great job on the Merc....the last thing to be un-dork-i-fyed is that Godawful center console....It looks hideous...just my $.02 ....just wish I could see the car in person.
That reproduction of the Hirohata striping is unbelievable! And I'm sure you're already investigating it, but here's a step towards getting rid of that console. Vintage Air sells a kit to connect stock heater controls to their units. I'm looking into it myself for my Chevy. http://www.rodandcustommagazine.com/techarticles/0912rc_air_conditioning_by_vintage_air/viewall.html
Absolutely the console will go. I did look at the pieces Vintage Air has to convert the stock heater controls, but after calling them I learned they do not work with my older system. What I plan to do is simply mount my current Vintage Air sliding temp and mode switches behind the dash in the stock locations. I have already picked up a rotary blower switch from Vintage Air as well to mount in the stock blower switch location. The trick is going to be that I would also like to have the stock fresh air vents and controls. I have a few ideas on how to make it all work, but have not started messing with it yet.
Made another big jump this last weekend and was finally able to refit the hood from when it had blown open on the previous owner. Both the back of the hood and the sides of the fenders were damaged in the incident as well as the hinges. A while back I came across a rear hood brace that has been chromed at some point in the past. I also picked up a straight set of hinges and sent them to ChromePlaterJosh to have them dipped in the shiny stuff. I had a free evening over the weekend, so dad came over and we made a stab at getting this mess sorted out. First thing we did was remove the hood and the bent hinges. I had intended to lay another hood I have laying around here in the hole to get a feel for where and how much the fenders were bent, but I didn't take into account the rounded corners, so that idea was out the window. Instead we put the regular hood back on and could tell both fenders had pulled up quite a bit at the location of the front hinges....no big surprise there, really I guess. At the suggestion of a collision repair friend of mine, I hammered on the fender flanges with a 2x4 and a bfh. It took a fair amount of hammering....and not just taps....I pretty much wailed on it, but they came down a 1/2" or more on each side. Next step was to swap out the rear hood brace. The old one had been "clearanced" for the really nice portholes in the hood. Why not trim down the insert used for the porthole, I don't know, but the big chew mark in the brace really didn't help it when the time came for the hood to blow open, thus the brace was bent out of shape a fair amount. My hope was a new brace would let us get the hood pretty close back to the proper dimensions. Replaced the hinges with the newly chromed ones: With not too much finagling, the hood closed down and was actually in the hole pretty close. We fiddled with the adjustment a bit more for a smidge more improvement, but for the most part, I think we are about as close as we are going to get right now without getting more serious about bodywork. The whole front cap still needs to come off at some point and there is still a pretty good pull in on the driver's side of the hood along the edge. But, for 3 hours of work and to have the thing 75-80% there, I'm pretty pleased. It's really nice to sit in it and not be looking down the underside of the hood through the windshield. As if I wasn't pleased enough already, the UPS man showed up today with a little present back from Dennis at Quality Restorations: The wheel looks fabulous and I can't wait to get it on. Hopefully I'll have a chance to mess with it this weekend...
My hood is bent worse that yours is, I think John, thanks in part, I'm sure to the hacked brace. I also went to the driver's side lip of the hood with the hammer and a 1/4 chunk of plate. That made noticeable paint damage on the edge of the hood, but my paint is way far away from nice, so I'm not real concerned. Your's may not need that kind of work at all. Like I mentioned on your thread, the paint on the fender did not show any damage at all, other than the inside on the flange where I had the 2x4, so you may get away with some work there and not have to really touch up any paint. Fingers crossed for you anyways....
My hood has a custom welded-in brace that runs from side to side, so I doubt mine is really bent at all. But the mounting points for the front set of hings are both tweaked up, the passenger the paint cracked and the driver's side might be bent a little on the exterior fender but we'll see the paint is not cracked. Do you have a safety catch on your car?
looking good! a merc hood is about as difficult to fit as a 40 ford hood, patience and perseverance are virtues in this department. Oh! and good job undorkifying.
I have reached the end of this part of the journey. The final part was the accessory wheel and getting it to work correctly through the new column. When I got it all put together in May, I did not paint the column as I planned to fit the merc wheel when I got it back from the recaster and see if I needed to modify the column any to close any gaps or compensate for any differences in circumference. Turns out, the wheel fit pretty decent and I didn't think I could really improve on the transition between the column and the wheel. So out came the column and I painted it the same color as the dash. While it was out, I also swapped in the brake pedal arm I had sent out to be chromed but hadn't come back before final assembly for the Stray Kat in May. One of the things I really wanted to work out was to have the Merc horn ring work through the GM style horn contact set up in the column as well as the turn signal canceling. I've lost more than a few hours of sleep figuring out how to make that all work and in the end it turned out easier than I thought it would be. The first thing I did was cut a keyway into the splined steering shaft to match the keyway in the tapered hub of the wheel. The wheel would tighten down onto the splines fine, but I felt it would be safer to have the key since there was no real mechanical lock between the two. The next part of the puzzle was to make the GM style signal canceler to work with with the Merc wheel. Easy as pie. All I did was drill the hole in the hub at 11 o'clock like the early 70's GM wheels had. You will note I drilled it above the weld on the horn ring retainer clip. At first glance, that looks like a handy place to drill the hole...resist the urge or I am sure you will be sorry. I also clearanced the inner edge of the horn ring center to be clear of the hole and have enough clear room to depress the horn ring without hitting the shaft of the canceler. Now while this may make some of you cry that I "desecrated" a Merc accessory wheel, you will note that this hole in no way renders it useless back on a stock Merc column and in no way shows when mounted. The stock Merc canceling ring was removed from the wheel hub when it was recast, and I left it off since I don't need it in this set up, but I assure you it goes back on fine and dandy and works as originally designed. Here is where the project gets really fun. As I tried to work this all out in my head, I figured I needed a bushing of some sort that I could stick the horn contact ring from the Merc column onto. Doing that, I could then connect to the horn contact wire that comes up the shaft of the GM style canceler/horn contact thingy. I started to lay it all out in my head and was going to have a friend of mine who owns a machine shop make me one out of nylon or some such material after I figured out all the measurements. Turns out, while that would work, it would have been the hard way. Would you believe I was able to concoct this thing out of two 75¢ PVC pipe fittings? My description may get hard to follow here, but hopefully the pics will make it all clear. I took a few of the hard parts with me to Home Depot and found that a 1 inch to 1.5 inch PVC adapter had a hub on the end of it that was pretty close to the right diameter to clamp the Merc horn contact ring onto. So, starting with this, I determined how tall it had to be to sit on top of the GM canceler and get the Merc horn contact ring to sit in the right spot behind the horn ring. Made my mark and cut it off. I already knew that the diameter of this piece would not clear the shaft of the GM canceler, so I cut a slot in it to clear the shaft as well as filed a little notch in the edge for the locating crimp on the contact ring. The shaft of the canceler also interfered with the contact ring, but it turned out it fit perfectly just inside the contact ring's clamp. Lucky me! Ideally, I wanted this adapter piece to have an inside diameter that fit pretty close to the spring that goes behind the steering wheel and it turned out that a 1 inch to 3/4 inch PVC adapter fit right inside my first piece and left me with the right size inner diameter. The hub of the wheel goes down the middle of all this, so the inside piece had to be shorter than the outside one. I measured how far down the steering shaft the hub would end up, made my mark on the second piece, cut 'er off and drop 'er in the hole. I also had to clearance it a bit for the canceler shaft, but I didn't cut all the way through so I would still have a solid inner circumference that would allow me to clamp the horn contact ring tight. Here is how it all looks together on the GM canceler and the spring in the middle. The last part was connecting the wire from the canceler to the Merc horn contact. Ordinarily, the wire comes all the way up the shaft (thus through the hub of the steering wheel) and plugs in to the GM horn button. Certainly, I didn't want this wire all the way up to the front side of the wheel, so I drilled a hole in the side of the shaft above the spring inside. I also made a notch in the bottom of the spring retainer (the wire used to come up through the retainer) so the spring would still be compressed down tight, but not pinch the wire now coming out the side. Crimp a connector on the end of the wire, screw it to the Merc horn contact just like it was done in the stock Merc column and whalah (I'm sure there is actually a fancy spelling for that word), instant GM to Merc horn adapter. Here's the whole pie in the column just before install of the wheel. I will mention here I had intended to glue the PVC adapter to the GM canceler to keep it from floating around and possibly riding up and inadvertently contacting the horn ring, thus setting off the horns. It worked out that when I put the whole thing together, it clamped down on the canceler shaft and I don't think it's going anywhere. And here we are as if nothing ever happened....except that we are a long way from Kansas, Toto, when you compare this pic to dash, column and wheel I started with. And to think, this whole crazy thing all started because I wasn't happy with the brake set up. The Flaming River column came with billet levers as the only choice. I contacted them and asked what year GM levers would fit so I could swap on some chrome ones. The tech told me the signal switch was late 60's/early 70's but as far as he knew, no GM shift lever would fit. Turns out, you can carve on the inner end of an early 70's GM truck lever and it will work. So, now I have chrome levers instead of the billet ones in the earlier pics and laminated knobs to match the dash. You can also just make out the chrome brake pedal arm inspired by the one I saw in the Rod and Custom Dream Truck last year. Sorry, the bucket seats and center console are still here....they will be here for a while until I rebuild and reupholster the stock Merc bench I found. LOL
Hey man, are you coming up to branson this year with your un-dork-ifyed merc? Hope to see it again!!! Jim
Hey Jim! Yes, I plan on being there. I just finished putting this crazy thing back together again this afternoon so I would have it ready to head up there in two weeks. I guess he decided that Sleds in September in August would stand a better chance of no rain again. LOL See you in two weeks!
Are you sure your day job isn't a custom car builder and you just mess around as an orthodontist? Really nice job on making that Merc. right.
LOL! I wanted to take shop classes in high school but my dad told me if I wanted to be an orthodontist, I needed to take the science classes so I would be ready for college and be an orthodontist who plays with cars on the side. Great and true advice, but in the end, orthodontics is really just mechanics on a smaller scale. I always tell folks, I am just a skilled laborer....but it happens to work out I had to go to school for a really long time to learn my skill.
Wow that car is coming out NICE dude! It always amazes me when people pull off all the good original "artdeco" stuff from their cars to replace it with late model garbage. Insane.
What he said. I never got the philosophy that says "let's make this '48 Ford as much like an '85 Corvette as we can. Digital gauges are eternally stylish!" Voilà. Your way works too, though - has a certain Native American flavor to it. Keep up the good work!
Looking real good. Everything you did was done with style and a certain pinache ( see I can miss spell fancy words also! Lol) As has been said what gives an old car style and character are the trim and add ons of yesteryear and what the car came with new. If I wanted digital or billit I would drive a corvette or a camery! Good work and glad you are happy with it.
This is proof that God loves Kustoms, You had to be saying a lot of prayers while working on the steering column. Thanks for sharing the tech, looks too Kool, you have to be pleased with the results. Happy Trails, Mick
LOL Yeah, sorry about that. I could not think of a way to describe what I did without going around in circles. Hopefully the pictures helped. I searched and searched to see if anyone had made this sort of thing work before with no luck. So, once I got it all worked out, I wanted to post it in case someone else ever tried to do it.
Not sure if He likes customs or not, but I'm sure laying awake at night trying to work that deal all out probably cut into what He would have preferred been prayer time instead. No, I won't be able to go....we got some school stuff with the oldest this weekend. Hope you have a great time!!
The Jalopy Journal
