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Much progress today. I was running back and forth between the garage and the back yard as I had a Tri-Tip on the smoker for dinner so I had to make sure it was tended to.

First I stripped the dash of any remaining do-dads that were still attached to it. Then I went over the back of it with a wire wheel on a die-grinder to remove all the rust. I paid extra attention around the cluster mounting points, cigar lighter opening, and headlight light switch opening. As all of these points ground through their dash openings.

With the rust all removed, I taped up all the openings from the front side and painted the back side of the dash with some light grey enamel. Then it went out into the yard to let the midday sun dry it.

Once it was all dry, my daughter helped me get it back into the car and lined back up. The top bolts along the windshield were put in first, but loose to support it.

Then I got the column support all bolted back into place. Then it was on to the wiring. The cigar lighter, ignition switch, fresh air fan switch, glove box lamp, and wiring to the passenger door switch are all in done now. Still need to get the under dash door light put back in, and then do all the cluster, headlight and other switch wiring.

I also managed to reuse the original female column connector by splicing the new wiring into it. So it maintains the original style connector under the column.

Hopefully a few more hours and all the wiring should be done and then I can test the entire system with the a small bench top 12v power supply I have and check everything before I hook it up to the battery. Still need to order a 6 volt step down to power the clock with. Does the clock run off a constant voltage source, or does it run off a switched voltage and it auto-winds internally?

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Clock is constant voltage and is wound internally. Basically a solenoid that as the clock winds down, contacts make and solenoid kicks the armature and spring several degrees breaking the contact and winding it again.

There are also several places that do quartz conversions if you were interested in something not authentic but much more reliable.

Howard,

Thanks for the info. So just so I get that you are saying, it basically winds up, and then disconnects for the constant source, and then when it winds down it reconnects and repeats the process?

I also found out that some time in my cars past that clock fuse blew, and someone just wrapped the fuse in tinfoil and jammed it back in there.

The solenoid armature sort of gets a quarter to third of a circle kick. As it nears the wound down end, there is a snap action contact that makes and as soon as armature moves a few degrees to wind, the contact opens again until the next cycle. The common problem is when the battery gets low or the lube dries, the solenoid does not have enough power and can't kick the armature enough to snap the contacts back open. That is usually when the fuse blows or the solenoid burns out. The contacts can also get pitted and stick causing the same.

Good to know. Luckily I have two spare dash clusters to harvest parts from if needed.

Is there a procedure for "lubing" the clock? Also the same question about the speedo.

The one thing about lubing is to use a clock oil and several places offer small tubes or bottles--enough for a lifetime. Cleaning is the thing there seems to be a lot of opinion on. If anyone has been in there first with something like WD-40 then it is a real mess by now. Google "clock cleaning solution" and several suggestions will come up.

For the speedo, I use light 3in1 type oil on the shaft bushing with the oil hole where the cable connects. If it has never been touched, then a dab on the gears and pinion shaft ends inside would probably be a good idea as well. You can probably get an idea if anything else was used inside such as maybe a light grease on the worm gears.

So dash is pretty much all buttoned up as far as the electrical goes. Only things in the car not hooked up are the clock, because I need a voltage reducer for it; the license plate lights, the backup lights (still need to drill the holes and mount them), and the front parking lights as the grille is not on car yet.

When I first connected the car to a power source, I put my multi-meter in series with the 12v power supply, and I noticed a very small 6.7 milli-amp load on multi-meter with everything turned off. It turned out to be something with the headlight switch position. As soon as I pulled it all the way out and back in, the load disappeared.

Once I verified that I had to more phantom load issues with everything turned off, I hooked up the car battery and went through all the checks.

I noticed that the light on the ignition switch is not coming on with the parking lights. So I will need to check on that. It could just be a loose bulb or something. Cigar lighter isn't working, checking the wire it's dead. So I need to check the fuse on it.

Only other gremlin is the rear passenger side taillight. It's being funky. I think there is a problem with the bulb or socket, insufficient ground, etc.

When I turn the parking lights on, the driver side taillight is brighter. If I press the brake light, the driver's side light gets brighter as expected from the 2nd filament coming on. But the passenger side then goes completely dark. (parking light turns off) All I can figure is that the filaments in the bulb on that side are sorted together or something. I don't think it's a wiring issue as the parking light is the same physical wire between the both tail lights. I will pull the taillight off tomorrow and give it check to see what the heck is going on.

I went through all the checks. With the light switch pulled to the first position the parking lights come on. The dash lights come on and the quadrant pointer glows green. The turning the switch adjusts the dash light brightness.

Pulling the switch all the way out and the headlights come on. Clicking the dimmer on the floor the brights come on, and the bright indicator lights up on the cluster.

Turning the ignition to the on position, the "Gen" and "Oil" light come on as expected as the engine is not running. The "Gen" light is wired inline into the alternator exciter wire. The start position works as expected where only the coil and starter get power, and everything else turns off to give the max amount of juice to the starter. As soon as the motor starts the oil light goes out, and when cold the GEN light goes out right away as the engine is spinning at fast idle and that is enough to kick the alternator into charge mode. With the engine warmed up, the GEN light stays on when first started, but a quick rev of the engine turns it off.

The engine shuts off immediately when the switch it ignition turned off. So no alternator feedback issues or sticking with the ignition switch.

The turn signals are working, but the passenger side is funky because of the taillight issue.

Power antenna is working. Goes up, and down with the switch. Is it supposed to go up when pushed in, and down when pulled out? Or is it supposed to be the opposite way? Easy to switch around the wires if needed.

Temp gauge is working, but appears to be reading colder than I had expected (1/3 mark) when the radiator top tank is hot to the touch. Does the resitance in the temp sender increase or decrease when hot? The sender is the original and was never replace or removed.

I cant tell if the fuel gauge is not reading, or the tank is just very low on gas. I will double check that tomorrow. Luckily I have two spare complete dash clusters if I need to swap anything out.

Also I am still missing the dome light and under-dash bulbs as I haven't found a modern 12v replacement bulb that will fit yet.

A few loose ends and small gremlins to fix, but generally I am extremely happy that everything is pretty much working as expected.

Video of me checking things while sitting in the car:

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Big progress Kev! It sure is rewarding to see the car begin to spring to life. I like your video, especially the power antenna. Neat feature!

You might first run a jumper wire to the bad rear stop/tail base to ground. Seems like a fairly classic bad ground deal, though I too have had a filament fail and lay over on the other filament.

I am excited to soon hear a drivers report on your maiden voyage!

Congrats for the nice job. Antenna is usually pull to raise push to lower.

One other thing to check on the lamps: are the bulbs and sockets same so the keys are indexing the same place and filament on both bulbs. Apparently there are modern bulbs with smaller or just different enough located pins so that with the old sockets there is enough slop in the keyways that bulb can be reversed or they don't quite index completely.