inserted it into the gauge. These take counter-clockwise rotation to move the needle clockwise, so spin the drill in reverse. I noted at max drill speed set in low was right at 1,000 RPM. I checked the two other mechanical tachs I have, and they were spinning around 950 RPM, so I made a note of that.



The next thing you're gonna want to do is clean the screen printed face of the gauge. You can either work around the needle or remove it, but be aware the needle is very delicate. If you're gonna remove the needle, take note of where it is pointing - this is especially important on an electric gauge as they don't always return to zero! To remove the needle, I hold the gauge innards with one hand, grab the needle with my thumb/index finger of the opposite hand, and simultaneously pull and twist counter-clockwise.

To clean the face, I gently scrub with a soft cloth, soap and water. If it's a Greenline or Twin Blue with the spun aluminum center, toothpaste works pretty well to brighten up the aluminum. Do not scrub too hard or use something aggressive as the screen printing (especially on the newer gauges) can be very thin.

If the needle is dull, you can repaint it. I have had good success just gently touching up needles with a paint pen. I have found the fluorescent color to be too bright of an orange, so just plain orange will do. For white, you're looking for a little bit of an off white color if they're old and plain old white if 1960's-ish and newer.

If this was a speedometer, you could at this time index the odometer wheel to match what your vehicle odometer has at this time.

Once you are satisfied, you can begin reassembly. The screws that hold the face to the innards are tiny, so take your time with these and don't scratch the face of the gauge.

When you put the needle back on, if at all possible, test the gauge at this time. For this tach, I put the needle back on the low end of the zero hash mark, so when I spun up the drill again, I was right at 950 RPM where the other two gauges I had were reading. I'm sure there are more sophisticated ways of calibration, but I don't have access to those so this worked in this scenario.



Here's the donor bezel, donor gasket, donor inner bezel, and original glass.




I bought an industrial tach awhile back at a swap meet that was essentially junk, but it had the Wings style needle, a 90* adapter, and a good case, so it was good for parts. I used that case as it still had both mounting studs, but you could braze on a stud at this time if no donor is available. Note the blue tinted plastic that go over the slotted windows - I cleaned these with soap and water and re-installed. DO NOT FORGET THESE.



Place the innards assembly into the housing and hold them in place while inverting the case/innards assembly as one. Re-install the screws that hold the innards to the case, making sure your innards are indexed properly in reference to the case.



Next, is more barbarian savagery. You'll want to make a sandwich out of the 4 bezel pieces. Outer chrome bezel mates to gasket, which lives in the inner lip of the bezel. Glass goes next, and steel bezel tops it off. The steel bezel has a paper type gasket that goes towards the glass, and you'll want to gently get the steel bezel under the chrome lip on the one side without chipping the edges of the glass. Go slow and check your work, looking for pinch points. This is what it should look like when ready to be rolled back on:



Now you'll want to reverse engineer your separated Oreo cookie. Take the case/innards assembly and wedge it under the chrome lip, then push the case lip down so it's inside the unrolled chrome lip all the way around. Twist the chrome bezel so that the rolled part is at the top of the gauge and the part that needs rolled back on is at the bottom. This is so that if you have any defects on re-rolling, they will not be noticed when someone looks down into your car at the finished product.

Take a 3/8" screwdriver to the part of the chrome bezel where the rolled section meets the unrolled section. Come at it with a slight angle and press down firmly/twist at the same time to roll the bezel back on. This is much like the removal in that you want to go slow in small steps, doing a little at a time and being careful not to let it slip. Go back over your work a couple times to get the inside of the rolled lip as smooth as possible. The 3 3/8" gauges are harder to do than the little 2 1/16" ones, but it generally can look like this:



Notice how only half the bezel has markings? That's why you only unroll half the bezel and why you put the good, untouched portion at the top. Now, you can remove the perimeter tape to find you haven't marred the case of the gauge. Good job!



Finished product:



I also did a 2 1/16" Big Block logo flat glass (1957 only) electric water temp, using a new bezel as that one didn't clean up well (Before photo at the top of this post next to the tach.)



Anyway, that's how I do it. I'll come back and edit this later on when I perfect the capillary tube replacement on mechanical water temp gauges as I have a few of those that need some love, but this will do for now.

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Looking forward to that, I have a few that need a good wash.

Good luck on the house!

 

Tim, congrats to your brother getting hitched and good luck to you on the new house!

 

Gauges look GREAT looking forward to seeing how you did it.

 

Wow - I'm all eyes... .
Good luck on the house - & hopefully an airport-sized garage...
Marcus...

 

Good news! I got the Stewart Warner post edited with details and more photos. I put in an offer on that house Friday morning and got a call before lunchtime saying it was accepted! Now I get to play my favorite game- the waiting game! The wedding was absolutely beautiful- after we got everything set up, I convinced my brother to pull his prized factory big block pickup down the lawn of the venue and on the brick patio for a photo op... came out pretty good! Happy 4th of July everyone!



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Nice job on the gauges. Try using a paint can opener instead of the small screwdriver. I find it works really well and has lot's of leverage on the bezel.

 

Nice gauge tech, thanks for sharing!

 

Haven't updated in awhile, but I got the house: @Kiwi Tinbender - I'm gonna be your neighbor! Run for the hills! I sign my life away Thursday and get keys Friday. Of course, the house is a total project, but I'm happy to get out of the apt/area I'm currently living in, plus it has a detached 2 car garage with power, including a couple 220V plugs out there! There's a load bearing wall going lengthwise down the garage splitting about 1/3 of it off for some odd reason, so that will need some of my "engineering", but in due time I will have much safer, better equipped working (and living) conditions.

To keep this somewhat on topic, I have rented the garage you see all these photos out of for... a long time... and in order to afford that, I have lived in a SLUM of an apt in a sketchy area of town - sketchy as in the following: there are used needles in our dirt parking lot... human feces on our sidewalks... a weekly occurrence of someone deciding their new home is on our front porch or sidewalk, a constant rotation of abandoned, stolen vehicles on our street with expired tags or no registration at all... and currently a "tribe" of 3 or 4 homeless "criddlers" living in a covered wagon they built onto an unregistered flatbed trailer on the street right outside my apt door - LOL.

In the past month, someone set fire to the trees adjacent to our building, with no one home and the dog trapped inside - luckily the fire dept and some local neighbors with fire extinguishers responded quickly to put it out... Someone slashed the tires of my brother's pickup that he just put on... I "got into it" with a homeless person digging through our garbage (nothing new, but usually they apologize and walk away...not this time), which would have turned violent very quickly if I did not have the strength to just turn around and walk away... Lastly, on my morning dog walk today, I ended up putting out ANOTHER fire (with neighbor assistance) that someone set in the brush outside a local music shop... I cannot wait to get the ____ outta there! Portland just does not seem to care about their city being turned into ruins, so Vancouver here I come! Ha!

Back to the garage... eventually my parts hoarding outgrew the garage where the T is, so I added a loft with a ladder and a winch mounted up in the rafters to get stuff up/down, including engine blocks, transmissions, rear axles, etc. Eventually, I outgrew that, too, so I rented another garage nearby (no power, but 1/2 price) to stash goodies... See where this is going? Well, I used some industrial pallet racks to add a second floor in there and had stuff stacked in piles really disorganized and terrible. I have just now come to the realization that I have a hoarding problem, and that maybe life would be a lot easier sometimes if I didn't have the car hobby, so I decide, "I have tons of time before I have to move into the new house; I'll just take stuff apart, grab what I want, and sell off the rest.... Plenty of time.... What I should do is consolidate everything into the cheaper garage, so if needed, I can ease my way into the new house/garage with a nice orderly flow...."
.....Right....
What really happened is a bomb of dust and metal shavings went off and there's car parts everywhere, stacked as deep and as tall as I dare. Somehow I managed to completely demo the loft in the first garage, and I'm mostly moved out of there.... In the process of selling off the 4 or 5 easiest things to grab and take a picture of (my feeble attempt at consolidation), I came a cross a Ford 9" 3rd member I wasn't gonna use, like ever. So I post it for sale on CL. And as it goes on CL, I get the "will you take 1/42 of asking" "will you deliver it to me 4 hours away for 1/2 price" yada yada yada. Well some guy says he wants it, but I gotta come way down on price and I gotta meet him halfway. I'm over it at this point and agree. Well for some reason I decide maybe I should clean it up before I load it up, so I'm looking around the mine field to see what's available. I spot a couple cans of brake cleaner and a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket 98% full of used motor oil..... "That will work," I think to myself. So I'm holding the heavy as ____ 3rd member over the open bucket of motor oil and hosing it down with the brake cleaner in my other hand, with most of the contents going into the bucket below. "Genius," I think to myself. "Genius." Well the guy calls for the millionth time and somehow/for some reason I answer the phone. And I'm talking to him and cleaning at the same time...somehow. Well, the 3rd member slips, falls into the bucket, and empties all but about 1/2 gallon of the used motor oil all over the contents of my garage, all over me, who has to go to work in a clean room in an hour with a half hour drive in front of me, and all over/inside my phone..... The phone may be advertised as waterproof, but I can assure you, not motor oil proof.... Anyway, I have smelled like motor oil for the past two weeks now.... But I got the house... So whatever.

 

great story Tim,congrats on the new place

 

Great story, sorry I am laughing at your misfortune. I think it's mostly because I can relate...


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Congratulations Tim, on the new place with a 2 car garage, maybe the walled off area will be your storage area for miscellaneous parts! This will make it so much easier for you to work on your T-bucket.

 

I had a nice 2-car garage to long time ago.
But it must have shrinked in the rain.
Congratulation to your new home.

 

I won't comment on the pumpkin story, but I'm glad you're moving some place safe. Congrats!

 

Um...Wow....Please try to take some deep breaths.....oh, and I presume you will be needing the help of the Kiwi to transfer all your Automotive booty to the new establishment? Let me know....

 

Tim

You are to nice. I hate to try to sell things on line. People start to dicker you down with their first words. Low ball you right away. If I ever do it again I think I'll say come over and if you don't like it then try to get the price down. Anyway I have done stuff like that.

My wife and I had a restored '55 Coupe De Ville for sale on CL. A local guy came over and looked at it and dickered me down to below what I really wanted. Called back a few days later and wanted me to drive it over. 99% I want it. I went over there and took him for a ride. Oh I didn't know the brakes pulled to one side. I didn't see that dent.
I said Get the fuck out of my car Oh he said I have the cash right here I really thought I wanted. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CAR. I drove off and vowed that is the last time I help any buyer.

Glad you have new digs.

Gary

 

Thanks guys. I'll be excited about it a few weeks from now after things stop being crazy - although I'm getting more and more excited each day. Paul, I'll give you a call when I have a plan that's better than my current one, which is buying 300' of high tensile wire to create a series circuit of early Ford and hot rod parts which I will tie to the bumper of the Jelly Bean as you call it and drag it across the bridge to the new place... What I'm getting at, is I don't want the neighbors to know they hate me until at least Christmas time lol. When I get the garage kinda sorta set up I'll post some pictures. Then hopefully progress on the Belly Button can continue.

 

Figured I'd update this to let you guys know I haven't completely given up. I got sidetracked on house stuff for a bit, and lately I have been organizing the garage, setting it up to work out of. It's going pretty good, but I definitely needed a boost. Well, I got a call from Cris saying my frame was ready to be picked up. Took awhile, and I knew it would. Absolutely worth the wait. Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and whatever else people say!












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Looks good Tim, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

Wow Tim that looks fantastic, I bet you'll be plenty motivated for a while.
So, paint or powder coat, what color.

 

NICE

 

Nice looking frame and Merry Christmas .

 

Thanks-- great article

 

Spiffy and strong!

 

After going back and forth many times, I've decided to powdercoat the frame black. I'm gonna try to get it done after the holidays, then final assemble the rolling chassis. I still have quite a bit of body work to do before paint, and I have the engine to build (probably go through the trans also). But, progress is being made, so I'm happy!

 

Thanks, Tim, for the update. I was wondering what happened to ya.

 

That sir is one "ballin" frame!