Since i've almost completed my mechanical goals on the car, i've shifted back to my interior, and I've been slowly collecting parts in the background as I find deals! I have a nice black dash out of a '75 Mercury20 gave me and while it was in good condition, it needed to be dyed black. Since the Duplicolor dyes didn't give me the satin finish I wanted (only gloss or flat), I decided to order some SEM Landau Black since I heard so many great things about it: they're all true!!! Covers much better and gives a perfect finish with the perfect satin!

First order of business was to wash with warm soapy water and scrub all the dirt and grease off. There still was a lot of patina left on the pieces:





Next I have a set of gauges I got off eBay a while back, think they're off a '73 and have the white faces. My car is far from perfect, but I had to put the green face gauges with the 6500 RPM tach in my '71 LT-1! The face plates were cheap, but the tach face is on back order so I went ahead and took apart the speedometer, cleaned it up, and installed the new gauge face:





Dash is coming together nicely, and I can't wait to have the proper interior in my car! I have the chrome vents waiting to go in as well.

 

You, too, are doing an outstanding job embarassing me...

 

Haha Slow and steady wins the race! We need to have a wrenching party at your house! What's needed on your car currently?

 

Gas! 😁. A wash. Vacuum out the leaves from last Fall. Reconnect the temp gauge wire, again. (Thank you for the reminder!). Oh, and those annoying, mind of their own, headlights!

 

It's always something!

 

With the long holiday weekend, I was able to get some work done to my girl. Still waiting on Holley parts and dash parts, but I still had an elephant in the room for my interior conversion that I had to address: the steering column. Last time I had the interior apart, I tried to fit the correct '71 dash pad and discovered that the '80 steering column was wider than the earlier steering column by 10mm! This doesn't allow the earlier dash pad to fit around the later steering column. Fortunately, a steering column popped up for free on this site a while back and I was able to get it. While it's old and crusty the bearings are tight, and it just needs a refresh. I'm going to change the: turn signal switch, ignition lock cylinder, ignition switch, turn signal lever, and repaint it black. I watch some videos and got the required pullers to dissect the column:



First step is to use a steering wheel puller to remove the hub:



Then you can work your way to the steering wheel lock plate, with this special tool:




The clip took some work to get out, but wasn't too bad



Then you can FINALLY remove the turn signal lever and turn signal switch!



I then started to get all the old paint off. I first wire wheeled it, then sanded it all down with 320 grit.

 

Nice work!

 

Thanks! You making some headway this weekend?

 

No not in the past week or so, but hopefully some time next week.
My wife and I tested positive with Covid.
We’ve both been vaccinated, boosted and wear our masks, so how we got it, who knows.
We are doing well, recovering and thankful we had no issues other than really bad colds, and no energy for the past week.
The worst part is that our dogs are driving us crazy because they haven’t gotten in their daily 2-3 mile hike, and as I’m sitting here bored to death, I see the lawn needs mowing, there’s fresh fruit on our trees, the garden shed isn’t finished and the Corvette is calling my name from out in the garage.
Stay safe and well!

 

Hope you and your wife are back on your feet and feeling better soon. And, those things that are waiting, are just going to have to wait a bit longer . Sometimes a break can be the best thing to get reorganized and focused again.

 

I hope y'all have a swift recovery and are back on your feet soon! I know that's torture staring out the window with the chores piling up!

Interesting that down here in Louisiana, my parents all recently had COVID, and they were boosted as well. And in Pittsburgh my sister and her husband just tested positive today. Definitely a wave going around it seems, but from everything I've heard it's been a mild variant fortunately. Seems like this virus is here to stay.

 

No doubt!
It was like having a super bad chest and head cold, with a slight fever, chills and body aches of the flu all at once.
And I can’t forget to mention the headache.
Today we got out, got some fresh air in the yard and I was able to box up a few oem parts and clear my workbench.
Tomorrow will be an even better day!

 

Glad it's getting better!! That sounds like you had a crappy run the past few days!

 

Looking forward to see the steps on your column rebuild

 

The turn signal switch slid out with ease after I removed the three screws that held it in, and finally I went to remove the ignition lock cylinder: this is where the fun began! This should be an easy task of just depressing the tab and popping it out, but my column had the hole covered with casting (read this is normal) and it took some work to remove it. I even used a drill to get it opened up - and boogered this thing up! I've fought with it for over an hour and cannot get this damn thing out! I can't feel the tab going down like it's supposed to and at the point where I'm going to start hammering it with a punch and having someone pulling on the key cylinder simultaneously! Just need a volunteer! lol So I took a break before I did some damage, anyone got some ideas?!

Here you can see the rectangle hole where you depress the tab on the back of the cylinder holding it in.. Maybe I should keep drilling and get that tab knocked down?




I did move onto priming, then painting the column with the SEM Landau Black, looking good!

 

Sometimes these cars can break you.
I spent an hour or so last week trying to remove my wiper arms.
Then I asked that stupid question on the forum and luckily someone spoke up and said, Oh you need this special tool and they’ll pop right off.
Sure enough they did and it took about 10 seconds each side.

 

ain't that the truth! It's always something stupid lol

 

Well I still haven't been able to get that damn ignition lock cylinder out my steering column, but I had some Holley parts come int: #18 squirter and 10.5 PV.

Previously I had discovered a micro vacuum leak at my carb base and a fresh gasket fixed it. I also noticed that I had had a higher vacuum reading now without the leak. When I would drive to replicate my light throttle tip in issue, I noticed I would drop down to about 10hg and I would get the lean condition and stumbles at that point. So I assumed at 10.5 PV would fix it, so I put one in this weekend, and it surely did fix my light throttle tip in issues!!! The next step will be to do back down to the #65 jets and see if I can cleanly run it without that issue.

Next was to work on my rich bog issue when I floor it. I bought the smallest accel squirters that Holley makes, 0.18", and put that on the secondary and retained the 0.25" on the primary. I still would get a rich bog when I floor it , although it cleared up MUCH quicker now, almost instantly, so it's certainly an improvement. Out of curiosity, I removed the cam from the secondary to disable that squirter and drove it to see how the engine would react: lean bog as expected. I then put a #31 squirter on the primary, with the secondary still being disabled, and went for some WOT pulls: PERFECT and CLEAN AFR and pulls!!!! I don't understand why my engine doesn't want much fuel at WOT... Is there something wrong going on here? I do forsee some throttle conditions where this would be an issue at part opening of the secondaries.

 

I also had my 6500RPM Tach face plate come in for my dash: The tachometer cleaned up nicely and it's starting to look like a complete dash! Chrome vents coming in this week and it'll be complete!



Got my bezel out, and here's a peak at how I'm going to do my gauges: will have AFR and Vacuum in the top two, and Temp/Oil/Volts on the bottom three with these aftermarket gauges I already have. Will probably eventually go to the stock gauges



And I removed all the old wood, glue, and paint off this shift bezel. I know it's not a '71 bezel with the fiber optic lights at the bottom, but I got it for free so going to use it!

 

It could be the carb is just too big for what your engine demand is. I would leave the squirter situation as it is unless you can find a smaller secondary squirter. Run it like that until you do see an issue but i dont forsee it.

The only thing i can see being the issue is the scondaries openning too soon and the demand isnt there. You would have to adjust the mechanical arm to tune that in so that yhe secondaries open a few degrees later but again, its finally working, i would drive it for a while and see how it goes.