Got some pics from JB at the upholstery shop yesterday. The Radio Flyer wagon is now complete. He was initially going to do tan upholstery, but when he laid the red against the wagon he said the wild color won out. Better match to the build. So this little wagon was painted in Leonardtown MD, lettered and striped in Hummelstown PA, and now upholstered in Lexington SC. It really gets around..
JB built it for his niece and nephew. They live in SC amongst all the red clay. Yes, we laugh about the situation too.
Love all the details along the way that take this car to a level most of us can only dream of. Thank you for taking the time to keep the thread updated along the way - I know I, and I suspect many others have learned a LOT from following along and studying your techniques and solutions. Can’t wait to see the completed car.
Been playing catchup for a while since my cross-country venture for the new shop truck, time for some long overdue updates. Finishing up on our tailgate, the last stainless pieces of the puzzle came from McMillan Rod and Custom in WI. Pretty good source for polished stainless trim pieces... We had emailed them dimensions for existing holes in the tailgate, and the welded studs were spot on. All our stainless parts added for a test fit/pre-drill/pre-screw of all the hardware to insure they'd go in straight during final assembly. Here's my contribution to the upholstery effort on the car.... And our tailgate installed.... And our update would not be complete without the requisite back up and punt moment. As we were closing the tailgate there was a slight binding as the tailgate was all but closed. Hey, you know my luck by now. Seems our trial fit in bare metal showed no issues but now we had multiple layers of paint that didn't want to play nice. The hinge notches in the bottom of the tailgate skin were digging into the inside of the hinges.. At this point a hinge is an easier repair than a completed tailgate, so the hinges were milled down .080 on that face and the countersunk holes deepened that much as well.. Then about three rounds of epoxy, block, repeat to eliminate the casting flaws, and on to the organic green kandy basecoat once more... And then groundhog day, install it once more, with much better results this time.
Well, it's about high time we got back on the console... We had designed the "hoop" to go around each leg of the horseshoe shifter, and to hold bulb seal rather than a strip brush, for a cleaner look. When we ordered the shifter it came with the new clear bezel for gear indication, but since we didn't have the factory console and it's matching parts, it was a bit much for us to incorporate into our fabricated console. In an attempt at simpler is better, one of the hoops was made with a wider flange for adding gear indicator nomenclature. Well, we have been waiting awhile for our turn in line at the machine shop, and that day finally arrived Next was the layout of the locations... The ends of the slots were cut using a 5/8 diameter RotaCut, joined together between with a Milwaukee M18 14 ga shear, and trimmed afterwards using Wurth snips. https://youtube.com/shorts/vA83vJVWnSY?si=vIKUzlgmDHCVFgM7 Then the 4-way power window switch was added to the rear, using the same process. And lastly, our AC vents added. I didn't have any RotoCuts in the 2-1/2 diameter, so we opted for using a hole saw. They can be sketchy when cutting through sheet metal, with the pilot drill wanting to pull the hole sideways. So we sacrificed an extra holesaw arbor to make a bolt-in guide, and changed the pilot bit out for a piece of 1/4 round stock. Holes deburred and vents installed.. Final version https://youtube.com/shorts/P94H8M4Uti0?si=JgYffFOc_l96Whkg https://youtube.com/shorts/6lWksNqKvXI?si=JMsE_F7LUX7CDUhV
Why did you put the indicator on the passenger side and not the drivers side where it can be seen easier?
initially that’s where we had it going but that would put the left escutcheon closer to the edge than the right, making it appear off center. The way it is done now you don’t notice that, and given the vantage point from the drivers seat it’s just as legible from either position.
More progress on the wagon... We've been working on the wiring, starting with the gauge cluster. A loop was added between the gauge's mounting screws to provide a bit of strain relief for its harness. Some of the bundles coming off the fusebox were excessively long, so we made use of fresh connector contacts to shorten the length so we won't have a rat's nest to hide under the dash. We did find the wires to the dimmer switch were too short by a couple inches, so the wires were re-routed too the side of the fuse box for a more direct approach. The addition of the FI Tech and HyFire 6A ignition components gave us some challenges for power feed wires, so some circuits were changed to "keyed" in order to provide the additional battery circuits required. The original text is easily removed with a few scrapes of a utility blade. My lettering skills are nothing to write home about, and given the size, I used a double stack of lens for these old eyes in the form of reading glasses and a cheater lens inside the welding helmet. First time I've used a welding helmet to paint something. We needed a mounting location for the Ignition module, and I still can't bring myself to drill holes in this firewall and hang such a wart on it. Since we had shaved the radio location to clean up the dash, this provided a bit of real estate directly behind the dash. Our stainless trim insert we made for the dash provided us some hardware for a mounting plate, but the thread length was a bit short. Some 8-32 rivnuts were selected to match the dash hardware, and 10-32 hex nuts were drilled to accept these (press fit). The rivnuts were trimmed to length, pressed in the hex nuts, and fusion welded using the TIG around the joint. The plate is .09 thick 6061, and press nuts were used on the back side for bolting the Hyfire to the plate. Installed....
Collecting more parts for the shop truck... These are reproduction cast shorty headers by Kugel Komponents, based off the OEM Ford 406 headers. They were media blasted and have been dropped off for a Cerakote finish. Still looking for some C6AE-R cylinder heads, rockers, and an intake for the 410 block. We also got the underdash AC bezel back from Chrome plating, still waiting on the round vents Still plugging along with the wiring on the 55. Fuse box is installed, still have some fine tuning (shortening) on some of the wire bundles.. but someone installed a steering wheel in the way. And since our Snap On puller doesn't fit the Billet Specialties hole pattern, it's time to make a new one.. Strike two, we didn't have a 1/2-20 tap to fabricate the new part, so we opted for a 1/2-20 hex nut. A shoulder was machined to center it up in the clearance hole, and welded onto our bar stock All removed, ready for some wiring... Shortening up another bundle and crimping on new Pak-Con pins We went to install the reproduction ignition switch, which came with a grooved retaining nut. We didn't have the needed "socket", and the one found online had fingers that were too short, for a guaranteed slip and scratch of the chrome finish. So yeah, let's raid the scrap pile of some 1-1/4" tubing.. https://youtube.com/shorts/6BCdxgtIQEM?si=tK3lPnJ6-O-g4KVx https://youtube.com/shorts/mQLstGXZnTU?si=tBlj5an-ORz-DULd Works like a charm...
Some wagon updates!!! Still working on the wiring, and to this stage we've done our best to eliminate all the butt-splice pigtails that come with the American Autowire kit. On the front end, the pigtail for the OEM parking light fixtures seemed to have an unobtainium style contact. Shout out to Sean Matthews at American Autowire. After explaining my OCD condition and the need for original pins to eliminate the butt splicing, a few messages and pictures back and forth, and he came up with the correct contact for us. Part numbers shown for those with similar OCD twitch. It takes a bit of force, but here's the slightly mis-shapen contact after strong arming its removal It's not often I do spring cleaning, call it hoarding if you will. But here's a case where I got rid of the old grill from the wagon because I got tired of tripping over it. Then at a local show and I see this brace behind the stainless grill of a 55, and it hit me... The old grille still had that part attached. So I reached out to a local buddy who just finished his 55 to see if he had one. Sure enough, he saved the day.. a bit of media blasting before it gets the SPI epoxy primer. The front end of the 55 also has separate harnesses for the headlight and parking lights, both visible when you open the hood. In order to clean this up a bit, we ran both into the headlight bucket and then down to the parking light fixture. This also helps in that we ran a separate ground to each light fixture to help eliminate those electrical gremlins, so it makes for a cleaner bridge between the two, out of sight under the fender. fun fun..... And then there's the shop truck.. I wanted to add some oil capacity to the new engine, and since the original drain plug dumps on top of the crossmember, let's move that enough to clear. and yes, that's remnants of Ford's better idea for a quiet timing chain on the oil sump. Missed getting a final shot, and we did add a baffle inside. Another piece to the puzzle, I always liked the Mopar pistol grip shifters. In today's world, I don't like the price.. I found an aftermarket version in Sweden (eBay) and it actually already has the 5 speed bezel on top. Like it was meant to be. Also note the proximity of the original shifter to the dash. The under dash AC will never fit with that in there, so the T5 will be a welcome addition for the missus in being able to add AC to the equation.. and 410 pickup day.. On the way to pick up a used bell housing from a local salvage yard, the old 352 left me stranded. Some roadside diagnostics, a changeout of the 59 year old OEM ignition coil, and we were back in business. It made an uneventful trip back and forth to Downingtown PA yesterday to pick up some 19 ga AKDQ sheet.
Glad to see you posting again! Get that 55 done! Can't wait to see it! The truck will be super nice when you're done, too!
The Jalopy Journal
