THANKS! What makes you think you're not going to be around to answer?  Now you have me worried!

Thanks guys, yeah the 68 radio is a perfect fit in the 66 dash.  Even the buttons look pretty darn close. If you need some 66 style knobs I have some spares. 

Carl, the melted wire was the brown one that comes out of the igniton switch. Sorry to hear you're feeling low. I know you'll bounce  back soon.  For me the good weather is coinciding with me feeling great so givin' er is the plan. Unfortunately I have to lose tomorrow as i have to work during the day and MC a retirement party at night.  I agree its a tight schedule but the only way i actually work is under  pressure which is why I decided to post this stuff.

The only parts of the speedo head wiring i'm not sure of is the wires for the two gauges.  Someone had cut the ones off on my car and installed aftermaket ones so i guess I'll have to run new wires from the factory gauges to the sending units.  Which colour goes to which sending unit? (Probably a dumb quesiton but I'll ask just to be sure.

Here is a picture of the rusty fuse box (kind of out of focus, sorry)

Howdy guys, I feel that i have to explain my somewhat extended  absence as i was on kind of a roll for a while there.  I got back late last night from an unscheduled callout with the air tankers in Alberta. The spring hazard had the boys at the Alberta Provincial Fire Control Centre start some of the groups early.  I worked with a Convair 580 and in a Turbo Commander birddog (control) airplane for a couple of days and then moved over to an Lockheed Electra tanker for about 4 days.  They then asked me to move over to a group of  4 Airtractor 802's on floats which are my favorite airtanker actually even though they are kind of small.  In this airtanker group I got to run the show in a Cesssna Caravan which is also my favorite control aircraft as it is roomy tough, capatible with the tankers and can fly for longer than my bladder can.

We worked the Nordegg fire, which some of you may have heard of. The village had been evacuated and we were trying to keep the fire from overrunning it. We put in about 18 hours over the fire in two days (and a bit of a third) and I must say we left it looking a lot cooler than we found it.  I'm not actually allowed to post pictures of the work (guvvy property) but suffice it say that there were some pretty intense moments especially as I also had to be the air controller for up to 6 airtankers that were skimming off a lake about 2 miles away from the fire, 2 other larger ones (Electra) that bought in retardent from Rocky Mountain House and 7 or 8 bucketting helicoptors plus recon machines all in a fire that was about 300 acres in size.  (in the foothills yet!) 

Total concentration! It was a literal aerial ballet.  What a great job, especially the flights up and back from Calgary to Nordegg at about 9000 feet ASL through the foothills while looking at the front range of the rockies  just off to the west. 

I'm still kind of pumped and may be bragging a bit but its not every day anybody gets to have that much fun and fear at the same time.

Now back to the Poncho now that I have have fixed my 90 year old dads electric buggy today.  (He ran into a curb and bent a wheel backwards )  Times a wastin!

With forest fires, when it comes down to it,  there are only two things you can actually do, pound the heck out of it or run away!   I'm pretty lucky in the airplane; we can always leave real fast if we have to.

Speaking of fast though (smooth segue) I stuck in the back seat and new carpet tonight and took my stepson for a quick rip. (and did a nice power drift in the grass) 

It's getting to look more and more  like a car again with everypart i put back on.  I still have to put the wiring harness in tomorrow and the dash to get it ready for a wheel alignment anf windshield install on Thursday.  So close i can smell it! 

Driving this weekend is possible if I don't hit any snags!

Hi guys, thanks for the discussion.  A lot of that astuff isn't even hooked up yet (Like wipers and heater power windows) so I'm not too worried about those  One thing i just recalled though  was that when I bought the car it had a starter button hooked up under the dash. (Ie. someone had bypassed the harness and hooked it up direct to the solenoid)) I thought it was the ignition switch gone bad so I swapped it out for a good one as part of the rebuidl but now I'm wondering it it wasn't a wire in the harness to the solenoid that was bad.  I'll check that tomorrrow and pull out the harness again if I have to. Its not too late yet.

I bypassed the neutral safety switch by the way just to see if that was it.

Yeah affirmative on the accessability.  I'm not real strong on wiring (although I did do my 39 Buick from scratch) so i will proceed one step at a time.  Thanks for the help guys.  I'm sure we'll be talking more. 

OK, update for tonight.  Found the power cable to the horn relay that I had forgotten to put on and put it on. (thanks guys) It really didn't change anything  weirdly enough.  Fixed one back taillight socket quickly (thanks to parts cars.)  I also checked my fusible link wire to the coil and its passing 12 volts when the ignition is on but its still wouldn't crank over. I jumped the solenoid and it started right up and shut off with the key so i'm really thinkijg I have a bad wire from the ignition to the firewall in the harness, considering I tested the swtich before i put it in. Easy enough to fix now.

Once it started running I had dash lights and the tach is working although its seems to cut out if i fiddle with the dash light rheostat for some odd reason.  No horn or signal lights yet but brakes and tails are good (and look pretty cool through those louvers)

Tomorrow i will check the bad wire, install the sending units for the oil and temp (still running off the old aftermarket gauges, replace the ammeter (i seemed have fried it as its sitting way over in the discharge permanently) and put in a wiper motor and get that all set up.

Progress is being made!  

I think I'll replace the wire right from the switch to the firewall.  As I  recall the car had a starter button wired in to deal with the same problem a long time ago.  I have a feeling this car was not all that perfect from the factory or started to get defective pretty quickly. I also remember when I took it apart that  the blower fan had fallen off the shaft of the motor a long time ago whch must have meant for some pretty chilly winters in this thing and a total lack of AC air.

Those early production cars had their problems i think.