Working on some of the minutia lately, prompted by some bullying by the wife about spare parts in the
spare soon-to-be baby's room.
1) the gas pedal had some flaking paint, probably from heating/bending during the rebuild to get it aligned to my feet. Removed, sanded, primed and painted, good as new.
2) The fuse for the heater motor kept blowing. I remember this may have started a while back, when I had to
replace my heater core. I went through the wiring and couldn't find anything out of the ordinary, though the resistor was a little loose. Fixed that, but fuses kept blowing. Checked the (+) at the motor and it was hot...suggesting that it may not be grounding very well. Although the mounts to the firewall were all tight, the new paint might have kept them from grounding well, so I scuffed up the paint at those mounts and tightened her down again. No more blown fuses
3) I had some aftermarket gauges from CJLaredo on ebay - they seem to be Crowns that he "upgraded" with in-house faceplates. I don't know if he makes them any longer. Anyway, they have a weird 3000K bulb so I had to find a replacement that was green. Well, a little too green, so I had to replace the bulbs in my speedo, too. Like I said, a little too green.
4) You'll also notice the OEM radio back in its spot. The wife was fed up with
radios in the closet so I decided it was probably a good time to install it and consolidate some of my aftermarket radios (if anyone is looking for some retros in working order, let me know. Nothing OEM any longer, though). Since I have that BT amp in the dash, I wanted to make sure to incorporate it somehow, all I had to do was find a switchable 12v source from the radio. Easier said than done, and I'm not ashamed to admit it took me a couple tries. The first I found and soldered was for a light that was only on when the radio was on. Turns out that light goes off when you put a cassette in, so I had to take the whole thing out and find one in the amp board instead. Now, amp turns on when radio turns on, amp turns off when radio turns off, and both radio, cassette, and BT are amped. Sounds great, plenty of volume at speed - enough to blow the speakers without much effort.
I guess one thing I am ashamed to admit is that I have been considering selling it. My wife says "no," that I've spent a lot of time, money, blood, sweat and tears on it, but I have some personal reasons that I'm losing sleep over. I would probably aim for Barrett-Jackson in the spring if I were able to make up my mind.
She's about as done as I can imagine her being. Drives like a dream and easily does 85+ on the highway (hard to say for sure, speedo only goes up to 85). Does fine in 105+ temps. 12mpg/1000 smiles per gallon with a lead foot. Only thing I might do sooner or later is drill the front driveshaft yokes for u-bolts.