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Another suggestion when storing for long-term is to stuff something in the tail pipe to keep critters from crawling in and plugging the exhaust.

Custom Bowden cable fabricators seem to be slim pickings now. The AC supply shop I bought several from has apparently gone out of business and one who did airplane cables had rather high prices. Haven't found a retailer who sells complete Bowden cable material in bulk but Amazon has several inexpensive and fairly long universal choke or hood control cables that would work. Some of the cables have stranded inner wire and others are solid.

You might be able to get a couple of heater cables out of one of them after discarding the knob and mount. You can pull the inner wire out to cut the housing to length or cut only the outer housing to expose the correct length of inner wire. Just be careful not to nick the inner wire if you leave it in the housing. A Dremel with a thin abrasive cut off wheel works very well on the hardened wires.

The solid inner wire type can be bent in a crude circle to fit over the pins but it is hard to do without the proper equipment and harder to make the circle look pretty. Not sure if the wire is heated and done soft or if the wrapping machine does it cold. The stranded wire needs some kind of finished end fitting. An option on both types would be to remove the plastic insulation from an electrical ring type terminal with the ring sized to snugly fit over the pins on the various working components and tightly crimp the terminal on the inner wires.

My heater control cables were rusty and some of them broke when I took them off and tried to lube them to free them up.
I bought raw cable from Aircraft Spruce and Supply. Not too expensive, they were very easy to deal with and it came pretty quickly.

Aircraft Spruce and Supply, Bowden Cable

The cable listed above turns out to be a little larger in diameter than the original, but I found it worked fine. I cut it myself and made my own ends. You just have to coil it around. It's not particularly difficult but you do need a pretty good pair of vise-grips and patience. I think I used a nail or something as a mandrel. Make sure to lube it with cable lube or silicon spray before making the second end, or otherwise it will be a lot harder to lube it (though you can do that by bending the housing and squirting the lube between the coils).

See below for a picture, which shows an old cable and a new cable. I agree it's hard to make the new cable coil as easily as the old cable, or quite as pretty, but one can make them work.

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Thanks for the information on Bowden cables. I will need to pull mine off and measure them so I can order new ones. Haven't had any sort of time recently so I haven't had time to figure out how to pull off the heater controls and trim.

We had one last warm day a week or so ago, so I topped off the battery charge and took some of the kids out for a drive. I topped off the fuel tank and we drove about 20 miles give the car some exercise. I still need to add some stabilizer and run it through the fuel system. Just need some time and a not rainy or snowy day.

Can't wait to get some more time to work on the car.

-Kevin

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It's a pain, but you can remove the control by getting a screw driver/nut driver (I can't remember which) behind the dash and removing the fasterer(s) between each lever control pair set. Then they can be pull out from behind. It's a pain, but can be done. Much easier if the radio isnt in the way.

Obviously, you'll have to use an Allen wrench to remove the set screws from the knobs first.

IIRC it seems impossible with the radio installed, but it's actually not too hard with the radio out. Make sure EVERYTHING works before you put the radio back in, move everything back and forth a lot. Also, since there are 4 cables that go in there, be very careful to mark which cable attaches where, as it is not obvious or intuitive and easy to get confused.

Also make sure to order the cable extra long because you will want some extra length for leverage for coiling it around, and of course the first time you might not do it so well so you will want some length perhaps to practice on.

Sage advice, thank you both. So my next question would be how to take the radio out, as well as the speaker bezel? I might as well take everything out when I do this. I'd rather have room to work, plus I want to clean up the bezel as much as I can. Getting the radio working is a low priority for me right now, but I don't mind taking a look at it when it's out. It'll give me a good winter project.

-Kevin

Help me solve this riddle. Why would gas come out of the filler pipe of its own accord? I haven't been able to drive the car for several weeks. Last night and today I noticed that the garage smelled slightly of gas, then this afternoon it was very strong. No drips at all ever since I fixed my previous leaks. But this afternoon I noticed a puddle directly underneath the filler neck. Sure enough my half soda can was soaked on the inside, and the gas cap was all wet.

How in the world did this happen? The car didn't move, nothing has changed on it since I drove it last two weeks ago? The only thing I can think of is the weather warmed up today. I filled the tank up quite a bit when I last drove it. It is easily halfway up the filler neck.

-Kevin

At least on my 1953, the radio and the speaker comes out all at once.

First you unplug the antenna and the power wire, on my car there is an in-line fuse, just take the fuse holder apart to disconnect the radio, and the antenna cable just plugs into the radio.

After that, you take the knobs off by unscrewing the setscrews on each (Allen wrench), then there are bigger screw collars, then you unscrew the collars for the knobs, using a large hex wrench or crescent wrench,

Now there is basically one screw that holds a bracket to the radio at the bottom, and one screw holding that bracket to the dash. Take both of those off (Phillips head). Now the radio can be kinda eased/angled out from below, between the dash and the firewall. It's a 5-minute operation after you've done it once. Putting it back in is a little harder because you are working against gravity, but basically the reverse.