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Wow! Sounds like you are going full steam. Hope it goes without a hitch. I'm looking forward to a picture of your green beauty!

Did some more testing, seems the converter locks up pretty much spot on at 30mph. Once it's locked, you can floor it to get it to kick back down. I noticed when you let off the gas, it seems to engine brake, but if you let off the gas and put it in neutral, it can coast some. I thought i read somewhere that was by design. One time when i stopped it stalled instead of releasing the engine to idle, but the idle was really low and the car was super cold and hadn't warmed up. Didn't do it before or after that during about 25 miles around town over several test drives.

I would think mechanically i'm pretty much done, maybe slightly adjust so that the lockup occurs sooner. I wish i had paid attention to when it locked up before. Still waiting for the glass guy :-/

Sounds pretty good, lockup at 30 mph might be a bit high (depending on throttle) and perhaps a little more fine tuning is in order, but even if not it should be fine. And yes, compression braking when coasting is a feature of the Ultramatic lockup converter, it will kick out when you reach a low enough speed.

I am yet again plowing ahead on the project! I have now torn out the headliner and windlace. You could definetely tell that people smoked in this car for YEARS. Everywhere that the headliner ripped, dust billowed out. It smelled awful in the garage for a while.

Ugh! Goes to show, no matter how well you clean a car, you can really never get that smoke residue out.

Here are some pictures of where I'm at right now.

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A project for sure. What does the green?? wire running across the top of windshield go to?

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jrbuzz, Neat blog. It might be a good time to consider installing some 3-point seat belts in the front now that you have the interior stripped. Just a suggestion.

(o{I}o)

If you look at the picture, Howard, you can see that the green wire is part of the cluster of wires coming from the trunk area. But the thing that's kind of wierd is that the wire goes from the trunk, across the roof, over the windshield, and back halfway across the roof again to the center panel, down the inside of the panel, and to the switch that turns the back dome lamp on when you open the door. As for the seat belts, JW, when I bought the car I said that I would not be putting any extra safety features in the car. Some will, some won't, I won't. I just like the originality of the car without them. And I found that it would probably be a little uncomfortable with a lap belt over you on such comfy seats. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I like getting other ideas from other posters.

Thanks for the wire info. It is interesting they routed it that way. I see schematically it goes to a splice point on the left pillar and connects with the other switch(es). Has to be an extra maybe 10' of wire with that route vs just going from the switch to the light and and joining the switches together there. Copper must have been cheap then.